A better mail merge for MS Dynamics CRM 2011

If you use Microsoft Dynamics CRM for creating quotes, you’ve probably been unlucky enough to have to use, or even worse, explain how to use, the “Print Quote for Customer” process from the quote screen.

Before I get too far, I’d just like to point out that it’s not the end result of this process I have a problem with – in fact, set up a decent mail merge template and you’ll get some decent quote documents out of it. It’s the process of getting there I take issue with.

There are plenty of pages on the web that describe the mail merge process, but it certainly seems to me entirely unintuitive. I have a quote on screen in CRM and want to see it in Word instead. Let’s count the steps the user needs to go through in order to get there:

1. Click "Print Quote for Customer"
2. Select to use an Organization mail merge template (you’re creating a quote – in my mind, you should always be using a company standard format rather than a personalised template)
3. Click the button to bring up the list of templates
4. Select the template to use
5. Click OK
6. Select to Open the file
7. Go to the Add-Ins ribbon
8. Click the CRM button
9. Click OK on the data preview screen
10. Go to the Mailings ribbon
11. Click Finish & Merge
12. Select to create a new document

Phew! That’s a lot of steps to go through, most of which are based around the technical steps of how the process is implemented and not the business processes the user is working with.

How about a smoother process that takes away the implementation details and allows the user to go straight from the quote screen to the finished document in Word without any popups along the way?

1. Click “Create Quote Document” (seriously, how many of these documents are printed rather than emailed?)
2. Select the template to use from the drop-down menu
3. Select to Open the file

How much time and frustration would that save your sales team, not to mention CRM trainers? An added bonus is to remove the spurious extra blank paragraph that normally appears in the finished document that was never there when you designed your template.

If you’re interested in this better process for your business, drop us a line on info@data-8.co.uk or 0151 355 4555 and we can send across the details you’ll need. It does require one unsupported customisation which unfortunately means it can only be used for on-premise installations.

We can also help streamline your sales process and increase the quality of your CRM data by adding postcode lookup, telephone number validation and email validation into your CRM system.