Lets look at a real-world solution to demonstrate Microsoft Offices ability to integrate with an enterprise system. This is an "pportunity management sales process that includes integration with a back-end CRM system.
A typical "pportunity management process for a sales person involves:
- Identifying an opportunity with a customer
- Analyzing the opportunity to identify size and probability of close
- Recording the opportunity in the CRM system
- Developing and updating the opportunity throughout the sales process
- Building a quote, which involves a detailed document that states the products and prices included
- Delivering the quote to the customer, and getting the order
This solution will feature Outlook, Word, Office SharePoint Server and Excel Services and how they can be extended by the developer.
From an end-users perspective, Outlook is a natural choice for a user interface since it is a critical tool for many salespeople. Here you will see how it can improve the sales persons experience by reducing the need to refer to multiple systems to perform job related tasks.
For proposal generation, Word is the natural choice. The solution will demonstrate a seamless flow to the sales person and integration with a back-end CRM system as the sales person goes through the process of managing the opportunity and generating the proposal.