Microsoft
Dynamics®
CRM
Relational Productivity Applications
Leveraging Microsoft Dynamics CRM and SharePoint for Enhanced
Business Impact
White Paper
Date: April
2010
http://crm.dynamics.com
Table of Contents
Abstract
.......................................................................................................................................................
3
Executive
Summary
........................................................................................................................................
4
Introduction
.................................................................................................................................................
5
Responding to
Evolving Pressures in the Business Environment
..............................................................................
5
Solution
Approach: The Relational Productivity Application
....................................................................................
8
Aware,
Aligned Workflows
..............................................................................................................................
9
Interfaces
that Present Multiple Views of
Data...................................................................................................
10
Enterprise
Search and Data Structure
.............................................................................................................
10
Assessing the
Business Value of the RPA
..........................................................................................................
11
The xRM/SharePoint
Realization of the RPA
........................................................................................................12
When to Go
with an RPA
...............................................................................................................................
15
Conclusion
.................................................................................................................................................
18
Abstract
Evolving market forces are putting increased pressure on
businesses to improve customer experience and bottom-line
efficiency at the same time. These contradictory trends
simultaneously demand greater quality, customization, and client
engagement with lower costs. The result is a convergence between
collaborative, unstructured information work and the structured
tasks required to optimize relationships with customers,
partners, vendors, and others. Though some people do both kinds
of work, information work and structured task work are typically
performed on separate information systems. Enabling information
workers to engage effectively with task workers requires uniting
the best elements of the collaborative, document and
team-focused information worker technologies with the relational
line-of-business applications that support structured task work.
This paper will examine the causes of this new convergence of
technology, a solution approach for the resulting new class of
software, the relational productivity application. The paper
will also lay out an approach to realizing the development of
the relational productivity application using a combination of
Microsoft® Office SharePoint® Server 2007 platform and the xRM
application framework of Microsoft Dynamics® CRM. The “better
together” scenario delivers an answer to today’s great business
challenge: how to be more customized, more rapid, and more
engaged with the client while still driving down transaction
costs and associated overheads. Relational Productivity
Applications
Executive Summary
Businesses today are facing new economic and competitive
challenges that are forcing them to rethink the traditional
tradeoff between quality, customer experience, and price. This
is not a new phenomenon, of course, but it has intensified in
recent years. Businesses are expected to be innovative and
customer-centric, with shorter product lifecycles and
customer-driven adaptations while operating increasingly lean
vendor and partner networks and related back-office processes.
In IT terms, solving this challenge involves improving the
collaboration between people who do the information work and
those who do structured task work. For instance, it means
enabling more productive alignment of sales and marketing with
the management of vendors, customers, and orders.
Information work is essentially collaborative and unstructured,
while structured task work has been fairly regimented, with a
focus on efficient and precise management of key business
relationships. Information workers use productivity tools and
collaboration solutions, such as online team workspaces, while
structured task work is performed on relational line-of-business
(LOB) applications. In many cases, the relational LOB
application grows out of a core
customer relationship management (CRM) application, with the
goal of extending customer management functions or managing
customer-like relationships, such as vendors or partners.
As the two types of work are increasingly blended in business
processes that combine structured and unstructured steps, there
is a need for a blended “relational productivity application” (RPA)
that spans these two essential modes of work and brings out the
best business results from the combination. The RPA combines the
process-oriented, structured line-of-business application with
collaborative, socially-based information work tools. The RPA
enables information workers to have awareness of transactions
and detailed specifics of operations that have an impact on
their work. Conversely, the RPA gives structured task workers
exposure to the subjective, document-based information that the
information workers use to manage accounts and the business
overall.
As an architecture, the RPA is an integration between the
relational LOB application and the collaboration environment,
with standards-based messaging connecting the two. The
respective data sets of the two applications are connected
through metadata, aligning structured business data with
unstructured documents and collaboration data.
In the Microsoft environment, the RPA is best realized by
integrating the xRM application framework of Microsoft Dynamics
CRM, which is used to build
relational LOB applications for structured task work, and Office
SharePoint Server, the collaboration and document management
platform used in information work. Microsoft Dynamics CRM and
Microsoft Office SharePoint Server merge into a “better
together” scenario, where the complete spectrum of workers
involved in a business can access the information they need to
work more productively and intelligently.
The Microsoft-based RPA can be realized in several different
modes depending on the specific needs of a business. In an
information-work-intensive environment, it may be optimal to
present the RPA through Web parts in a SharePoint portal
interface, through the Microsoft Office Outlook® messaging and
collaboration client, or in a combination. Microsoft Dynamics
CRM ASPX is preferable to create the RPA interface in situations
where task work is more dominant.
It is possible to assess a business and determine the impact
that an RPA will have on its operations. Not every business
needs an RPA. This paper highlights some approaches to
evaluating the level of pressure the business faces to blend
information and task work through an RPA. Relational
Productivity Applications
Introduction
The motto of any successful business manager has always been,
“Do more with less.” Today, though, the pressure to do even
more, with fewer resources, has never been greater. Not only are
business conditions challenging in virtually every local economy
in the world, but also a surge of new global enterprises are
shaking up the marketplace status quo on every level. For
example, China has surpassed Germany as the world’s second
largest export economy1,
and Brazil’s Embraer has overtaken Canada’s Bombardier as the
world leader in small jets2.
The title of a recent book on economics and management says it
all:
Globality: Competing with Everyone from Everywhere for
Everything.3
On a business unit level, these intensified performance
pressures are forcing businesses to be innovative and
customer-centric, with shorter product lifecycles and
customer-driven adaptations while operating increasingly lean
supply chains and back-office processes. A key success factor in
tackling this tricky mandate will be to simplify the ability of
workers to be productive in performing both information work and
structured task work.
Information work involves managing the business entity, product
development, contracts, marketing, and sales. Information work’s
technology environment is relatively unstructured and built
around ad-hoc collaborative systems and socially based, flexible
teaming.
In contrast, structured task work is fairly regimented, with a
focus on efficiency and precision in back-office processing.
Technologically, structured task work is usually done on
line-of-business (LOB) applications with carefully designed
process flows and interfaces for the capture of high integrity
transactional information and records.
There are many different types of LOB applications, ranging from
finance, to logistics, to customer relationship management
(CRM). Given the stress that the economy is now placing on
enhancing customer experience, however, this paper will focus on
those relational LOB applications that affect customer
engagement, such as solutions for CRM, vendor management, and
partner management.
Although the technology toolsets for information work and
structured task work are different, by design and necessity, and
will likely remain separate in the future for many good reasons,
today’s reality is driving a convergence between these two types
of systems. This paper is about approaches to integrating
collaborative, information work systems and relational LOB
applications with the goal of creating blended “relational
productivity applications” (RPAs) that span the two essential
modes of work and bring out the best business results from the
combination. For the realization of the target solution in a
real world setting, the paper will describe how Microsoft
Dynamics CRM and Office SharePoint Server offerings can be
brought together to form an integrated relational productivity
application.
Responding to Evolving Pressures in the Business Environment
The electronics industry provides a useful example of the new
“do more with less, but compete creatively” high wire act that
businesses must pull off to remain competitive and profitable.
The recession has forced a long-term reset in the industry.
Industry growth is projected at just 1.3 percent in 2009,
compared to 10.1 percent in 2006. Major industry categories such
as semi-conductors are projected to fall by as much as 14%
worldwide.4
Relational Productivity
Applications
Negative growth has resulted in
widespread cost cutting, even as pressure has increased to offer
better products and greater customer experience. Research and
development spending has been slashed 30 percent (U.S. $8
billion) industry-wide5,
though product development costs are actually on the rise. As
Joseph DeBiase, Senior Vice President and General Manager of
Henkel Adhesives Electronics Assembly, aptly stated in a 2009
interview, “In times like these, the challenge is to implement
tight cost controls to weather the short-term storm without
significantly impacting longer-term customer programs. Customer
needs for new, innovative materials solutions don’t evaporate
during a slowdown.”6
The requirement to be
increasingly customer focused, despite cutbacks and slow growth,
is also well-summarized by Alisha Mowbray, Senior VP of
Marketing for Newark, a catalog distributor. "More and more we
are being called upon to be a solutions provider. Customers are
looking for our ability to provide technical support and other
information—not only are we getting 'you have to have the
product in stock,' we are getting 'what can you do for me to
help me do my job better?'"7
Figure 1. The pressures of
today’s market are changing the traditional trade-off between
transaction costs and customer experience.
Today’s business environment is forcing managers to rethink the
traditional tradeoff between transaction costs and customer
experience. Figure 1 illustrates this new reality. In practical
terms, the mandate for high customer experience and low
transaction costs is forcing a number of operational changes in
the way companies do business, how they manage their employees,
and how they equip people with information technology.
For example, in the traditional low transaction cost / low
customer experience approach to business, an electronics
manufacturer might require customers to order a large minimum
quantity of a standard item from a catalog. These large orders
would be processed in a fairly straight, step-by-step
choreography of a work process flow using an underlying LOB
system. In this way, the manufacturer could earn a good profit
from the product because the costs associated with closing the
transaction were relatively low. The information systems needed
to support the transaction could be more or less rigid, with
highly structured transaction records in databases, because the
need for modifications to order details and customer
interactions are also limited.
In contrast, a high-touch
customer experience is enabled through a different mode of
operation and information system tools. In the high-touch
environment, customer-facing personnel, such as account
managers, might be collaborating with product design teams,
manufacturing managers, and senior management on customized
orders. It’s a collaborative, iterative information work process
to generate a customer order at a manufacturer that is aiming
for a higher level of customer experience. The development of a
sales proposal, for example, requires multiple iterative loops
of discussion, review, and revision amongst the sales team,
manufacturing, and senior management. At each stage, the
stakeholders in the process manage documents and related notes
in a semi-structured collaborative solution. The process is
inherently social and cross-team, with social networks entering
in the workflow. It is not routine or predictable, and the
results vary each time the teams run through it. The workers in
this process collaborate in loose, socially-based groupings that
change frequently. Their data is usually unstructured and housed
in the collaboration solution, not in database tables.
The transaction costs for
supporting the high-touch, high customer experience mode of
business are typically higher than those of a business that only
supports a low customer experience, little customization, and
little specialized attention to the customer. There are more
people involved in the sales process, and more steps in the
sales and order fulfillment process. The lack of predictability
reduces the efficiency of the process, and the productivity of
individual workers in the process lags as well.
Figure 2. When the iterative,
collaborative processes of the high customer experience sales
process, shown at the top, have to interact with relational LOB
applications, shown at the bottom, the result is a set of
inefficient hand-offs of information that drive up transaction
costs.
As an order moves from proposal to fulfillment in the high-touch
business, the collaborative, unstructured sales process
conflicts with the straightforward, relational LOB applications
used to process the order, as shown in Figure 2. For example,
the company may want the customer to be aware of order status
and be able to discuss the order as it progresses through
manufacturing and delivery. As a result, in this mode of
working, there is a greater expectation that order managers will
be in regular communication with sales and manufacturing
stakeholders. However, much of the time, the working routines of
the respective groups and their supporting technologies are not
compatible or designed to enable effective communication.
Interactions between the two groups are often manual and
inefficient. With each order requiring a custom, contract-based
approach, the order processing and management stakeholders
cannot work as productively as business conditions might demand.
This drives up transaction costs for order management even
further.
Though the electronics industry provides a good example of the
need to improve coordination and situational awareness between
information workers and structured task workers, the challenge
is affecting many industries and business scenarios beyond
manufacturing. Whether it’s a matter of survival, competing, or
realizing a more profitable future, virtually every business is
trying to improve its quality, service, and customer experience
while simultaneously driving down operating costs. In financial
services, for example, it’s about building relationships with
the most lucrative clients while pushing down costs of account
management and trading operations. In healthcare, the challenge
manifests itself in improving patient care while improving
provider profitability. In retail, it’s about decision-making
executives sharing point-of-sale business intelligence while
trimming back-office overhead, and so on. Relational
Productivity Applications 8
Virtually every business needs
to improve its return on assets, people, and capital. They must
improve profitability of their distribution channels and the
management of their vendors. The realization of these objectives
depends on improving the alignment of information workers, who
typically oversee operations and set direction, and structured
task workers, who are responsible for the execution of operating
plans.
Solution Approach: The Relational Productivity Application
The challenge facing business leaders today is to figure out how
to enable a productive blending of structured tasks with
unstructured data across the business process flow. The cross-overs
and interactions between people doing information work and
structured task work need to be more efficient, and personal
productivity needs to be higher throughout the process. For
instance, information work has processes and collaborative
information tools that cut across teams, while structured task
work is usually more focused on intra-team dynamics as a process
and data management issues. The respective approaches to
teamwork need to be unified into a coherent, more productive
whole.
Though there are many interpersonal and management aspects to
solving these problems, the information technology answer to is
to envision, design, and implement solutions that facilitate
productive interplay between clear-cut workflows and subjective
collaborative processes—and between the workers who conduct
them. Such a solution, which brings the combined power of both
relational LOB applications and collaboration solutions to bear
on the business, is known as a relational productivity
application (RPA). The RPA merges the best aspects of the
collaboration toolsets used for information work and the
relational LOB applications used for structured task work.
The RPA must deliver a way to
manage both unstructured data, such as documents, and structured
relational data, such as that found in order processing
databases. The RPA must enable both social engagement and
task-based interactions across the complete spectrum of workers
involved—many of whom overlap roles and must use both types of
systems. It must enable knowledge-based information evolution as
well as analytics and structured data generation. An RPA needs
to handle both informal rules and tightly structured business
processes. And, it must offer both unstructured enterprise
search as well as data query and filtering for structured data.
Figure 3. Reference architecture
for the relational productivity application
In terms of high level
requirements, an RPA needs to give all the workers involved in a
business a high degree of awareness of one another and the work
they are doing. The RPA should enable everyone to know who is
who, who is doing what, and where to find specific information
in either structured or unstructured form. Figure 3 shows a
reference architecture for an RPA that takes these core
requirements into account. In the RPA shown in Figure 3, workers
can have social awareness of one another across the
organization. For example, a structured task worker, such as a
customer service representative, can search the social network
for expertise or knowledge held by others in the organization.
Everyone should be able to see who works for whom, and how teams
are structured. The social connection capability can streamline
the handling of complex orders and drive down the transaction
costs of the business.
The RPA has to provide for searching across all of the data
contained in the two component systems. Thus, both information
workers and structured task workers must have access to an
enterprise search function that spans both the unstructured
documents as well as the structured business data in the
relational LOB application. Any RPA user must be able to find
and open any document or data set in the system, access controls
notwithstanding.
Aware, Aligned Workflows
The RPA should provide all users, whether they are involved in
information work or structured tasks, with awareness of the
information’s context. For instance, an account manager viewing
a sales proposal document should be able to have efficient
visibility into the complete account picture for the client in
question. Conversely, a customer service representative should
have a simple view into the sales proposals pending for a given
account. The business value of this improved awareness is the
ability to align the treatment of clients with their real-time
status. If a client is chronically past due in its receivables
and rejects every order as unsatisfactory—data that is going to
reside in relational line of business applications—the account
team should be aware of this as they prepare new sales
proposals.
Though this awareness can always
be achieved through manual interactions, such as picking up the
phone, sending an e-mail message, or looking up an account on
the relational LOB system, the overhead associated with checking
the account status is unnecessarily high. And, the action might
get overlooked if it is not automated. Aligning the information
systems involved so that awareness of the full account situation
is presented holistically at the interface level makes it far
easier, and more efficient, for all stakeholders to act more
intelligently about each client.
Figure 4 shows what the better-aligned sales proposal workflow
could look like with an RPA. In this scenario, the account team
has automatic, real-time awareness of the account status
presented in the collaboration interface that they use to
prepare the sales proposal. As the order goes into production,
the back office workers get alerted automatically of a pending
order that will be affected by an inventory issue. The client
itself, connected to the RPA through a customer portal, is
efficiently updated on the order status. Senior management,
linked to the entire process through its own dedicated RPA
interface, has awareness of the account situation and can react
if necessary by redirecting resources or assigning priority to
the customer order. The net effect of the RPA in this situation
is to elevate the engagement with the customer without a
commensurate expenditure of effort on managing the transaction.
Relational Productivity Applications 10
Interfaces that Present Multiple Views of Data
To make this work, each group of
stakeholders needs to have a different view of the core data
involved. Figure 5 offers a portlet-based approach to RPA user
interfaces that provides a relevant experience of the underlying
data for the information worker and structured task worker. The
left side of the figure shows a view attuned to information
work, which includes projects and files that are linked to
associated accounts and order information. The right side of the
figure is the structured task view, which places emphasis on the
day-to-day order processing and account management tasks, but
which also provides links to documents that are associated with
specific accounts.
Both interfaces expose data about orders and accounts, though in
different ways. For the worker involved in structured tasks, the
order and account information is rich and detailed. For
information work, the view is based on projects and documents
that are indexed to accounts and orders. Giving everyone a view
into the relevant sides of both structured and unstructured data
can improve operational effectiveness. For example, if an order
being managed through an ERP system runs into supply chain
problems, the workers handling the proposal for the next project
with that client can have real-time awareness of the problem. In
this way, the RPA automatically brings people together to focus
on account and order issues that arise during the course of
business. With a “friends” type of view in the interfaces, there
is the potential for social networking in the context of
work—people can see who is connected to whom, who works for
whom, who is expert in specific subjects, and so on. This can
accelerate the solving of problems and the creation of
productive connections between people, no matter where they work
in the organization.
Enterprise Search and Data Structure
the data is structured, unstructured, or social, enables highly
efficient interaction between information workers and structured
task workers. This is especially critical as unstructured
information comprises about 80% of the data in most businesses.
Getting the enterprise search
feature in an RPA to index and search this varied set of data is
part of the design challenge in creating this type of hybrid
application. Though there are several approaches to achieving
this design objective, a best practice is to create metadata
that links different data types across the multiple databases
and file repositories that comprise the RPA. Figure 7 shows how
the data fields for a file stored in an unstructured file
repository in the RPA’s collaboration suite area are linked to
associated structured databases. For the enterprise search to
work, the search engine needs to index all of the databases and
repositories and correlate the linked file and data results.
Assessing the Business Value of the RPA
The business value of an RPA will be based, to a great extent,
on the way that it is implemented. Assuming that the
organizational and human factors are well managed, though, an
RPA should be able to create return on investment (ROI) on
tangible as well as intangible levels. On a tangible, hard
dollar basis, the RPA generates ROI by reducing order processing
cycle times and lessening the time required for structured task
workers to fulfill orders. This increase in productivity
translates into lower transaction costs and overhead. The
greater awareness of events, projects, and ideas emanating from
the information worker side of the business should also drive up
alignment between operations and sales. For example, inventory
and supply chain planning can be more efficient if the
responsible structured task workers have improved insight into
client needs and business strategies. As Table 1 shows, if an
RPA can drive down task times for order processing challenges by
streamlining communication and collaboration, the cost of
handling transactions goes down by a measurable dollar amount.
On an intangible level, a well-implemented RPA can enable a
business to operate more intelligently. When those involved in
information work, such as account representatives, managers, and
senior executives, have a relevant, real-time view of key
operational factors as they collaborate, the business can become
more agile and client-focused. The RPA makes this agility and
intelligent operation possible by streamlining the connections
between front and back office operations. It has always been
possible, of course, for managers to have awareness of
transaction details and supply chain specifics. The breakthrough
of the RPA, however, is its ability to bring the relevant data
and documents to the forefront of the user’s attention in an
automated process. The results include gains in personal
productivity at all levels, with a commensurate gain in
organizational productivity and profitability.
The
xRM/SharePoint Realization of the RPA
The Microsoft Dynamics CRM xRM (xRM) application framework for
task work can be integrated with Office SharePoint Server, a
complementary technology, to render a relational productivity
application. Office SharePoint Server and xRM embody the
built-in functionality and development potential to realize the
business objectives of each half of the RPA. Dynamics CRM, whose
XRM framework capabilities are depicted in Figure 8, can be used
to develop relational LOB applications that take advantage of
the platform’s process automation and orchestration services,
data and metadata services, and integration features.
xRM enables the development of business applications that
feature forms-based data entry, process modeling, highly
scalable information stores, and sources for relational data.
Designed for structured task use, xRM-based LOB applications
feature hierarchical, role-based security. xRM-based
applications are built using Web services, so they are
relatively simple to integrate with other applications, such as
Office SharePoint Server, in an RPA.
xRM offers a number of advantages in the development of
relational LOB applications. xRM offers developers a
declarative, model-driven, business application framework that
harnesses the full power of the Microsoft application platform
and accelerates the development and delivery of enterprise-class
applications. It enables rapid application development with
point-and-click customization, drag-and-drop design, and
integrated role-based security.
xRM features business application modeling that includes
business processes and relational data modeling, features that
empower non-IT people to design effective workflows in LOB
applications. xRM has integrated business services including
e-mail, task, and activity management. xRM-based applications
integrate with Office Outlook and other Office applications, and
offer “Web-scale” user experiences. The xRM architecture
provides a high level of scalability and availability at the
relatively low costs through a choice of on-premises or online
service delivery modes. With Microsoft Visual Studio®
development tools and the Microsoft .NET Framework, xRM can be
extended even further.
By enabling application developers to make use of a single
framework for many applications, xRM can help IT departments
realize savings in solution development and implementation
costs. Because xRM contains pre-built functionality, such as
asset management, supplier management, and access controls on a
flexible service-oriented architecture, it is relatively simple
for developers to use and re-use its extensible building blocks.
In financial terms, the xRM-powered in-house development
capability can result in striking cost savings through the
reductions in expenses for packaged software and specialized
outside service providers. Mitsubishi Caterpillar Forklift
Europe, for example, which used xRM to develop relational
business applications, reduced development costs by 60 percent
compared with similar projects developed on other technologies.8
Similarly, ENSTO, a
Finnish industrial
8
Microsoft Case Study:
http://www.microsoft.com/casestudies/Case_Study_Detail.aspx?casestudyid=4000004607
Relational Productivity
Applications 13
company, was able to develop
custom applications with xRM in under six months.9
Prior to adopting the xRM
framework, the same work would have taken a full year.
Office SharePoint Server is designed for collaboration and
information work. Office SharePoint Server features document
collaboration, file libraries, and shared version management.
Built for information discovery, Office SharePoint Server offers
rich enterprise search capabilities. Office SharePoint Server is
also a portal, and has the ability to surface numerous
applications, including custom-developed SharePoint Web parts,
to the end user in a personalized portal interface. In contrast
to xRM, which is typically centrally managed, Office SharePoint
Server can be essentially user-managed, allowing for
customization at the individual, team, or business unit levels.
Office SharePoint Server
enhances Microsoft Dynamics CRM and xRM. Office SharePoint
Server is an integrated suite of collaboration and content
management capabilities for information sharing across
organizational boundaries. Many organizations are already
familiar with Office SharePoint Server in its role as supporting
a variety of collaborative business applications. Office
SharePoint Server provides complementary capabilities to xRM for
organizations seeking to manage customers and other
customer-like relationships. As highlighted in Figure 9, Office
SharePoint Server provides capabilities that Microsoft Dynamics
CRM does not have, which helps enrich the Microsoft Dynamics CRM
customer and customer-like scenarios.
The RPA brings together the best
potentialities of Microsoft Dynamics CRM and Office SharePoint
Server for collaborative use between structured task workers and
information workers. Figure 10 shows a reference architecture
for one approach to bringing xRM and Office SharePoint Server
together to form an RPA. In this case, the suggested
architecture involves having the SharePoint portal serve as the
user interface for the RPA, with custom-developed SharePoint Web
parts surfacing the RPA functionality to the end user.
As Figure 10 shows, both Office
SharePoint Server and Microsoft Dynamics CRM operate on a
similar stack, with their respective platforms running on top of
the Microsoft Windows Server® operating system, Windows Server
Internet Information Services, and the .NET Framework. Data in
each application resides in Microsoft SQL Server® databases. The
SharePoint Business Data Catalog (BDC) enables the structured
data in Microsoft Dynamics CRM to be filtered and searched by
the SharePoint enterprise search function. The RPA functionality
that blends the structured and unstructured information is
implemented through Web service calls that invoke procedures
from Microsoft Dynamics CRM. The results of the Web service
calls and enterprise search queries flow through to the end user
in a custom SharePoint Web part.
Figure 10. Reference architecture
for an RPA created by integrating xRM and Office SharePoint
Server. In this case, the Dynamics functionality surfaces to the
end user through custom-developed SharePoint Web Parts that are
presented through the SharePoint portal interface.
Illustrating what such a Web part might actually do, Figure 11
shows an example Web part that presents the user with order and
invoice information drawn from the Microsoft Dynamics CRM
database, paired with associated files from SharePoint
repositories. The drop-down menu initiates an enterprise search
query that requests the order and invoice data from the
Microsoft Dynamics CRM database as well as associated file and
people-related links from Office SharePoint Server. The query
runs against the BDC, which manages the search into the
structured data tables. The query searches SharePoint
repositories at the same time. The results in the table show
orders and invoices matched with sales proposals, contracts, and
a SharePoint site with meeting notes. The SharePoint content has
been linked with the orders and invoices through metadata
fields.
From a business perspective, this Web part enables the user to
see the context of orders and invoices in a streamlined way. For
instance, for the invoice that is past due, the user might be
able to see some explanatory Relational Productivity
Applications 15
information in a related
document that would forestall turning the account over for
collection. Taking that action might damage the account
relationship if there is a valid business reason for allowing
the account to go past due. The Web part’s ability to blend
structured and unstructured data can save the time required to
turn the account over to collection. And the time needed for the
user to make the judgment call about collection is reduced from
what it would be if the user had to look up the unstructured
information about the account separately. The results are higher
productivity and better account management.
It is also possible to render an RPA using the xRM front end,
which is built on ASPX. The choice will depend on the projected
use case scenarios for the RPA. A preponderance of structured
task work uses for the RPA favors the ASPX approach, while an
emphasis on information work will make the SharePoint portal
approach more effective for users. For example, if the majority
of users of the RPA are dedicated primarily to structured task
work, as might be found with customer service professionals or
call center representatives, the ASPX interface will work
better. An RPA built with the xRM ASPX interface components,
with embedded links to unstructured data in Office SharePoint
Server, will look and feel more like a relational LOB
application and enable faster processing of repetitive
transactions. For the use case, this is a better scenario.
Microsoft customers are beginning to build RPAs. For example the
Board of Pensions of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America
(ELCA) took advantage of the rapid development potential of xRM
and produced a prototype LOB application as an unfunded side
project without an external consultant in just four months.10
ELCA was then able to
integrate their application with Office SharePoint Server and
provide a consistent look and feel for all users of the
application. The resulting central application portal could then
easily be integrated with other applications, including
non-Microsoft solutions.
10 Microsoft Case Study:
http://www.microsoft.com/casestudies/Case_Study_Detail.aspx?casestudyid=4000006266
An added productivity factor in the RPA is the ability of the
end user, especially the information worker, to access the RPA
while working within the Microsoft Office system. While working
on a proposal in Microsoft Office Word, for example, an
information worker could easily execute a “save as” command to
add the proposal file to the appropriate SharePoint site that
was linked to the RPA. In Microsoft Office 2010, these
capabilities are enhanced beyond what is currently available in
Office 2007. Similarly, the ability for an Outlook user to
create e-mail folders that are automatically linked to customer
accounts, projects, or orders in Microsoft Dynamics CRM makes it
easy for a relevant e-mail to be shared across the spectrum of
information workers and structured task workers connected to the
account in question.
Going beyond the RPA, the broader Microsoft application platform
and service-oriented architecture functionality found in
Microsoft BizTalk® Server 2009 gives the RPA the ability to
connect with virtually any application in the world. Any
application that is Web-service-enabled could connect to the RPA
for data exchange or procedure calls. For example, an RPA
connected to BizTalk Server could request data from mainframe
systems or vendors’ ERP applications. The result is even further
enhanced productivity as both information workers and structured
task workers gain increased insight into information throughout
the business ecosystem.
When
to Go with an RPA
When should a company go with an RPA? When is it better off
concentrating on pure relational LOB applications or emphasizing
collaboration solutions? There are myriad factors, for sure, but
a recommended approach to resolving the issue is to assess the
frequency and importance of both information and task work and
determine whether an RPA is advisable. Relational Productivity
Applications 16
Figure 12 shows how a group of
businesses might chart their levels of task and information
work. The curve on the left shows information work. For a
business that charted itself on the far left, where most of the
work is information work and all of the most important work is
in that mode, a pure collaboration solution is in order, at
least from an investment perspective. Such a business might have
an LOB application, but the most effective use of IT resources
would be to enhance the information work capabilities. Examples
of this type of business might include professional services
firms and creative agencies.
The right side of Figure 12 captures companies that are
primarily transaction-based, and would be best off investing in
new and better LOB applications. The middle ground, which is
where many businesses today are heading, is RPA territory. In
this zone, a business needs to be productive and synergistic in
both the information work and structured task work disciplines.
The RPA gives workers access to both types of information and
processes for a higher level of business effectiveness.
A rule of thumb for deciding if
a situation warrants an RPA is to assess the solution needs from
a “CRM-out” perspective. With Microsoft Dynamics CRM as the core
of the xRM application framework, the best candidates for RPA
development are solutions that either contain CRM itself or
adjacent application functionality that supports customer-like
relationships. CRM out solutions include those that are already
closely related to CRM, such as a property management
application that supports customers leasing properties.
Alternatively, CRM-out also implies a solution that supports
customer-like relationships, such as vendor or partner
management.
Figure 13. Defining “CRM-out”
solutions as ones that extend CRM, relate to CRM, or support
customer-like relationships
Table 2 summarizes this spectrum of work and includes the
suggested solutions. For traditional information work, Office
SharePoint Server and the Microsoft Office system are suitable.
The trend on this end of the work spectrum is away from the
information work silo and towards the blended RPA. On the right
side of the table, traditional task work is best served by xRM
LOB applications, though the trend is also toward the blend.
Microsoft has sometimes Relational Productivity Applications 17
referred to the blended, RPA
approach to work as “the New World of Work,” a concept which was
first identified in an essay by Bill Gates in 2005.11
To make a recommendation about
when to use an RPA and when not to, one possible solution is to
conduct a scoring exercise. The purpose of the exercise is to
place a company on a matrix of customer experience and
transaction cost demands that will indicate the value of an
investment in an RPA. Table 3 offers a self-assessment quiz for
an RPA prospect. Table 3 is designed to show how a company ranks
itself on two scales: 1) price sensitivity and related
cost-cutting mandates; and 2) the level of customer experience
they are expected to deliver.
A company’s needs to meet
customer experience demands and cost reductions can be plotted
on a matrix as shown in Figure 14. From the scoring of the quiz
in Table 3, the average for the X Axis column should be plotted
on
the X axis of the graph shown in
Figure 14. The Y Axis column average should be plotted on the Y
axis of Figure 14. Overall, these two scores plotted in Figure
14 should show the client’s level of suitability for an RPA. An
organization that must provide high customer experience but
which is not under tremendous cost cutting pressure would be
well served by a collaboration solution, such as Office
SharePoint Server, and does not necessarily need an RPA. This
type of prospect falls in the upper-left quadrant of Figure 14.
Conversely, a business with low
customer experience expectations but high cost-cutting mandates
is suited for a relational LOB application, such as Microsoft
Dynamics CRM, and falls in the lower-right quadrant. Companies
with a high requirement for customer experience and a high price
sensitivity and cost-cutting mandate are good candidates for an
RPA, as shown in the upper-right quadrant of Figure 14.
Conclusion
Whether it’s about responding to today’s intense business
pressures or just trying to improve the productivity of an
operation, information technology can play a key role in
enabling better alignment and collaboration amongst information
workers and structured task workers. Though each group of
workers uses technologies that have been developed specifically
for their unique uses, it is possible to bring together the best
of their respective systems. The result is a new type of
software hybrid known as the relational productivity
application, or RPA. The RPA combines the process-oriented,
structured line-of-business application with collaborative,
socially-based information worker tools.
In the Microsoft environment, the RPA is best realized by
integrating Microsoft Dynamics CRM, which is used to build
line-of-business applications for structured task workers, and
Office SharePoint Server, the collaboration and document
management toolset used by information workers. Microsoft
Dynamics CRM and Office SharePoint Server, which both have
extensive platform functionality, merge into a “better together”
scenario, in which the different types of workers involved in a
business can access the information they need to work more
productively and intelligently. The RPA, as realized by the
combination of Microsoft Dynamics CRM and Office SharePoint
Server, can be a powerful tool for managers in today’s world of
business challenges.
This document is provided
“as-is.” Information and views expressed in this document,
including URL and other Internet Web site references, may change
without notice. You bear the risk of using it.
This document does not provide you with any legal rights to any
intellectual property in any Microsoft product. You may copy and
use this document for your internal, reference purposes. © 2010
Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.
Microsoft, Microsoft Dynamics, SharePoint, SQL Server, and
Windows are trademarks of the Microsoft group of companies.
All other
trademarks are property of their respective owners
