A Solution Architecture for Connected

Customer Centricity

Author:

Javed Sikander

Microsoft Corporation

Published: July 2010

Version: 1.0

Abstract

Microsoft Connected Customer Centricity solutions provide retailers with a rich set of capabilities for

clienteling, loyalty management, and marketing. These solutions allow retailers to effectively connect

with their customers across multiple channels. This document presents a solution architecture for

Connected Customer Centricity and describes the use of the underlying Microsoft Dynamics CRM

platform. It describes the solution capabilities and the underlying enabling technologies, and then it

provides a summary of partner solutions. The document concludes with an overview of Microsoft

Dynamics CRM from a developers perspective.

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Contents

Introduction .....................................................................................................................................5

Technology Enablers ................................................................................................................................ 5

Multi-channel Retailing ........................................................................................................................ 6

Mobility ................................................................................................................................................ 6

Customer Experience ........................................................................................................................... 7

Social Media ......................................................................................................................................... 7

Business Intelligence ............................................................................................................................ 8

Cloud Computing ................................................................................................................................. 8

Connected Customer Centricity Solution Architecture .......................................................................9

Loyalty .................................................................................................................................................... 11

Clienteling .............................................................................................................................................. 11

Marketing .............................................................................................................................................. 12

Customer Identity .................................................................................................................................. 13

Customer Experience ............................................................................................................................. 13

Customer Segmentation ........................................................................................................................ 14

Access to Back-end Systems .................................................................................................................. 14

Retaligent Solution Architecture ..................................................................................................... 15

About Retaligent and Charisma 1:1 ....................................................................................................... 15

Solution Description .............................................................................................................................. 15

Solution Foundation .............................................................................................................................. 16

Presentation Layer ................................................................................................................................. 16

Feature Overview .................................................................................................................................. 16

Business Process Engine/Best Practices Wizard ................................................................................ 17

Clienteling/Client Book ...................................................................................................................... 18

Loyalty ................................................................................................................................................ 20

Offer Delivery ..................................................................................................................................... 21

Dashboard .......................................................................................................................................... 21

Social Networking .............................................................................................................................. 22

Raymark Customer Relationship Management for Retail Solution Architecture ............................. 23

Retail CRM Data Warehouse and Business Intelligence Cubes ............................................................. 23

Analytical and Operational Reporting ................................................................................................... 24

User Interface Customizations .............................................................................................................. 24

Rules Engine ........................................................................................................................................... 24

Data Mining and Predictive Analytics .................................................................................................... 25

Web Service-based API and Object Model for Multi-Channel Integration ........................................... 25

Retail CRM Workflows ........................................................................................................................... 25

Workflow Scheduling and Event Triggers .............................................................................................. 25

Automated Customer Segmentation ..................................................................................................... 25

Personalized Item Recommendations ................................................................................................... 25

Personalized Offers ................................................................................................................................ 26

Personalized Email Marketing ............................................................................................................... 26

Personalized SMS Marketing ................................................................................................................. 26

Promotion Benefit Evaluation ............................................................................................................... 26

Role-based Dashboards and Security .................................................................................................... 26

Microsoft Dynamics CRM: A Developer Perspective......................................................................... 27

Plug-in .................................................................................................................................................... 27

Workflows .............................................................................................................................................. 27

Entities and Relationships ...................................................................................................................... 28

Web-Services ......................................................................................................................................... 29

CrmWebService Web Service ............................................................................................................. 29

MetadataService Web Service ........................................................................................................... 30

CrmDiscoveryService Web Service..................................................................................................... 30

iFrames .................................................................................................................................................. 30

xRM ........................................................................................................................................................ 31

xRM Application Services ................................................................................................................... 31

Microsoft Dynamics CRM Accelerators ................................................................................................. 36

Social Networking Accelerator ........................................................................................................... 36

Analytics Accelerator ......................................................................................................................... 37

Portal Integration Accelerator ........................................................................................................... 37

Extended Sales Forecasting Accelerator ............................................................................................ 38

Introduction

The customer is the most important component for any successful business. For a retailer especially,

treating customers well and ensuring that they have a great experience is the key to success.

Technology innovations, such as the Internet, have revolutionized the way people work, live,

communicate, and shop. Retailers now need to reach and service customers not only in a physical

store, but also online via e-commerce portals or on social media sites, across a plethora of mobile

devices, smart phones, and kiosks. While the face-to-face element of retail can never be fully replaced,

retailers need to deliver personalized experiences to their customer across multiple channels, and they

need to understand and connect the customer interactions across all touch points. Retailers also need

to differentiate their brands and build long-lasting customer loyalty. To succeed, retailers must drive

customer centricity as a core value across their people, processes, and systems.

There are three capabilities that retailers need to focus on to transform their businesses for customer-

centricity:

Loyalty program management

Clienteling, or in-store customer relationship management

Marketing and campaign management

This document explores the technologies that enable these three capabilities and describes a platform

for customer centricity.

Technology Enablers

Technology innovation has forever changed the retail business by putting customer needs and

experiences at the forefront. It has enabled retailers to run their supply chains and stores more

efficiently, design and develop products that consumers like and use, and deliver these products and

services where and when the customers need them. While a comprehensive look at all these

technology innovations is beyond the scope of this paper, the following are six enablers that are

making retail more customer centric (see the diagram that follows):

Multi-channel retailing

Mobility

Customer experience

Social media

Business intelligence

Cloud computing

The following sections describe each of these enabling technologies.

Multi-channel Retailing

From a marketing standpoint, multi-channel is defined as a marketing approach that uses different

ways to reach or interact with existing or prospective customers. In this context, a channel could be a

retail store, a website, customer mailings, a phone call, an email, or a text message sent directly to a

mobile device or social media site (Facebook, Twitter, and so on). Effective multi-channel retailing

enables retailers to interact with a customer through the customer's preferred mode of

communications, resulting in better conversion of marketing campaigns to actual sales, greater brand

loyalty, and an improved customer experience. Moreover, it allows retailers to develop a deeper

understanding of customer needs, thereby creating products and services that become household

names for generations.

For consumers and shoppers, technology becomes important if it makes their lives easier instead of

more complicated. To be effective, multi-channel retailing needs to be supported by systems that can

interoperate and take advantage of the strengths of different channels. The systems need to be loosely

coupled and extensible so that retailers can easily add support for new channels whenever needed.

These systems should allow retailers to analyze every single customer interaction, across all channels,

so that they can design and execute personalized, targeted marketing campaigns.

Mobility

Mobility refers to the ability to communicate or interact anytime, anywhere. Mobility allows both

source and destination devices, applications, and people to be free from constraints imposed by a

physical location. Mobility in the retail industry is based on the seamless interaction between mobile

devices and back-end systems. For example, a sales associate could use a smart phone or a PDA device

that is connected and synchronized with the retailer's customer relationship management (CRM) and

merchandizing systems to see detailed product and customer information. The sales associate could

then use this information to close a sale.

The three key benefits of mobility are:

Improve employee communication Businesses today rely on an increasingly mobile

workforce. More employees need anywhere, anytime access to more types of communications

and collaboration informationincluding email, calendars, contacts, tasks, and shared content.

Maximize overall productivity By giving employees access to company tools and data on

mobile devices, they can be productive regardless of where they are or what time it is.

Increase customer satisfaction Real-time access to customer data and insight can lead to

improved customer satisfaction because employees will be able to respond to customer

queries accurately and quickly.

Mobile devices used together with the Customer Centricity solution increase the retailer's ability to

conduct business anywhere, and enables them to connect with customers, employees, partners, and

vendors. By giving the customer-facing workforce access to mobile devices, retailers provide these

employees with a wealth of information at their fingertips. This gives them the ability to access

customer interaction history and demographics so that they can present appropriate services, as well

as cross-selling, up-selling, and other opportunities to the customer.

Customer Experience

Customer experience has become increasingly important in the past few years and is a key enabler for

a Customer Centricity solution. Customers have come to expect simplicity and elegance in every

hardware and software interaction. This expectation has been set by highly successful consumer

devices and well-designed productivity software. Retailers need to provide a simple but immersive

experience in stores and online. Consumers are already using technologies that deliver multimedia

content across channels, elegantly designed screen layouts, and easy-to-use designs that create

engaging, immersive experiences. To extend these technologies into the shopping experience, retailers

need to give their customers a unified interface across all channels.

Social Media

Social media represents a new medium for consumer interaction. More and more, people are making

decisions on what to read, view, and purchase based on discussions, forums, reviews, and so on, from

their friends and other consumers. A retailer that does not adapt itself to social media loses an

opportunity to influence the perception of its brands. The most powerful advertisement for a business

is its customers. Positive and encouraging feedback on social media outlets is much more beneficial and

effective than traditional advertising. Retailers are using social media to listen to their customers,

foster new ideas, and validate new product or service concepts. Effective social media tools are

allowing these retailers to understand the needs of their customers across blogs, Facebook pages,

Twitter entries, and so on. By combining traditional CRM capabilities with social media tools, they can is

allowing them to listen to, participate in, and analyze the conversations of their customers.

Business Intelligence

Business intelligence (BI) is the process of collecting, structuring, analyzing, and making use of data to

gain business insight. BI enables more informed decision-making, thereby improving performance and

efficiencies across the organization. For retailers, BI can be derived from a variety of systems, including

sales, billing, enterprise resource planning (ERP), CRM, and so on. Retailers are using established data

warehouse technologies and tools to access information from across the enterprise and to provide

deep insight to their business decision makers. Using business intelligence, retailers are making faster

and more informed decisions that help them to optimize resources, reduce costs, and improve the

effectiveness of front-end and back office activities, ranging from sales to human resources to

procurement.

Having deep insight is critically important to providing a connected experience for customers. Retailers

are using state of the art BI tools to manage and track campaign performance, and to segment and

retain their most valuable customers. They can assess the effectiveness of loyalty promotions and

partner relationships, track and analyze key service center metrics, and generate a complete picture of

contact center performance. These tools and the data they collect and analyze are providing sales

associates with a 360 degree view of their customers.

Customer-centric BI technologies enable retailers to use past and present data assets to drive

productivity and increase customer engagement, thus enabling better, faster, more accurate decision

making capabilities. BI enables retailers to extend data to dashboards and scorecards, and measure key

performance indicators (KPIs). They can use analytics to make intelligent assumptions so that they can

build predictive models and identify new opportunities. Using BI, retailers can create more effective

marketing campaigns and measure the effectiveness of these campaigns.

Cloud Computing

Cloud computing is creating a paradigm shift in how retailers view information technology (IT). Instead

of building an infrastructure to handle peak usage (which lies dormant for most of the year), retail chief

information officers (CIOs) are looking at cloud computing for infrastructure optimization. The elasticity

of the cloud offers them the ability to increase or decrease storage, processing, or bandwidth with

minimum cost. Also, by using servers that are centrally managed at a higher granularity (per container

rather than per rack or individual server) by a third party, retailers can better manage their IT resources

to service their business users.

The following are some key benefits that cloud computing is bringing to retail IT environments:

Eliminating the need for large number of powerful servers on the premises

Reducing maintenance costs

Providing limitless and flexible storage, processing, and bandwidth

Employing a federated architecture that ensures high availability

Providing a more integrated and interoperable application environment

Cloud computing is a key enabler for customer centricity. It allows retailers to better connect

applications that might be running on the premises and in the private cloud with applications and

services running in a public cloud. It makes it easy for retailers to add new channels for connecting with

customers without having to add significant hardware, software, or maintenance.

Connected Customer Centricity Solution Architecture

Microsoft Connected Customer Centricity offers a powerful, flexible, end-to-end solution for retailers

who are striving to make their businesses more customer-centric. The solution gives retailers three

powerful capabilities: loyalty management, clienteling, and marketing. These capabilities are based on

customer identity, customer segmentation, and customer experience. Microsoft Dynamics CRM

provides the core platform for building Connected Customer Centricity solutions, as illustrated in the

following diagram.

Loyalty

One of the essential concepts of customer centricity is to identify your best customers and provide

them with opportunities to earn special benefits. For retailers, loyalty programs play an important role

in attracting new customers, retaining existing customer, and supporting customers after they

purchase products. Loyalty programs also are used to increase customer engagement and gain new

customer insights from shopping and behavior patterns.

To develop a good loyalty program, retailers need to understand loyalty across customers, products,

and channels. Retailers need a solution that provides membership management, prepayment

management, and a membership portal with easy enrollment via different channels. The portal must

also allow easy integration with existing systems. The loyalty solution must provide multiple

membership tiers and membership with card and card-less support. In addition, the solution needs to

support configurable business rules for earning loyalty points, balance points, aging, and support for

different redemption methods, including regular purchases, gift cards, and so on, from various

channels. The solution must also provide technology to collect customer information and break it down

to meaningful analytics. This allows sales and marketing teams to better understand the customer and

find ways to increase their patronage.

Microsoft Connected Customer Centricity provides a loyalty management solution based on Microsoft

Dynamics CRM and developed by Microsoft partners. It provides retailers with a solution that:

Allows easy online and in store enrollment for new members.

Gives customers the ability to check their balances online, on mobile devices, or in store.

Allows customers to accumulate loyalty points without using cards while shopping in a physical

store, online, or via a mobile device.

Gives customers the ability to redeem their points via gift cards, cash, or payback as credit to

their accounts.

Efficiently tracks customer information and participation.

Monitors customer spending levels and measures tailored loyalty programs.

Clienteling

By using a clienteling solution, retailers can implement effective in-store and online strategies that can

lead to increased satisfaction for the customer and increased profitability for the retailer. A clienteling

solution enables the retailer to provide targeted customer information to the sales associate on the

shop floor or online. The sales associate can then use this data to better connect with customers and

enhance their overall shopping experience. By providing customer-centric data, clienteling helps the

sales associate strengthen his or her relationships with customers by personalizing the shopping

experience and providing relevant product recommendations before, during, and after the sale.

Microsoft Connected Customer Centricity provides a clienteling solution that was developed by

Microsoft partners on Microsoft Dynamics CRM. This solution enables retailers to:

Equip the sales associate with point of sale (POS) devices, PCs, and handheld devices that are

integrated with back office systems and customer touch points.

Further assist sales associates by integrating customer profiles, preferences, lifestyle

information, and various customer interaction systems to give the associates a complete view

of the customer.

Manage store-level and outbound customer contact.

Provide integrated management and reporting across all channels of customer interaction.

Analyze customer buying behavior to create personalized promotions for specific channels.

Provide extensive customer and product information and easy access to backend fulfillment

information.

Microsoft Dynamics partner Retaligent Solutions, Inc., provides a clienteling solution built on the xRM

platform that extends Microsoft Dynamics CRM for retail clienteling. The solution provides a Microsoft

Silverlight-based user interface that runs on an array of devicesfrom POS devices and PCs to

ruggedized handheld devicesthat use the Windows 7 operating system. Retaligents offering

enables retailers to implement proven clienteling practices that drive associate productivity and

improve customer lifetime value.

Marketing

It is no secret that today's customers are increasingly sophisticated and knowledgeable. They have

greater access to market information and demand results faster than ever before. To be effective, a

customer-centric marketing solution should be able to create and manage campaigns by using

customer data.

Instead of using a generic marketing strategy, retailers must be able to create customer-focused

campaigns based on customer segmentation and buying behavior, and then deliver campaigns by using

the customer's preferred method of communication. Customers today do not buy individual products.

Instead, they buy complete solutions and experiences. From a marketing point of view, it is critical that

retailers provide their customers with a view of the complete solution, related products, well-designed

assortments, and promotions based on the combined purchase.

Marketing is moving from its classic one-way push model to a two-way interactive customer

conversation. With the new and emerging digital channels, marketers have a wide array of

opportunities and tools to engage customers in a relevant and valuable way. Retailers can use social

media to listen to customers so that they can better understand, analyze, and respond to their needs.

Microsoft Connected Customer Centricity provides a marketing solution based on Microsoft Dynamics

CRM and developed by Microsoft partners. It provides retailers with the flexibility and ease of use to:

Use customer data to create a targeted list of customers and then associate them with

campaigns.

Create rules to trigger responses based on customer interest.

Enable Internet marketing by creating landing pages and data forms on demand, without any

coding.

Measure and analyze campaign success by using key performance indicators (KPIs).

Support mobility solutions to easily access customer data from anywhere, anytime.

Enable end to end event planning and execution.

Raymark, a Microsoft partner, provides a powerful marketing solution that is built on Microsoft

Dynamics CRM and Microsoft SQL Server database software. For more information, see the Raymark

Customer Relationship Management for Retail Solution Architecture section of this document.

Customer Identity

Establishing a customer identity allows you to identify a customer across all channels so that you can

service him or her more effectively. Customers should be able to use their loyalty card, phone number,

or a private label credit card to identify themselves in the store, and they should be able to log on to

your e-commerce site by providing easy to use credentials.

Every time a user interacts with or visits a website, mobile phone, or other device, he or she leaves

behind personal and behavioral data in the various business and CRM systems. With the customer's

consent, web purchasing details should be visible to the sales associates in the store, and the

customer's purchase history from the store should drive his or her experience on the website(s). Having

a 360 degree view of customer data across all channels and across all products and services is critically

important for providing greater visibility into customer experiences and opinions. This information

enables retailers to make better decisions to improve brand awareness and customer engagement.

Microsoft Connected Customer Centricity solutions are built on a solid identity framework that helps

retailers gain insight across social networks, web interaction channels, and point of sale activities.

Customer Experience

Retailers need to provide a consistent experience to their customers and their employees across all

engagement points, including those in the physical and online stores, and in social network sites,

kiosks, and mobile devices. Understanding the complete customer experience requires monitoring

customer activities from the customers viewpoint through all the customer channels and touch points.

Microsoft Connected Customer Centricity solutions are built on Microsoft Silverlight, and provide

seamless, engaging, and immersive user experiences. These solutions not only give a rich and

consistent user experience, but also provide capabilities for increasing customer satisfaction by giving

field staff insights into customer metrics, operational metrics, IT metrics, and end to end tracking of the

customer fulfillment process. They facilitate the service and contact center teams ability to provide

superior customer service by providing a case management, service history, and support knowledge

base.

Customer Segmentation

Retailers collect a large amount of data about customer purchases, product/brand performance,

inventories, and logistics. This valuable data can be used to make marketing campaigns more effective,

create customized promotions, and make pricing more profitable. Microsoft Connected Customer

Centricity solutions are built on the Microsoft SQL Server BI platform, and give retailers the ability to

segment customers based on location, taste, buying power, product affinity, and lifestyle. It enables

brand managers to use proven simulation and data mining techniques to predict customer response to

campaigns. Retailers can organize the information into customer segments with distinct benefit groups,

such as the following:

Customer behavior (brand loyalty, product usage rate, ready to buy stage, and so on)

Customer attitude (key behavioral influences, needs, preferences, and so on)

Past business history (total amounts purchased, purchasing frequency, response to marketing

campaigns, and product affinity)

Demographics (age, gender, race, education, occupation, income, marital status, and so on)

Geography (ZIP code, state, country, region, and so on)

This segmentation creates a useful grouping of customers that is based on each groups tendency to

share the same values and respond to marketing in similar ways. This allows retailers to:

Create manageable groups for targeted activities such as marketing campaigns.

Identify the important attributes, needs, and wants of each customer group.

Compare the characteristics of different segments to determine segment-specific actions.

Set effective, measurable goals for each segment.

Execute in-store clienteling strategies that support multi-channel marketing campaigns.

Access to Back-end Systems

Microsoft Connected Customer Centricity solutions integrate well with any back-end ERP, supply chain,

or merchandizing system. Product relationships and assortment information from the back-end

systems can provide cross-sell and up-sell opportunities for sales associates. For sales associates,

having real-time capabilities to check product availability data upfront improves customer satisfaction.

Integration of point of sale (POS) data with pricing data can help make promotions successful because

results can be measured in near-real time, allowing campaigns to be fine-tuned if necessary. Retailers

can get an end-to-end view of the order status because connected customer centricity solutions are

integrated with back-end order management systems. This view can also identify possible bottlenecks

and other issues in the order fulfillment process. Labor management can be tied to promotion and

sales data, allowing retailers to allocate resources in the most efficient manner possible. These

solutions can also track actual labor hours and costs, allowing retailers to make strategic decisions

about staff hiring and readiness to support upcoming and ongoing sales and promotional activities.

Microsoft Connected Customer Centricity solutions integrate with each of these back office systems to

provide numerous benefits to the retailer, enabling retailers to drive sales, improve profitability, and

gain deeper insightall of which can lead to improved decision making across all channels.

Retaligent Solution Architecture

The following sections of this paper describe the solutions built by Retaligent Solutions, Inc., a

Microsoft Dynamics CRM partner.

About Retaligent and Charisma 1:1

Retaligent Solutions, Inc., provides retailers with clienteling, assisted selling, loyalty, and gift/wish list

solutions. Retaligents applications are designed to improve sales associate performance while

enhancing the customer experience in-store, at the point of decision. These solutions enhance

customer knowledge, automate sales processes through task and communication tools, deliver product

knowledge and improve operations on a common integrated platform.

Working closely with Microsoft, Retaligent recently shipped a complete end-to-end customer

engagement solution built on the Microsoft Dynamics xRM platform. This solution is called Charisma

1:1.

Charisma 1:1 provides a retail-specific infrastructure that allows retailers to improve the shopping

experience and create ongoing learning relationships with their best customers. With Charisma 1:1,

retailers can synchronize back-office functions with in-store execution, facilitating relevant, timely

customer communication and recommendations, and building lifetime value with their customers.

Charisma 1:1 runs on a retail-specific analytics, marketing, and sales campaign management platform

that is integrated with Charismas loyalty and clienteling capabilities. This solution supports retail multi-

channel marketing initiatives and helps sales associates to support customers effectively across

multiple channels. Charisma 1:1 is designed to increase customer traffic, improve the browsing-to-sale

conversion rate, and lead to higher average transaction size.

Solution Description

Retaligents Charisma 1:1 is designed to make full use of the Microsoft Dynamics xRM platform, as well

as additional Microsoft products including SQL Server, SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS), Internet

Explorer 8, Silverlight 4, Microsoft Outlook, and Microsoft SharePoint. The solution enhances xRM

features and combines them with an easy-to-use Clienteling and Loyalty interface for the in-store user

(typically, the sales associate). The presentation layer uses the latest Silverlight technology.

These products, in combination with xRM, allowed Retaligent to develop an extensible application that

delivers critical business features needed by corporate marketing departments, retail management

departments, and in-store sales associates.

Solution Foundation

The Retaligent Clienteling application is designed and architected for the Microsoft platform, and uses

the latest product and architectural features of that platform. The solution provides a customized

experience for users including the store sales associate, store manager, mid-level executive, and

corporate executive user. At the center of this clienteling solution is the Microsoft Dynamics xRM

platform. This platform provides the key elements needed to rapidly implement an extensive

enterprise solution through a variety of components, including, but not limited to:

Data and metadata services

Access and security infrastructure

An advanced search engine

A robust workflow runtime

Retaligent designed the solution with system integrators (SIs) and corporate IT in mind. The solution is

easy to configure, enhance, and deploy. The development approach allows for seamless product

upgrades and future enhancements, whether provided by Retaligent or by an SI partner. To manage an

array of complex clienteling and CRM business rules, Retaligent created plug-ins that address retail-

specific synchronous requirements, and reusable workflow components that manage the configuration

of common best practice activities.

Presentation Layer

The Clienteling presentation layer is fully independent from the business logic, making it easy to

modify, brand, or redesign the interface without redesigning any of the underlying logic. Entities are

wrapped in a series of web services and exposed for consumption by a variety of platforms and

applications. Retaligents Charisma 1:1 also leverages web services by using Microsoft Active Directory

to authenticate the user and secure the application. The core of the front-end Clienteling client-side

application was developed in Microsoft Silverlight to support multiple platforms, including POS devices,

kiosks, personal computers, and Windows Mobile devices. This approach allows the application to offer

visual web interface components that could be componentized, if appropriate, to meet other specific

requirements.

Feature Overview

Retaligent's Charisma 1:1 solution consists of the following integrated components:

Business Process Engine/Best Practices Wizard

Clienteling

Loyalty

Offer Delivery

Campaign Management

Analytics and Segmentation

Performance Dashboard

Social Networking

These eight components are designed to function on the Microsoft Dynamics xRM platform in either a

standalone application configuration or as a combined solution. Additionally, the solution suite

incorporates Microsoft SQL Server, including SQL Server Analysis Services (SSAS), SQL Server Integration

Services (SSIS), and SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS), as well as SharePoint with advanced

presentation capabilities. The solution also provides hooks into other key Microsoft products, such as

Microsoft Exchange, which is a key component for integrating the solution with corporate tools. Lastly,

Retaligent is developing pre-built integration adaptors to several products, including the Microsoft

Retail Management System (RMS) and the Microsoft Dynamics product suite, including Microsoft

Dynamics AX.

The following sections briefly describe each component of the Charisma 1:1 solution.

Business Process Engine/Best Practices Wizard

The Best Practices Wizard provides overlay functionality across all components. This wizard is the

cornerstone of the Retaligent Charisma 1:1 offering, and provides features that support retailing best

practices through an easy to use business process workflow. The Best Practices Wizard provides a front

to back, configurable solution that lets the retailer focus on very specific business needs, and assists the

retailer in developing all of the elements necessary for a particular campaign or initiative.

These areas of focus include:

Increasing traffic

Increasing average transaction size

Increasing repeat visits and visit frequency

Increasing sales associate productivity

Increasing Items per transaction

Increasing margin

Providing other relevant retail business metrics

When the retailer identifies a sales campaign or initiative, the wizard walks the retailer through a step-

by-step process to identify a targeted, specific solution. Based on the initiative, the application assists

the retailer in preparing the needed items to execute the program.

Analytics incorporated in the Retaligent CRM solution allow for segmentation of the customer base by

demographics, spending habits, lifestyle, affinity, cross-shop metrics, and so on. The analytics feature

can be used to perform the following retail-focused activities:

Analyze data to determine those clients who belong to an existing or newly created segment.

Analyze data to provide a list of likely customers who will respond to an offer or receive a

campaign.

Analyze data to uncover relationships that can be used to create lists of customers that can be

leveraged through offers or campaigns.

Segments are used for analytics, targeted outreach, campaigns, and offers. They can be used to

determine the following:

Lifestyle segmentation based on purchase history, preference data, demographics, and

potential third-party data

Deciles segmentation based on customer spending

Psychographic/demographic segmentation

Buying habit and buying preferences segmentation

Clienteling/Client Book

Retaligent used the Microsoft Dynamics platform to deliver an in-store CRM Clienteling component

that incorporates Retaligents clienteling application expertise. The Client Book replaces the little black

book used by some retailers. It is built on the Microsoft Dynamics xRM platform, and makes use of the

flexible CRM entities, as well as key elements of the BI/analytics and workflow features. The solution

supports global deployment, and provides multi-language and multicurrency capabilities and a

role/permissionbased architecture. The Clienteling/Client Book component was developed in an

ASP.NET and web-services environment, and has an interactive retail user interface built with Microsoft

Silverlight, as shown in the following illustration.

The Clienteling/Client Book works seamlessly with the other seven components and is comprised of the

Customer and Associate modules. :

Customer Module

The Customer elements of the Client Book are comprised of key data elements related to a client (a

customer), and the ability to augment this data after each customer interaction. The key elements of

the Customer module include:

Customer Profile The Customer Profile is a view of the core client data, including contact

information, sales summary, and interaction summary.

Purchase History The Purchase History element displays all purchases related to a client, and

lets the user filter purchases based on various product, department, and associate attributes.

Interaction History The Interaction History displays all interactions that have taken place

through the Client Book component, and is supplemented by a history of customer touch

points initiated from Charismas seven other components. This feature provides a holistic view

of all client interactions.

Preferences Preference functionality supports the ability to capture and display specific

client preferences at the business unit level. Preferences are created, published, and managed

by the retailer, and can be viewed by all or by only relevant user groups.

Social Networking The Social Networking element provides a history of online interactions

with a client, captured on various social networking sites. In addition to allowing an associate

to communicate directly with an identified customer, the Social Networking element enables

interactive outreach, such as posting items for a customer to consider and allowing the

customer's friends to vote on the most popular item.

Search Search capability is critically important for any in-store experience. The retailer must

be able to effectively search against an array of customer data to identify the right client to

review or contact. The solution supports both basic client text-based name search capabilities

and complex ad hoc query capabilities that search on virtually any customer data elements.

Associate Module

The Associate module is designed to support sales associate activities. It has four functional elements:

At-A-Glance The At-A-Glance page is the equivalent of an associate dashboard, with the

flexibility to provide associates with relevant news or corporate updates. Additionally, it

supports day planner functionality (with access to Week/Month/Year) so that users can view

and manage their work.

Tasks Tasks are assigned to associates as either operational tasks or customer

communication tasks. Customer communication tasks represent the essence of Clienteling.

These tasks are supported by communications tools (described later in this document), and are

populated in several ways:

Through various back-office functional components (Campaign Management and

Business Process Engine)

By the associate who will access the client profile and set a task

Through manager team-related tools

Task completion is dynamically updated through use of the system, allowing for a wide range of

manager reporting capabilities.

Appointments The Appointments element enables an associate to create, update, and

complete an appointment that is either tied to a task, or is a stand-alone agenda item. This

element is often used for scheduling in-store events and appointment sales. All appointments

are tied directly to a client, allowing for click through access to a client profile. All appointment

information is tied directly to sales data, allowing a retailer to see the success rate and

productivity of an associates appointment sales. Appointments can be one-time or recurring.

Communication Tools To deliver a seamless user experience for the associate on the store

floor, Charisma 1:1 incorporates communication tools that guide the sales associate in daily

customer interactions. The solution provides templates for text, letter, and email

communications, as well as scripts for outbound telephone calls. The interface will also track

the completion and outcome of all customer communication for single or multi-step

campaigns.

Loyalty

Charisma 1:1 supports various loyalty schemes and in-store programs. The Loyalty component features

are tightly integrated with the rest of the solution, and provide one key identifier that is used

throughout the application to refer to various program-related processes. The loyalty components are

based on a single-client entity; therefore, households can share loyalty cards or they can use different

cards for each user.

Because Charismas Loyalty features are tightly integrated with other software components, loyalty

information to be shared by the BI/Analytics, Campaign Management, Dashboard, and Clienteling

components of the system. The Loyalty management system is designed to create and manage loyalty

accounts and facilitate multi-channel points management with functionality such as points accrual,

reward thresholds, promotions, points to next tier, points redemption, points reporting, and customer

statements. The following illustration shows a typical Loyalty page.

The Loyalty component has the following features:

Create member online or in-store.

Manage and calculate accrual of points.

Create customer status based on thresholds.

Provide appropriate data for monthly, quarterly, and yearly statements.

Redeem points via POS, ecommerce, or marketing communications.

Use multiple and/or flexible calculation rules for special rewards events.

Offer Delivery

Charisma 1:1 uses BI/analytics, plug-ins, and workflows to create customer offers such as discounts,

coupons, incentives, or special buys. Offers can be delivered across multiple channels through the Offer

Delivery components. Offers can be extended based on a data-driven triggering event that might be

the result of a multi-step campaign or for attaining a loyalty program threshold.

Features include the ability to display queued and real-time offers and messages across channels such

as POS terminals and kiosks, track responses to these offers, and provide this information to campaign

management. The Offer Delivery management system includes the following capabilities:

Track how often an offer is to be displayed by a channel.

Prioritize offers and offer types based on channel and clientspecific segments and/or

preference data.

Set redemption rules.

Track response and activity.

Dashboard

The Charisma 1:1 Dashboard provides a graphical display of relevant business metrics, and highlights

possible areas of improvement.

The Dashboard is configurable, allowing users to customize the experience with the data they find most

relevant. Based on the myriad user types within a retail environment (Executive Management,

Marketing, Store Operations, Training, Call Center, Store Managers, and so on), the tool can be

configured to provide specific, targeted interfaces based on user needs.

The Dashboard uses SharePoint capabilities to function on different device types, including POS

terminals, web portals, kiosks, and various mobile devices.

A Dashboard can display the following types of information:

Specific campaign metrics by campaign type and associate type

Segment metrics

Customer aggregate and detail metrics (for example, cross-shop, affinities)

Overall profile metrics for clients

Possibilities for improvement (based on Analytics and the Best Practices Wizard)

Stored performance and associate performance metrics (for example, benchmarking to

support planning)

Application usage metrics (for components, as well as clienteling usage)

Exception reporting

Social Networking

This component uses the Microsoft Social Networking Accelerator. It enables the sales associate or the

marketing team to view and manage communications with their customers and to gauge the

perception of their communication across the most popular social networking sites. Social network can

be used to create a new customer profile or can be appended to an existing profile.

Retaligent uses the Social Network Accelerator to compliment the following retail programs:

Branding By tapping into target communities to increase share of voice (SOV) and obtain

feedback on brand perception, and to gain immediate feedback on advertising via traditional

media.

Community building By helping to refine target demographics and find new or emerging

demographics by closely monitoring friending relationships.

Extending customer intelligence gathering By using voluntary surveys that provide a vehicle

for customers to submit complaints, and also a way for retailers to gain deeper insights that

can affect promotional and merchandising planning, and improve consumer profiling, allowing

retailers to create new psychographic profiles from personal interest information.

Raymark Customer Relationship Management for Retail Solution

Architecture

Raymarks Customer Relationship Management (CRM) for Retail solution is a powerful customer

analytics and personalization engine for retail businesses. The solution is based on the Microsoft

Dynamics CRM platform and business intelligence tools. It enables retailers to use customer profile and

interaction information (purchases, activities, and so on) collected throughout the retail network to

execute marketing strategies.

Comprised of marketing automation features and functionality for retail, the solution incorporates

multi-channel data from the POS, email, direct mail, mobile applications, text messaging, third-party

applications (websites, social networks, and so on), staff handheld devices, kiosks, digital signage,

customer service touch points, deliveries, surveys, and more. This rich solution allows retailers to

create effective, targeted campaigns that deliver personalized item recommendations, offers, discounts

and promotions based on deep customer profiling and cross-referencing.

The solution includes the following features:

Customer analytics and reports for retail

Marketing automation based on business rules, workflows, and events

Multi-channel touch point integration

Personalized item recommendations and offers

Automated customer segmentation

Campaign management and response tracking

Role-based dashboards and security

Architectural components, technologies, and extensions to Microsoft Dynamics CRM included in the

solution are described in the following sections.

Retail CRM Data Warehouse and Business Intelligence Cubes

Based on Microsoft SQL Server database and analytics technology, the Retail CRM data warehouse and

Business Intelligence cubes extend Microsoft Dynamics CRM entities and relationships, and represent

the core retail CRM data model of the solution. The data model is extensible to meet custom business

requirements. The following diagram illustrates the solution architecture.

Analytical and Operational Reporting

Retail CRM-specific analytical and operational reports, such as campaign performance or customer

recency, frequency, monetary (RFM)monitoring reports, are based on Microsoft SQL Server Reporting

Services and (optionally) on Microsoft SharePoint Server for multi-dimensional analysis and data drill-

downs.

User Interface Customizations

The Microsoft Dynamics CRM user interface, as well as entities, attributes, relationships and navigation

have been customized to meet the needs of the retail-specific solution. Examples of such

customizations include entities for customer segments, retail points of business, channels, and related

items, as well as custom UIs for workflow scheduling and item recommendation rule configuration. The

solution makes heavy use of iFrames and custom ASP.NET pages.

Rules Engine

To take full advantage of the depth and breadth of information in the retail CRM data warehouse, the

solution includes a powerful and retail-specific Rules Engine. The Rules Engine drives runtime querying

and decision making in campaigns. As an example, a retailer might want to limit item recommendations

for customers to a specific set of product categories, brands, or price points in an email campaign.

Rules for item recommendations are configurable by users when they design a campaign, and the

runtime engine resolves selections at the time of campaign delivery.

Data Mining and Predictive Analytics

Microsoft SQL Server Analysis Servicesbased data mining and predictive analytics features are

available in two core areas of the solution: in analytical reporting (to determine past and future best

performing customer segments, for example) and in the Rules Engine (perhaps to drive item selections

for campaigns based on system identified trends).

Web Service-based API and Object Model for Multi-Channel Integration

A Windows Communication Foundation (WCF)based web service API and object model are included in

the solution to support multi-channel integration of customer-facing applications and touch points. The

solution uses the Provider Model design pattern to communicate with adapters to external systems.

The web service API and integration objects can then be used to move data in and out of the solution

and to make application calls (such as GetItemRecommendationsForCustomer or

GetPromotionBenefitForItems).

Retail CRM Workflows

Custom-developed workflows, such as one for item recommendations by email and another for

birthday promotions, are included in the solution as a starter kit for retail marketing automation. These

workflows are configurable and can be extended to meet business requirements. Others can be

created to operate on any of the entities in the retail CRM data warehouse. Workflows for data

integration based on the previously-mentioned object model are also included.

Workflow Scheduling and Event Triggers

A flexible module for scheduling the execution of workflows (every night at 12:00 midnight, for

example), or having them be triggered in response to a system event (such as after every POS

transaction), is included in the solution. Microsoft Dynamics CRM plug-ins and custom-developed

Microsoft .NET components are used to enable these capabilities.

Automated Customer Segmentation

Customer segmentation is a core activity in retail marketing. It simplifies the process of personalization

by defining a small number of customer identities to work with. Included in the solution is a module to

define and manage customer segments and to have them automatically and continually populated with

retail customers. Segments can be based on socio-demographic attributes, spending levels, and/or

other data elements. Depending on the fields used for segmentation, a customer can be moved from

one segment to the next over time (based on spending levels, age, shopping frequency, and so on). The

Rules Engine module, combined with custom workflows, is largely responsible for keeping the

segments updated with the right customers.

Personalized Item Recommendations

The solution includes a Rules Enginedriven API call to retrieve personalized item and cross-selling

recommendations for customers. The API can be called from any touch point that a customer is using.

Recommendation rules can be adapted to meet the requirements of a campaign, channel, or business

unit, and can be used to cross-reference consumer profiles and purchase history.

Personalized Offers

The solution includes a Rules Enginedriven API call to retrieve personalized offers and promotions for

customers. The API can be called from any touch point that a customer is using.

Personalized Email Marketing

The solution includes a Personalized Email Marketing Engine that uses the Personalized Item

Recommendations and Personalized Offers modules to manage and deliver the right products, at the

right time, at the right price, to the right customer's email inbox. Included are an email template design

module, intelligent item selection controls, response tracking, and more.

Personalized SMS Marketing

The solution includes a Personalized SMS (Short Message System, another name for mobile text

messaging) Marketing Engine that uses the Personalized Item Recommendations and Personalized

Offers modules to manage and deliver the right products, at the right time, at the right price, to the

right customer's mobile phone. Two-way SMS is supported (provided that the SMS gateway supports

it). Included are an SMS message template design module, intelligent item selection controls, response

tracking via SMS short codes, and more.

Promotion Benefit Evaluation

The solution includes an API call to evaluate the benefit (discount, complimentary or bundled item, and

so on) to offer to a customer in a dynamically-generated cross-selling scenario. For example, if a

customer is viewing a webpage that describes Product A, and the page calls the Personalized Item

Recommendations module to select a related product, Product B, based on the customers profile for

cross-selling, then the Promotion Benefit Evaluation module can be called to determine that a 20

percent discount should be offered on the bundle, based on pre-configured promotion rules.

Role-based Dashboards and Security

The solution includes a role-based dashboard that is built on custom and personalization-enabled

ASP.NET web pages and security. In this module, the Microsoft Dynamics CRM role and hierarchy

based security features are used and extended to reflect the organizational structure of the retailer.

Dashboards give access to role-specific reports (flash and detailed) and shortcuts to functionality.

Microsoft Dynamics CRM: A Developer Perspective

Microsoft Dynamics CRM is a customer relationship management solution that provides rich

capabilities for sales, marketing, and service management. Microsoft Dynamics CRM gives customers

the flexibility to use the solution on the company premises, as a service in the cloud, or hosted by a

third party. In addition, Microsoft Dynamics CRM is easy to use, deploy, and maintain.

From a developer perspective, Microsoft Dynamics CRM is really an application platform that provides

sophisticated services and tools to facilitate rapid development of business applications. This chapter

explores the power of Microsoft Dynamics CRM and xRM from a developer perspective, with a focus on

extensibility, deployment, and management.

Microsoft provides a Microsoft Dynamics CRM Software Development Kit (SDK) that allows developers

to extend the product beyond the built-in features. You can find a detail documentation of the SDK on

MSDN at http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb928212.aspx. The following provides an overview

of key extensibility mechanisms.

Plug-in

A plug-in is a .NET assembly that subscribes to Microsoft Dynamics CRM events, intercepts events, and

triggers a custom action. For example, a plug-in could reserve items in inventory before creating the

order. Typically, plug-ins are used to integrate CRM with back office and legacy systems. Plug-ins can be

written in .NET-compatible languages such as C# or Microsoft Visual Basic .NET (VB.NET). They

implement a simple plug-in interface (IPlugin) that requires implementation of a single method. The

Microsoft Dynamics CRM SDK provides a registration tool and registration API to associate plug-ins with

platform events.

Plug-ins are extension points that developers can use to integrate custom business logic with Microsoft

Dynamics CRM. Plug-ins can subscribe to a published set of events that will run whenever one of the

events occurs. To function in this way, a plug-in needs to have event handler code that runs in response

to a platform event. The event handler must implement the IPlugin interface.

Workflows

Microsoft Dynamics CRM workflows enable the automation of business processes. Microsoft Dynamics

CRM ships with several workflows and exposes capabilities that you can use to create, extend, or

customize workflows to suit specific business needs. One way of extending workflows is by creating

custom workflow activities, which are .NET assemblies that can be created with the Microsoft Visual

Studio development system.

The Microsoft Dynamics CRM workflow capabilities are based on the Windows Workflow Foundation

programming model. The Visual Studio Workflow Designer lets you use the Visual Basic .NET and Visual

C# programming languages to create workflow templates and custom workflow activities that extend

the workflow capabilities of Microsoft Dynamics CRM.

In addition, a workflow designer that can be used to create workflows is now incorporated into the

Microsoft Dynamics CRM web application. It is available to all users whose role includes workflow

privileges. By incorporating the workflow designer into the web application, many featuresincluding

advanced find and reportingare automatically enabled for workflows.

Entities and Relationships

Microsoft Dynamics CRM uses the word entity to refer to the structures used to store and manage

data. Conceptually, an entity is comparable to a database table except that it includes more

information. An entity includes the form, views, and behavior of that entity in a system. Entities

correspond to the types of records Microsoft Dynamics CRM manages. In addition to the default

system entities, you can create custom entities. The ability to add custom entities is a powerful way to

extend Microsoft Dynamics CRM functionality and does not require that you write code.

When you create a custom entity, you probably want to relate it to another entity. A stand-alone entity

is not very useful because it is not connected to any other data in the system. To relate entities, you

add a relationship from an entity form. The following are different types of entity relationships that are

supported in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0:

One-to-Many System-Custom A custom entity that is linked to a system entity. The custom

entity has a lookup field to associate it with a system entity.

One-to-Many Custom-Activity/Note A common relationship that can be created

automatically when you configure notes and activities associated with a custom entity.

One-to-Many Custom-Custom A relationship that occurs when you include a custom entity

as the child of another custom entity. The child entity has a lookup field to associate it with the

parent custom entity.

Oneto-Many Custom-System A relationship that occurs when a custom entity is linked to a

system entity. This cannot be a parent-child relationship type; it can only be a referential

relationship type. A lookup field is added to the system entity, but it is not a required field.

Custom-Custom A referential relationship between two custom entities. This means that you

can create two relationships between two custom entities, which creates lookup attributes on

both entities so that each entity has a reference to the other. However, if a parental

relationship already exists, creating this type of relationship introduces a cascading circularity

and is not allowed.

System-to-System Relationships between system entities. This allows you to link multiple

relationships between accounts and contacts. The account entity already has a primary

contact; this allows you to add a secondary contact as well.

Many-to-Many The many-to-many relationship was called Associate in CRM 3.0. This is

modeled after the way you link competitors with opportunities.

Multiple Relationships Enables relationships such as having multiple users associated with

an entity. For example, you could use this relationship if you have a project entity and you

want to know who created it (Created By), who modified it (Modified By), and who it is

assigned to (Owner), but you also want to know who the lead program manager, lead

developer, and lead tester are.

Self Referencing Relationships An entity that refers to itself. This allows you to build trees

and hierarchies of entities. CRM will also automatically check for circular references.

Web-Services

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 provides three web service APIs to access and manipulate application

data. These services are:

CRM Web Service (CrmService.asmx)

Metadata Web Service (MetadataService.asmx)

Discovery Web Service (DiscoveryService.asmx)

Microsoft also offers three assemblies that you can use to programmatically interact with Microsoft

Dynamics CRM instead. These assemblies are:

Microsoft.Crm.Sdk.dll

Microsoft.Crm.SdkTypeProxy.dll

Microsoft.Crm.Outlook.Sdk.dll

When developing assembly-based solutions, such as plug-ins and workflow assemblies, we recommend

that you reference the API assemblies rather than using the web references. For web development

applications, you can use either the Web Service Description Language (WSDL) or the assembly

reference approach.

CrmWebService Web Service

The CrmWebService web service is the core API mechanism for programmatically interacting with all

entities in Microsoft Dynamics CRM. It provides strongly typed access to all entities in Microsoft

Dynamics CRM, including custom entities and attributes. This web service also allows execution of all

supported operations, including those with built-in business logic and specialized operations. It

provides valid WSDL that is dynamically generated on the server to include the latest customizations,

and provides a single endpoint for your code.

Common Methods

The following six methods provide the basic create, read, update, and delete (CRUD) operations for

entities, including custom entities.

Create Creates a new record for a given entity.

Retrieve Returns a single record based on the entity ID passed in.

RetrieveMultiple Returns multiple records based on a query expression.

Update Edits an existing record.

Delete Removes a record.

Fetch Returns multiple records based on a FetchXML query.

Execute Method

In addition to the common methods, the Execute method is provided to perform any business logic

that is not addressed by the common methods. The Execute method executes a message that

represents either a specialized method or specific business logic. Execute uses a message-based

approach, and supports a message class hierarchy to group similar operations. It takes a message

request class as a parameter and returns a message response class.

MetadataService Web Service

The metadata for Microsoft Dynamics CRM is stored in the SQL Server database tables. These tables

contain the entity, attribute, and relationship definitions for each organization. This includes the

metadata for your customizations. The MetadataService web service contains the messages that you

use to read or write the definitions for all the entities in a Microsoft Dynamics CRM installation. It can

also be used to build a client-side cache.

Use the MetadataService web service to:

Create a custom entity.

Retrieve the metadata for a specific entity, either system or custom.

Retrieve, add, or update attributes for an entity.

Create or delete relationships between two entities.

Determine metadata changes and identify custom entities from all entities.

CrmDiscoveryService Web Service

The CrmDiscoveryService web service enables the caller to determine the correct organization and URL

for their needs. Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 is a multi-tenant environment; a single Microsoft

Dynamics CRM server can host multiple business organizations. Each time a server handles a web

service method call, it could be for a different organization. Therefore, the web services must be

notified of the target organization that a user is intending to reach. The CrmDiscoveryService web

service enables your code to discover the CrmService and MetadataService web service endpoint URLs

and other information about the target organization.

iFrames

One of easiest ways to extend Microsoft Dynamics CRM is to use iFrames (inline frames). When you use

iFrames, the Internet or LAN connection is very important because it must maintain a connection to the

underlying application and data.

You can use the forms editor in the Microsoft Dynamics CRM client to embed an iFrame in a Microsoft

Dynamics CRM form. iFrames can be used for a variety of customizations, such as:

Incorporating a page from a SharePoint site

Adding HTML code to the page; for example, to define a button

Showing a commercial web site; for example, www.msn.com

Embedding a custom application

xRM

Microsoft Dynamics CRM is an application platform that can be used to develop business applications.

To develop an application for the platform, you build an xRM application (where x stands for anything

and RM means relationship management). To build an xRM application, you can customize the existing

customer relationship management applications that are included in Microsoft Dynamics CRM, or you

can design completely new line-of-business (LOB) applications that are not based on the sales, service, or

marketing capabilities included in Microsoft Dynamics CRM. With either approach, your application will

use Microsoft Dynamics CRM as a platform, and will take advantage of the capabilities of the platform to

deliver business value to your user.

Retailers can use extensible data models and application frameworks to provide a wide variety of

functionality. An xRM solution can be a custom application within CRM that exposes new functionality

or an LOB application solution on top of CRM. It might be a Silverlight application or a .NET application.

xRM is essentially an application development framework to rapidly develop relational business

applications. It is designed to accelerate the development of LOB applications through the use of

flexible, dynamic application services. xRM uses familiar Microsoft technologies as building blocks,

including Microsoft Office, Microsoft Outlook, SQL Server, and the .NET Framework.

In addition, you can use the Advanced Developer Extensions included in the Microsoft Dynamics CRM

SDK. This set of tools simplifies the development of Internet-enabled applications that interact with

Microsoft Dynamics CRM.

The following sections describe the xRM services that you can use to develop Microsoft Dynamics

CRMbased LOB applications.

xRM Application Services

xRM provides the following ten application development services to allow developers to rapidly build

their business logic, create user experiences, access data, and help secure access (see the diagram that

follows):

Data and metadata services

User experience services

Access and security services

Analytical services

Extensibility services

Integration services

Architecture services

Management services

Point and click customization services

Process automation and orchestration services

These services are described in detail in the following sections.

Data and Metadata Services

A major feature and benefit of xRM is that each application is completely defined in metadata and not

in code. This provides great deal of flexibility and extensibility to application developers and business

users. Non-technical users can also add new fields that extend the behavior of XRM applications.

Keeping application definitions in metadata simplifies the application upgrade process and allows

changes to be published and propagated with no down time. Newer applications built on the platform

inherit all these capabilities, thus avoiding rework. The schema and its customizations can be exported

and imported, allowing changes to be managed and migrated easily. The tools for managing the

schema are all web-based and do not require any special installations. Knowledge of SQL is not

required to take advantage of these features because the UI allows the creation or modification of the

data fields and schema, automatically enforcing referential integrity rules and data relationships.

The following illustration shows the components of xRM data modeling.

User Experience Services

Developers can use xRM user experience components to create consistent user experiences across

multiple LOB applications. This approach reduces training time and increases user adoption. The xRM

user experience components allow deep Microsoft Office integration, can be synchronized with

Microsoft Outlook, have accessibility features, and are available on standard clients and devices. Each

xRM application includes standard prebuilt user functionality. This functionality includes features such

as mail merge, presence visibility, a knowledge base, task and activity management, user queues,

scheduling management, advanced find and query, smart search, and so on.

The following illustration shows the user experience components provided by xRM.

Access and Security Services

xRM allows for a granular security model that uses role-based access and controls. User administration

is simplified by the use of the Microsoft Active Directory directory service. Security access can be

specified for different role profiles. Users can be assigned to these profiles, resulting in a diverse

security model with correct access permissions. An additional benefit is that these roles have to be

created just once and can then be exported for use in other environments, such as test, staging, and

production.

The following illustration shows the access and security components provided by xRM.

Analytical Services

xRM provides analytical services that ensure data and insight consistency across all LOB applications.

The analytical services use proven Microsoft technologies, such as SQL Server, SQL Reporting Services,

the SQL Analysis Service, and a central monitoring server that provides centralized data access, storage,

and caching services. The monitoring server also supports view rendering and enables better scaling by

spreading the database load. Additionally, a dashboard designer makes it possible to create complex

dashboards and scorecards. These dashboards and scorecards can be viewed as web pages or via

Microsoft Outlook, Microsoft Excel, Microsoft PowerPoint, and Microsoft SharePoint.

A report creation wizard is available so that business users can easily create reports and get visual

insight into the data. In conjunction with the workflow capabilities present in the Microsoft Dynamics

xRM system, users can take action in response to the analytics. You can use SQL Reporting Services to

schedule reports, make them viewable offline, and export them in numerous formats. The types of

reports that can be created include OLAP charts, OLAP grids, pivot charts, pivot tables, Excel

spreadsheets, trend analysis, web pages, and so on.

Extensibility Services

xRM extensibility services enables IT departments to support many different business requests and

rapidly create extensions to fit the unique needs of every application. Extension points are available

throughout the architecture so that developers can easily extend the system.

The following illustration shows the extensibility components provided by xRM.

Integration Services

Microsoft xRM provides a wide array of integration capabilities so that developers can rapidly compose

applications. These can be categorized into the following four areas:

UI integration UI integration lets you create composite applications and enterprise mashups.

You can build an integrated UI by simply using the forms editor and adding iFrames to forms

that load external application screens. You can also have external applications load xRM forms

by creating URL addressable forms. UI integration is low cost and requires less maintenance

because the different applications involved are very loosely coupled. This allows for rapid

innovation and implementation that would take much longer with traditional applications.

Data Integration xRM supports building applications by using a more traditional approach in

which data is integrated via APIs. xRM provides fully operational data retrieval APIs for

common tasks such as create, read, update, or delete (CRUD) operations. Using these APIs

gives retailers a higher degree of control at the right level of granularity that their business

requires, and makes it possible to have a higher level of security over the data coming into or

going out of the system. xRM has a Metadata API that provides entity, attribute, and

relationship definitions for each organization, including any customizations. You can use this

API to build a client-side cache for attributes such as the possible state names or pick-list

values. The Metadata API also allows you to customize CRM and LOB applications by adding

functionality.

Business Logic Integration xRM lets you use existing logic from other business applications.

xRM provides access to all the business entity dataincluding data for custom entities and

propertiesby dynamically generating web services. In addition, xRM supports the use of

plug-ins to extend functionality. This lets you integrate custom business logic, such as custom

data processing rules with specific conditions under which the custom business logic is to

execute.

Process Integration xRM uses a powerful workflow engine to allow processes to flow across

applications. It also includes prebuilt connections for integration platforms, such as Microsoft

BizTalk.

Architecture Services

xRM enables developers to build applications that support a broad set of global business application

needs. Multi-tenancy is built-into the xRM architecture, and lets developers create applications that

support multiple organizations and users on the same application instance. Applications developed on

xRM are multi-language because xRM supports more than forty languages, including right to left

languages such as Arabic. xRM supports multiple currencies and supports base currency roll-ups.

Management Services

xRM provides tools that reduce administrative costs and tools that streamline and simplify operations.

In addition, applications are fully portable, which streamlines the product lifecycle from development,

testing, staging, to production.

The following illustration shows the management components included in xRM.

Point and Click Customization Services

xRM comes with a powerful tool to allow rapid development of applications with minimal code. These

point and click tools can be used by both technical and non-technical users. They support fast

deployments and an iterative lifecycle, resulting in less time and resources required for development.

Some of the components accessible through point and click customization are modifications to

relational data schema because all entities are abstracted. The point and click tools help users to create

forms and define navigation rules easily. Security can be set based on user roles.

Custom business rules can be coded into the forms and their interactions. Rich analytics and reporting

capability can also be configured, allowing users to easily provide a complete application. All the

changes and customizations created are dynamically made available to the rest of the system, including

the workflows, analytics, wizards, search, and so on.

The following illustration shows the point and click customization components.

Process Automation and Orchestration Services

xRM uses the Windows Workflow Foundation (WF) and enables the automation and orchestration of

processes that are required by LOB applications. As business processes are automated and

orchestrated, there is a corres