Beringer Associates Blog

Microsoft has released Update Rollup 5 for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0

beringer — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 03:33:13 +0000

Microsoft has released Update Rollup 5 for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 Server, Microsoft Dynamics CRM for Microsoft Office Outlook, Microsoft Dynamics CRM Data Migration Manager, Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 Language Pack, and Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 E-mail Router. For more information about this release, see Microsoft Knowledge Base article 970141. To maintain parity between the the application components of Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0, this update rollup includes packages for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 Server, Microsoft Dynamics CRM for Outlook, Microsoft Dynamics CRM Data Migration Manager, Microsoft Dynamics CRM Language Packs, and Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 E-mail Router.

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=5101d801-976b-4c11-bdfc-000b970ef4a3

Beringer Associates, Inc.

www.beringer.net | sales@beringer.net | 800.796.4854

Microsoft Nominates Beringer Associates for Partner of the Year in the Satisfaction & Experience category in the East Region

wbuggy — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 20:16:33 +0000

Pennsauken, NJ –July 29, 2009–Beringer Associates (www.beringer.net), a leading IT Solutions Provider, has been nominated by Microsoft for Partner of the Year in the Satisfaction & Experience category in the East Region. This award recognizes a Microsoft partner who has provided exceptional customer satisfaction with Microsoft through outreach and participation across a range of customer focused activities.

“They have grown their business largely on the very high quality of customer and technical support provided to their clients. They have a full time Help Desk environment (running on a highly customized version of Microsoft CRM). This system assures they meet service levels for our customers. Customer Service and Technical Support is the top priority in their business – their philosophy is “good work leads to more work“. Paul Pusateri – Partner Account Manager – Microsoft

“Beringer was also responsible for one of the largest implementations of Microsoft CRM Online (Fall 2008). This implementation was 250 seats originally. The CRM Online system was highly customized to meet the customers’ needs. The solution included backend data integration that pushes data from the customer’s line of business applications to CRM Online on a weekly basis. As a result of the solution delivered and the support received from both Beringer and Microsoft the customer had doubled the amount of users on the system to 500″. Chris Kahl – Partner Technology Advisor – Microsoft

“Beringer has also become an invaluable resource for other Microsoft partners in the area. They have been generous with their time and expertise in helping other partners with technical issues and assisted in architecting complex solutions that fully leverage the capabilities of Dynamics CRM and the Microsoft stack. They are a first class organization from the ground up and a credit to the Dynamics Partner community“. Paul Pusateri – Partner Account Manager – Microsoft

“We are honored to be nominated for this award by Microsoft. We owe this nomination to our team of dedicated support and implementation professionals who go above and beyond in every project. This company wide commitment to world class support has fueled our growth of over 1000% in our Microsoft CRM practice over the last year. We also thank the great team of people at Microsoft we work with every day, we could not continue to be successful without them”. David J. Buggy – Vice President/Partner – Beringer Associates

About Beringer Associates, Inc.

Founded in 1993, Beringer Associates is a leading IT Solutions Provider specializing in IT Service & Support, Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and Business Telephone Systems/Voice over IP. Headquartered in Pennsauken, NJ Beringer Associates has over 14 years of experience helping businesses plan, implement and support Customer Relationship Management initiatives. Their implementation methodology has been used to help hundreds of businesses across the country achieve success with CRM. Beringer is a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner representing the highest level of competence and expertise with Microsoft technologies. Beringer Associates can be reached on the Internet at www.beringer.net or by phone 800-796-4854.

Microsoft Honors Beringer Associates for Outstanding Customer Commitment and Sales Achievement

beringer — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 14:11:03 +0000

Pennsauken, NJ –July 29, 2009–Beringer Associates (www.beringer.net), a leading IT Solutions Provider, has been named to the 2009 Microsoft Dynamics President’s Club, receiving recognition from Microsoft Corp. for its dedicated commitment to customers. This honor reflects Beringer Associates success in extending the Microsoft Dynamics CRM platform to drive business advantages in companies worldwide.

This recognition came during Microsoft’s Worldwide Partner Conference in New Orleans. Microsoft Dynamics President’s Club recognizes a small prestigious group of Microsoft Business Solutions partners worldwide for achieving a high level of sales and business performance while maintaining a constant dedication to customer satisfaction and innovation.

“Microsoft is proud to congratulate Beringer Associates. on being named to the 2009 Microsoft Dynamics President’s Club,” said Doug Kennedy, Vice President, Microsoft Dynamics Partners. “This accomplishment is a result of Beringer demonstrating unparalleled commitment by investing in the success of Microsoft Dynamics, our customers and solutions.”

“We owe our success to our dedicated team members and to our loyal customers” said David J. Buggy, Vice- President/Partner, Beringer Associates. “Our tremendous sales growth of over 1000% was achieved by working with our clients as a strategic partner and clearly demonstrating the value of Microsoft CRM. We are honored to be named to President’s Club and look forward to another successful year in our partnership with Microsoft.”

About Beringer Associates, Inc.

Six Steps to CRM Success

beringer — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 21:02:12 +0000

1. Envision – Take a step back and define what CRM means to your business. Define objectives and project goals along with expected return on investment.

2. Plan – Focus on process! It is easy to get wrapped up in the features of CRM products. Features are typically not important until your needs are defined. The planning portion of the project defines your business processes and outlines how CRM will enhance your overall operation.

3. Design – When designing your CRM strategy there are many considerations. Phasing is very important in a CRM project. Evaluate all business applications in your organization and all customer touch points.

4. Deployment – During this phase keep business interruption to a minimum. Create a deployment plan that minimizes the impact to both employees and customers.

5. Training – The proper amount of training is critical. Set minimum system use requirements up front and communicate these to the users.

6. Support – Build the proper internal and external support channels prior to go-live. Make it easy for users to get answers to questions and problems quickly.

Beringer Associates, Inc.

www.beringer.net | sales@beringer.net | 800.796.4854

The Value of CRM in a Down Economy

beringer — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 20:46:43 +0000

You must ask yourself what changes you have made to your business to adapt to the current economic climate. If you cannot answer this question you may be behind the eight ball. The current climate is not that of previous years and not where we will be in the future, we are in a period of transition and must change our businesses to adapt.

CRM is one strategic initiative that can help your business adopt change quicker and with less disruption. It will not only help you make necessary changes now but will position you to capitalize when things turn around.

We work with many businesses each year to help them plan and execute their CRM initiative. We interact with business leaders across many different industries facing different challenges. Most have some commonality today; weathering the current economic storm and preparing their business for when things turn. In this article we have put together a few CRM related strategies that can help businesses survive and even thrive in these times.

Most experts agree that in a downturn it is very important to put an emphasis on existing customers, selling more to existing customers can create cheap growth. It is also a good time to examine customer profitability account-by-account and rank your customers. A CRM system can help by segmenting your customers and creating processes for cross/up selling into these accounts.

Make the most of every opportunity! In these challenging times where the buying universe has shrunk it is more important than ever to make sure your sales team is proactively managing every sales lead that is generated. In challenging economic times buyers shop more to try and get the best pricing on just about everything they purchase. As a result we face more competition. If you are not proactive in managing sales leads your competitors will be.

It is also more important now to know the outlook of the business on a monthly basis. This allows us to make well informed decisions. Without a central place to manage sales opportunities this can be a difficult task. Most CRM systems will offer a robust opportunity management system with pipeline reporting, some also offer sales process coaching as well. Our CRM system automatically emails us a monthly report showing bookings vs. costs for the current month and shows us a weighted pipeline for the next 3 months. This report is a valuable tool for knowing where we are at today and where we are headed over the next few months. It also allows us to adjust to the pipeline, if 90% of the pipeline is in early stages we focus more energy and resources on moving deals ahead and less on prospecting.

Improve your close rates – Another way to increase revenue is to improve your sales teams close rates. For example let’s assume you have 25 opportunities in your pipeline. If your average gross profit on a sale is $5000 and your average close rate is 50% you could generate an additional $12,500 if you improved your close rate by 10%. The best part about this is you have not added any costs to obtain this additional revenue. Do you know your sales teams average close rate? CRM systems can shed light on this important metric and help you measure improvements.

Market more cost effectively – Bootstrapping is important in the current climate but cutting marketing too much can hurt sales. Look for ways to more cost effectively market your products and services. A CRM system can help you dig into your customer data and create very targeted marketing campaigns. For example identify customers that have not made a purchase in X months and offer an incentive. Another example would be to identify all accounts that have purchased a specific product or service and market a synergistic product or service.

Know what is working – I can look in our CRM system and easily determine exactly how many leads each marketing campaign has generated and the amount of sales each campaign generated. This allows us to continually manage where we spend our marketing budget based on campaign performance.

If you can’t measure it you can’t manage it – We have seen an increase in the amount of requests for custom reports. If you already have a CRM system in place but are underutilizing it now may be a great time to enhance your system. Many businesses implement changes without a way of measuring the results. In times like these a panic mentality can set in causing business leaders to make rash changes. If you are planning on making changes make sure you have a way to measure the changes you implement.

These are just a few examples on how a properly implemented CRM system can help you through this tough period.

If you are interested in exploring how CRM could benefit your business contact us for more information. You can also learn more about the CRM services we offer.

Beringer Associates, Inc.

www.beringer.net | sales@beringer.net | 800.796.4854

AAA South Jersey Selects Beringer Associates to implement Microsoft Dynamics CRM

beringer — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 14:10:35 +0000

AAA South Jersey, an affiliate of AAA offers automotive, travel, financial and insurance services to drivers throughout southern New Jersey. They needed a CRM platform that could be cost effectively tailored to their unique needs.

“We manage a significant amount of data across several lines of business, the challenge is that this data is fragmented across different databases making it difficult to get a complete picture of our members. We need a solution that allows us to centralize our data in one place to be able to operate more efficiently and provide better service to our members. We also need a solution that will improve our ability to cross promote our different products and services better demonstrating the overall value in AAA membership.” Joan Sickler, Managing Director – Projects.

The Choice was Clear

“We evaluated several solutions but selected Microsoft CRM because it offered the most value for our investment. Microsoft CRM is highly configurable to meet our needs and is built on an open platform reducing our total cost of ownership long term. It also plugs into the systems we already use today such as Microsoft office and Outlook reducing the learning curve for our users and decreasing the time to value.”

Why Beringer Associates

Beringer took the time upfront to fully understand our business and our needs. They began with a tailored demonstration that let us see how CRM would fit into our environment and solve the challenges we were experiencing. They also performed a very thorough needs analysis and project planning engagement enabling us to collectively develop a detailed scope of work that will assure the solution is delivered on time, within budget and that it meets our needs. Beringer has the experience and resources to help us assure a successful implementation.”

Expected business benefits

“The MRM (Member Relationship Management) solution will allow us to bring together information that was previously stored in separate databases making our staff more productive and enabling our team to provide better service to our members. It will also allow us to capitalize on cross promoting our products and services to both members and prospective members. The Microsoft CRM solution will give us much better analysis capabilities using powerful reporting and graphical dash boarding tools. We also see significant value in deploying workflow that will allow us to ensure best practices are followed in every member interaction.”

“We are very excited to partner with AAA South Jersey to implement Microsoft Dynamics CRM. Microsoft CRM gives us a solid platform to build a solution that addresses AAA’s member relationship management goals.” David J. Buggy, Vice President/Partner, Beringer Associates, Inc.

For more information on AAA South Jersey visit their web site or call 1-888-577-9222

For more information on Beringer Associates visit www.beringer.net or call 800-796-4854

AltiGen Releases New IP Telephone – Model IP720

beringer — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 13:42:13 +0000

AltiGen has annouced the release of a new IP Telephone, model IP720. Expected to ship July 09 the new phone will feature an Updated Deisgn, Embedded POE , Gigabit Ethernet Switch and an improved Speaker Phone.

Technical Specifications:

The IP720 is an executive level IP phone with 15 programmable keys, speakerphone, intercom, intercom, busy lamp fields, and much more. The IP 710 telephone is a fully featured VoIP phone designed to empower the user. Bringing stylish form and functionality to the desktop, the IP 720 makes sophisticated features simple and intuitive to use. Users have single button access to voicemail, activity/presence selection, voicemail greeting selections, call recording, call conferencing, call transferring, and even placing calls to employees in other countries.With the 4 line, backlit liquid crystal display the IP 720 is capable of displaying time, Caller ID name and number, real-time call center workgroup statistics, do-not-disturb, and call forwarding status.Personalize the IP 720 Telephone.
You can personalize the IP 720 with 15 backlit user-defined keys. These programmable keys can be setup for any combination of configurable features like, but not limited to, speed-dialing, extension busy/ringing appearances, call appearances, line appearances, and workgroup activity status.

One button access for voice recording to your personal voicemail box or to a centralized server
15 backlit user-defined keys
One button access to activity/presence codes
15 user programmable keys for extension, call and line appearances, access to system features, and speed dialing
Workgroup real-time statistics on the telephone display for use by workgroup service agents or supervisors
Auto answer feature allowing calls to be answered automatically to a defined voice device within a specific ring time. Great for call center service agents with headsets or office operators

Accessorize the IP 720 with 3rd party hands free headsets using AltiGen’s dedicated headset answering button and amplified industry standard RJ9 and 2.5mm headset ports.AltiGen also provides you with 14 combined traditional and melodic ring tones which can also be assigned to line and extension appearances on the programmable keys.Productivity Features:

Network Interface:

Built-in Gigabit Ethernet switch
RJ-45 port x 2 (LAN/PC)

Voice Devices:
Handset port
RJ-9 and 2.5mm industry standard headset ports
Hands free speaker phone

LCD Display Capabilities:

Caller ID Name & Number
DNIS Name & Number
Time display and call timer
Message waiting indicator
Do-not-disturb and call
forwarding status display
Activity/presence status display
Workgroup statistics
Call log
And more…

One-touch feature buttons:

Redial
Hang-up/Release
Hold
Intercom
Speaker
Mute
Headset
Flash
Speed dial
Transfer
Conference
Speaker
Voicemail
Voicemail greeting selection
Activity/presence control
Volume control
15 backlit user programmable keys

LCD Module & Keypad:

White backlit liquid crystal display
Blue backlit keypad
Large font
4 different programmable key template colors

General Specifications:

Physical dimensions (HxWxD) 8.74×9.72×1.89 in (222x247x48 mm)
Main body weight: 2 lb 2.3 oz (972 g)
Handset weight: 6.2 oz (176g)
Handset Weight: 176g (6.2 oz)
Operation temperature: 0-40^OC (32 - 104^OF)
Storage temperature: 10-60^OC (14- 140^OF)
Operation humidity: 5%~90% non-condensing
Wall Mountable
Operation humidity: 5%~90% non-condensing

Accessories: (Purchased Separately)

Ac Power Adapter
Wall mount bracket kit

For more information contact Beringer Associates at 800-796-4854 or visit on-line at (www.beringer.net).

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 Update Rollup 4 is now available

beringer — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 19:10:00 +0000

Update Rollup 4 for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 is available. This article describes the hotfixes and the updates that are included in this update rollup. This update rollup is available for all languages that are supported by Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0.

The issues that are resolved in Update Rollup 4 for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0

Update Rollup 4 is a cumulative update rollup that includes all the fixes for the issues that are documented in Update Rollup 1, in Update Rollup 2, and in Update Rollup 3.

For more information about Update Rollup 1 and about the issues that it resolves, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:(http://support.microsoft.com/kb/952858/ )

For more information about Update Rollup 2 and about the issues that it resolves, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:(http://support.microsoft.com/kb/959419/ )

For more information about Update Rollup 3 and about the issues that it resolves, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

(http://support.microsoft.com/kb/961768/ )

For more information about Update Rollup 4 and about the issues that it resolves, click the following article number to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base: (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/968176 )