Using Web Forms to Create Data Entry Efficiencies with Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0

Megan Walsh, 24 August 2010

It is often said in our industry that the value of your CRM system is directly proportional to the quality of the data inputted. Microsoft Dynamics CRM has the ability to capture a myriad of information about your customers, some of which is always valuable (required), some of which is good to know in most cases (business recommended) and some of which is nice to have but not necessarily known (no constraint). Field constraints are great for indicating to the user which category each field falls under, however the user often still needs to tab through the unnecessary fields to reach the required fields, which can slow down data entry.

One of our clients has a busy administration department who need to enter customer details into their Dynamics CRM system very quickly in order to keep on top of their workload. The information collected is stored in three different entities, all of which contain required, business recommended and no restraint fields. In order to allow users to get the most important information into Dynamics CRM in the most efficient way we developed a custom web form to capture the information.

The user can tab through the form and enter all the details required to set up a new customer into one screen. When they hit the ‘Create’ button the data is distributed into the newly created customer records. This solution makes entering new customer information and updating existing customer details across multiple entities quick, easy and efficient.

The beauty of this solution is that it can be used to make data entry more efficient for organisations that need to record new customer information in multiple entity records. The customer in the example above uses the solution to quickly create Contact, Loan, and Identification records.

Customer Relationship Management software can be extremely beneficial, but it is true that the quality of the data entered directly effects the value you will get out of your CRM system. By using a web form to quickly capture the most relevant data and distribute it across the associated records we have made is easier for users to efficiently enter high quality data, and have therefore increased the value that the organisation will get out of their Dynamics CRM solution.