CRM UK - the official blog of the CRM specialists at TSG

Concentrix – a truly forward thinking organisation!

Concentrix recently carried out a survey to gauge perceptions of the company.  The results were pleasing and confirmed that Concentrix is seen in a positive light by all respondents .

Responses included:

- “Making a real difference to customers”

- One of the best technical solutions providers in the CRM and ERP space

- A professional CRM and IT solutions provider who prides themselves on delivering high quality solutions

- A truly forward thinking solutions provider with years of experience

- Professional, yet dynamically driven by expertise to meet software and infrastructure business needs

- Concentrix is a complete IT solutions provider aiming to provide a professional, efficient and agnostic solution to a company’s IT needs

- Making a real difference

Why did we do this?

Most organisations believe that they are, or should be perceived in a positive light, after all this will often form the foundation of the company’s existence.

However, from an internal perspective it is very easy to have a biased view of the organisation and not do any research to confirm the perception. This complacency could result in the failure of an organisation as a whole. So we thought it was important to carry out research to gain a real feedback on the perception of the organisation.

Concentrix is an independent Business Solutions provider supplying CRM and ERP software, Infrastructure, Hardware and Support. Concentrix takes a product agnostic approach to supplying software and provides ‘best in breed’ solutions from Microsoft, Sage and FrontRange. What’s more, Concentrix has excellent working relationships with all of its suppliers and is a Microsoft Gold Partner, Sage Business Partner and FrontRange Premier Partner.

Concentrix is an early adopter of new technology and this contributes to the company’s continuing success. However, it is important that Concentrix maintains this position going forward and continues to monitor its progress.

For more information about any of the solutions provided by Concentrix or to arrange a free trial, please contact Concentrix on 01509 410500 or email [email protected]

There are a number of reasons to choose Concentrix!

A recent survey has revealed Concentrix has a large number of strengths, which provide a real advantage over the competition including:

- Technical Ability

- Professionalism

- Product Agnostic Approach

- Experience

- Staff

Technical Ability

Concentrix is an independent Business Solutions Specialist and provides best in breed software from Microsoft, FrontRange and Sage.  Concentrix can customise any of these solutions to meet the precise requirements of your organisation. What’s more, they also have the resources to respond to your changing requirements moving forward.

Professionalism

Concentrix is a highly professional organisation and the company is trusted and highly regarded by both its customers and its suppliers.

All projects undertaken by Concentrix have a unique project methodology which makes each stage of the project process transparent which ensures the success of your project. It will minimise the costs associated with the project, reduce the risks involved and helps your organisation achieve maximum user adoption.

Product Agnostic

Concentrix provides best in breed solutions from Sage Microsoft and FrontRange. This enables us to ensure that the product meets the precise requirements of your organisation. Concentrix will not try to make a solution fit.

Experience

Concentrix has a number of customers in a range of different industry sectors including:

- Retail

- Education

- Charities

- Transport

- Construction

- Food

- Pharmaceuticals

Concentrix also has a number of Case Studies available from a range of industry sectors which provide real life examples of system implementations.

Staff

Concentrix staff are highly skilled and committed to delivering exceptional levels of customer satisfaction. This ensures that you will receive excellent customer service.

For help, advice or more information about any of the products Concentrix provide, please contact us on 01509 410500 or email [email protected]

Concentrix Customer Surgery

The next Concentrix Customer Surgery is on Tuesday 24^th August 2010 and we’d love you to come.

The Customer Surgery gives existing customers the opportunity to spend an hour with one of our CRM, Accounts or Business Solutions Specialists completely free of charge. You can ask our team about anything ranging from your existing system, to software upgrades, tips, advice and future developments.

Date: 24^th August  2010

Location: Concentrix Ltd, 20 Granite Way, Mountsorrel, Leicestershire LE12 7TZ

To book your place*, either email [email protected] or call 01509 410500 by Monday 16th August.

*Please note to attend the surgery you have to book a place first.

The final Blog from Concentrix at the Microsoft World Partner Conference!

As the locals would say, it's been awesome.

I'm sat in Washington DC's Dulles airport with Kev (who is documenting some JavaScript - he is a proper techie) awaiting our flight back to London. It's been a full-on week!

Today was spent wrapping things up and we had some quality face time with Microsoft product leaders on Dynamics NAV and CRM - asking difficult questions and getting even deeper into the products. We also got hands-on with Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 and have all sorts of cool nuggets of info that we'll tell you about some other time - the picture below shows the amazing CRM dashboards:

 
We also got to spend a bit time in the Expo. The Expo is huge but we've been so busy we hadn't had chance to take a look at it until today - full of good stuff and we had an interesting chat with a guy about Project Server 2011 (believe it or not).

 

Kev and I do a lot of software demos - both separately and sometimes as a finely tuned double act. So it was nice to see some of the Microsoft guys fighting the demo gremlins this week, just like the rest of us do every day.

Special mention to Microsoft UK's Gary Fowle for keeping his chin up in the UK Partner Keynote when the technology (and technicians) would have reduced a lesser man to tears.

Big thanks to Kev for his significant contribution to the blog and, (possibly more importantly) the work we have done and what we have achieved in the past week. And also thank you to Microsoft for the privilege and a great show!

While certainly impressed by the event, excited about some of the technologies and pleased by Microsoft's direction I think I've avoided the brain-washing I blogged about before coming. This is in part due to keeping a healthy dose of scepticism and our "product agnostic" approach. It's also partially down to the fact that the baseball caps weren't free and are, in fact, rubbish (see below)!

 
It's been a terrific week and I'm looking forward to bringing home what we've learned for our team and, most, importantly for our customers.

If you are interested in optimising your business performance with Microsoft Dynamics then let's talk. Concentrix is one of the UK's top 10 Microsoft Dynamics CRM partners (measured by license sales - we'd score much higher if they measured on innovation) and amongst the fastest growing Microsoft Dynamics NAV partners. So, as one of my great business mentors says, GET INVOLVED!

Super-computing on-demand, data visualisation, out-there technology, Microsoft’s Chief Operating Officer and Bill Clinton – the latest news from Concentrix at the Microsoft World Partner Conference

Here’s the latest news from John Odell, representing Concentrix (with Kevin Whittingham) at the Microsoft World Partner Conference 2010.

Wednesday morning, Washington DC. The Verizon Centre ice arena, home of the Washington Wizards (ice) hockey team and WPC’s big sit-down venue for the week. We kick off with looking at some bleeding edge use of Microsoft’s latest technologies, including:

 - Super-computing on-demand through (the) Cloud (GreenButton from InterGrid). This demo showed the rendering of high quality graphics over a complex CAD wireframe by packaging up the “job” and sending it out to a series of clustered servers all running Windows Azure. The workload is spread amongst the various servers and clusters for processing and then returned as a recompiled completed job, doing in a few seconds what would take many hours using traditional means – and all without owning any server hardware. Stunning.

- Silverlight Pivot: Data visualisation, sorry: visualization unlike anything you’ve seen. Awesome.

 - Some new camera and projector tech (if you like that sort of thing) from Microsoft's wacky R&D team. These guys are out there, but the technology is out there too and things like projecting an interactive Surface style interface from your phone is not too far away.

Microsoft’s Chief Operating Officer Kevin Turner (KT) was doing some high octane cheerleading and talking about the competition. KT loves to compete and is the embodiment of Microsoft’s aggressive approach to taking market share. He admitted mistakes, such as dropping the ball on Mobile and the horribleness that was Windows Vista – but was never far away from talking about eviscerating the enemy.

My favourite bit was when, talking about Google, Kevin noted that Microsoft didn’t need anything in their code of conduct saying “don't be evil” to remind them not be evil (see http://investor.google.com/corporate/code-of-conduct.html). Some of things he said about Oracle’s Larry Ellison were just downright nasty, but funny and quite possibly true.

And then it was time for Bill Clinton, 42nd President of the US, philanthropist, philanderer (allegedly) and one of the most gifted speakers of his generation. He was pretty cool. Kevin got a thank you from Bill – it was not clear whether it was directed at our Kev or KT...

We rounded off the morning with a look at another business intelligence software offering (we’re involved in so much BI that I’m going to have to write a report on it...) and a chat with a nice Argentinean lady from Microsoft about the forthcoming changes to Partner status – it’s getting more discerning, so when you see that Concentrix is a Gold Partner specialising in CRM and ERP, you know we’ve earned it!

After lunch it was interactive discussions with some of the Microsoft Dynamics CRM product leaders about Customer Care, an area we specialise in with particular focus on the passenger transport vertical. Some good stuff is coming in Dynamics CRM 2011 and some equally good stuff that we want for our customers is not! They can’t do everything at once, but we’re pushing them and they are listening.

After a few more bits and pieces (including getting some t-shirts – I’m not invoking the idiom of “getting t-shirts” as oft used by our MD, I’m talking about the physical acquisition of apparel) we finished the day with a briefing on the new Microsoft Partner Advisory Council.

We’re packing up tonight as it’s wheels-up as the sun goes down on Thursday. It’s been a full-on, flat-out week and it ain’t over yet... As proof that we were actually here and not sat by a pool in Miami regurgitating Microsoft press releases following a fluke mix-up with the flights:

 
Kev’s gone native:

 
Have a nice day – remember you can follow me on Twitter http://twitter.com/odellodell and for lots of other useful stuff, follow http://twitter.com/Concentrix_UK.

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011, Dynamics NAV 2009 R2, Cloud computing ... Today's news from Concentrix at the Microsoft World Partner Conference

Here’s today’s post from John Odell, Senior CRM Consultant at Concentrix who’s at the Microsoft World Partner Conference in Washington DC. Remember you can also keep up with John’s news from the conference at http://twitter.com/odellodell.

Another balmy morning here in DC. Early start to get a couple of hours work done in the UK AM, Skype'd the wife and kids, had an hour in the hotel gym, an omelette and then into some "connect" networking meetings. Had lunch with a French chap and we discussed the vastness of WPC and how you would struggle to achive the scale in Europe - the picture below shows half of one of the main rooms (I'm wearing a very bright pink shirt - there's a prize if you can spot me).

 
Getting deep with Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011... There are a few pretty exciting elements to the new Dynamics CRM. Here are just a few - expect to hear a lot more in the coming weeks and months:

• Code in Cloud: We've been providing hosted Microsoft Dynamics CRM for a while now and had a great success with it. However, one of the major problems with hosted CRM as it stands is the inability to handle advanced customisations, integration and bespoke components. This is because you can't deploy custom code into the shared hosting environment. Customising and integrating CRM is a core Concentrix specialism, so this limitation has been a major pain for us and closed the door on hosted CRM to a number of customer's. With CRM 2011 it will be possible to have code in (the) Cloud - so that's pretty significant for a lot businesses (especially if you consider it alongside the Azure stuff I blogged about yesterday).

• Dashboards: Frankly, the lack of dashboards in Microsoft Dynamics CRM v4 is a little embarrassing. Sage CRM has dashboard, SalesLogix has dashboard, even good ol' GoldMine has dashboard, but not Microsoft Dynamics CRM v4. Well, Microsoft have plugged that gap with a very impressive looking dashboard facility that can be role tailored, individually tailored and fully contextual. It is more like a mini-BI tool and will be great for things like customer care, case management and sales pipelines (as well as being pretty to demonstrate!).

• Outlook-ised: Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 looks even more like Outlook than ever! It has reading panes for CRM records (less clicks to get to the details), user customisations (such as chose your own columns + "drag and drop" parts on the user interface), flagging, categorisation and grouping of CRM records, enhanced communication tracking - all about usability, user productivity, user empowerment and user happiness!

• Custom activity and communications: Possibly my favourite, which is a bit geeky, but is upping the flexibility of Microsoft Dynamics CRM and I can really see how it would benefit several existing customers who are currently bending themselves around the limited communication types in v4.

• Role tailored client: This is a major success story for Microsoft Dynamics NAV (if you ever find yourself in a Microsoft-delivered NAV session then you'll be hit over the head with role tailored client / RTC until you are dizzy!) which is being incorporated into CRM 2011. As the name suggests, it tailors the client - meaning user interface and experience - to the user's role and therefore need, excluding stuff they don't need and streamlining what they do. Simple but clever (you know what I mean...).

• SharePoint integration out of the box: Pretty much what it says on the box - Dynamics 2011 and SharePoint were always meant to talk to each other, now they are made to talk to each other.

• Marginal gains: As I blogged yesterday, CRM 2011 is about LOADS of marginal gains (which have the potential to deliver BIG benefits), improvements to shaky bits in v4, gaps plugged, several splangly new things, a further step in the right direction.

Microsoft are clearly a bit cagey about the precise features list and we'll continue to take a realistic and perhaps slightly sceptical view of CRM 2011 until it's in production. However, it is clearly awesome!

 

Getting deep with Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2009 R2... Well, I never thought I'd get excited by an ERP software product! However, NAV 2009 R2 (catchy name) is clearly pretty special. Here are the highlights from what we saw today:

• CRM integration: An integration framework for Microsoft Dynamics CRM that comes in the box for Microsoft Dynamics NAV is bound to get me interested. Tieing together the front and back office is a desire of many companies and organisations and NAV now gives us another really solid option.

• Streaming the client: So, you can use NAV just like it's on your desktop without having it installed on your PC. Coupled with the NAV role tailored client, imagine what this could do for your remote workforce or even satellite office(s). As well as not needing NAV installed they wouldn't need a VPN/Citrix.

• Cloud: The above "streaming" concept is a large part of Cloud-ing NAV, but it's not the whole story. Cloud NAV will be subscription based and require no hardware infrastructure, but it will still integrate with CRM and give you the rich RTC.

• Other highlights: More Windows 7 functionality, such as "jump menu"; online payment; better BI capability.

The roadmap looks pretty tasty and highly focussed, so it's a good product to get on board with. Kev quite literally had to have a cold shower and lie down after the NAV session.

It's the end of the day but the work isn't over as Kev and I head off to the Microsoft UK Partner party at a swanky hotel near the White House. It's all tuxedos and cocktail frocks, but Kev and I wear neither and opt for a more subtle, clandestine approach. Fair play to Microsoft UK - I criticised their lounge but they threw one hell of a party. For me it included some good networking, a cavalier but ultimately doomed game of blackjack, an embarrassing attempt at a shoot 'em up on the Xbox (when on earth did joysticks get so complicated?) and hitting the free bar for at least two glasses of cranberry juice. 

  
 Bill Clinton is speaking in the morning. Which should be nice.

More updates soon - if you need any further information on the topics I've discussed in the meantime, feel free to contact Concentrix.

Did someone mention Cloud? – Latest News from Concentrix at the Microsoft World Partner Conference

Did someone mention Cloud? Only about a million times (before lunch). “Cloud” is the buzzword du jour for hosted solutions or Software as a Service (Saas) – as well as Infrastructure as a Service (Iaas) and Platform as a Service (PaaS) (no, I’m not joking).

Cloud is Microsoft’s big thing and Steve Ballmer (Microsoft CEO) kicked things off with vigour and seemed pretty keen on Cloud (note Cloud, not the cloud or a cloud). He had a microphone, but he needn’t of used it – there were only 13,000 of us in the room and he was plenty loud enough.

Microsoft – and Concentrix - already offer cloud options for Microsoft CRM, (we call it hosted Microsoft CRM), as well as Exchange and SharePoint. One VERY exciting thing is that the next release of Microsoft Dynamics NAV will be “cloud ready”, as well as integrating out-of-the-box with Microsoft Dynamics CRM and doing something so clever with the web-based streaming of the client software that I still can’t quite explain it (you don’t need to have NAV installed on your computer to use it - go figure...).

 It sounds like Microsoft is close to getting the whole cloud thing right. They admit they’ve made mistakes and have learned a lot about hosting from offerings such as Windows Live, Hotmail and Bing (they are still learning about how to search for things). The way they are building their data centres is quite sci-fi and one for another day.  

As British people, we are very familiar with cloud and should be well placed to leverage the business opportunities it offers as the proposition matures. The whole IaaS and PaaS, as well as much of the SaaS (are you still with me?) will be delivered through Microsoft Azure and Azure Appliance. This is set to revolutionise on-premise / data centre deployments as it allows the customer to host the servers, software and data locally while receiving it as a service and paying for it all on a subscription basis. That even sounds cool to me.

Elsewhere on the hardware front, it was interesting to learn more about Windows Intune, which our hardware / infrastructure management guys (and customers!) will be very interested in. For the BI (business intelligence) fans, Microsoft’s forthcoming data marketplace – codename “Dallas" - will enable people to buy and sell data and make it available through the OData standard API. We saw a good demo of Dallas hooking into one of our favourite BI tools – Tableau software. PerformancePoint is also now part of SharePoint (2011), which is a pretty good BI tool too.

Microsoft Dynamics CRM v5 has been officially named Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011. We're getting our hands on it soon, so contact Concentrix if you want to find out how it can benefit your business or organisation or if you just want to come in and have a look at it.

Kev and I were present at the first ever public demonstration of Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 and were suitably impressed. It looks more like, or rather just like Office; The personalised contextual Dashboards look spot on; out-of-the-box SharePoint (MOSS) integration is overdue but here!; loads of marginal but serious improvements are also wrapped up in it. Overall, from an end consumer point of view it looks like the functionality will be much more usable - I think it's going to blow people away! When asked to summarise, in layman’s terms, his thoughts on the new version, Kev (Concentrix Senior Microsoft Dynamics CRM Application Specialist / guru / geek) said “...wow”.

We also stopped by the UK Partner Lounge, which doesn’t scrub up very well compared to some of the other countries’ lounges. It has some badges and a James Bond theme – complete with 007 cardboard cut-out, Union flag and cocktails shakers (and Kev – not a permanent fixture) as below: 

 
I spent the afternoon immersing myself in ERP strategy and will take lots of thoughts back to our Microsoft Dynamics NAV team; met with a potential new supplier for a software demo; joined in a CRM focus group with some other partners; went for a run to the White House (smaller than it looks on TV, but with a very nice garden).

Tomorrow there is going to be much, much more on the new version of Dynamics CRM as well as more networking and a party on a roof (well, someone has to go to these things).

Concentrix at the Microsoft World Partner Conference - Latest Update

Here’s the latest update from John Odell Senior CRM Consultant at Concentrix, at the Microsoft World Partner Conference in Washington DC. John will be keeping us up to date direct from the conference through this blog, and via http://twitter.com/odellodell.

It's "wheels up" and off to Washington DC for the Microsoft World Partner Conference (WPC). Those nice chaps at Microsoft have thought of everything...

Now, perhaps I can find someone from BA to talk to about an Industrial Relationship Management solution... IRM anyone?

Sunday... A few observations on DC:

+ Beautiful architecture

+ Hot (very!)

+ Very slow sub-way escalators (Londoners wouldn't abide the speed)

+ You're never more than a couple of blocks from a Starbucks coffee shop (I have a reputation for spending a lot of time in coffee shops).

We're checked-in, orientated and received (there was a reception) and looking forward to the real action kicking off tomorrow. It looks like it’ll be a very busy but very good week and both Kev and I have been impressed with the scale and detail of the thing so far.

As for the rest of the day, we're off to find the Spanish Partner party... ola!

Concentrix is a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner and Microsoft Authorised Education Reseller

Concentrix at the Microsoft World Partner Conference

Here’s a guest post from a Senior CRM Consultant at Concentrix, John Odell. John will be visiting the Microsoft World Partner Conference in Washington DC at the end of this week. You can keep up with John’s progress, discoveries, reports and opinions while he’s at the conference - right here on the Concentrix blog!

Guest Post:

The Microsoft World Partner Conference (aka WPC) is Microsoft's annual week-long event for partners from all over the globe. This year it is being held in Washington DC from 11th to 15th July and as a leading UK Microsoft Dynamics partner, Concentrix just has to be there.

I am flying out to represent Concentrix, along with my trusty sidekick Kevin Whittingham (our lead technical specialist on Microsoft Dynamics CRM). Kev and I are really excited about this. I am particularly looking forward to:

- Getting exclusive access to the new version of Microsoft Dynamics CRM (v5), details of which have been pretty hush-hush thus far (we've been told it's "awesome", or words to that effect but it will be nice to get some detail!). We've had an excellent couple of years deploying Microsoft Dynamics CRM v4 and are looking forward to learning what we can achieve with the new version.

- Embracing Microsoft Dynamics NAV. As a CRM consultant, my knowledge of finance and ERP systems can best be described as "working" (although Concentrix has a number of highly qualified and experienced ERP and Microsoft Dynamics NAV specialists, I tend to focus on CRM). As our Microsoft Dynamics NAV practice continues to go from strength to strength it has become a key Concentrix offering. I'll be looking out for anything of use I can bring back for the ERP software guys at Concentrix.

- Meeting up with other Dynamics partners and sharing experience, war stories and forging some new links.

- Seeing Bill Clinton deliver a key note address (you know you've paid a lot for your ticket when Bill Clinton is on the, er, bill).

- Getting Kev to explain all sorts of interesting new technologies to me.

Although Concentrix is a Microsoft Gold Partner, we will be keenly preserving our independent / product agnostic approach and I'm determined not to get sucked in / seduced / brain washed by the glitz and glamour of it all... what's that, free baseball caps..?

As well keeping up with John and Kevin's daily goings-on at the Conference right here on CRM-UK, you can also follow John via Twitter  http://twitter.com/odellodell

More to follow soon...