Importing Data to Dynamics CRM 2011

Mark Bradman, 24 May 2012

The most common CRM system used by sales people is arguably an Excel Spreadsheet with numerous lines and columns, painted in different colours, all meaning something to someone, but of not much use to anyone else.
 

Let’s see how easy it can be to import this type of data into Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 whereby it becomes available to everyone in your organisation to use.

For this example, let’s assume this is a list of people who entered a competition at recent Trade Show. You obviously went to a lot of time and expense to gather this data:

• Many $1,000s for the Stall Site
• Many more $1,000s for Fit Out
• Staff Time to man the Stall
• Cost of Prizes to lure people to provide you with their contact details
• Time and expense to enter all the information into the Spreadsheet…

What now? Are you going lose control of your ‘Gold Mine’ by just giving it out willy-nilly to your sales team to find time to follow up, or would you like to track progress of sales resulting from it to perhaps determine how successful this Trade Show was and whether it might be worth doing again next year?

Okay. Let’s assume that you would prefer to import this data into computer system for further use across your organisation, be it the person in charge of sales, or marketing, or finance, or stock control, or whomever.

“Begin with the End in Mind”, Stephen Covey says, so let’s have a look at what the fields are in your database that you may want to map these to. In Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2012, these could be any or even a combination of different types of records from Accounts and Contacts to different Activities such as Phone Calls, Emails, Faxes, etc.

For our example, let’s assume these records are Leads, potential customers we will be marketing to in some way.
 

First of all, let’s make some minor changes to your spreadsheet as follows:

1. Add a column for Owner – You could assign to different sale people if you wish
2. Add a column for Topic – a required field in this example
3. Delete Heading Rows – the Import Wizard works from individual column headings
4. Delete Comments column which we won’t be using in this example.

 

Next, save as an XML Spreadsheet 2003 and go to your Microsoft Dynamics CRM system to import it.
 

When the screen below shows up, you know you’re on your way.
 

Select ‘SampleDataMap’ and click ‘Next” button to continue.
 

Select ‘Lead’ as the record type you are importing and click ‘Next” button to continue.
 

All your field names from your speadsheet are displayed for you to choose which fields in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2012 you would like them top map into. If you look closely, you’ll even notice that some of these have found fields of the same name and mapped them already. You obviously still have final say as whether this is correct. 
  

So you map the fields from your spreadsheet that didn’t have the same name as in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2012 or mark them ‘Ignore’… 
 

… and click ‘Next” button to continue.
 

One final review and click ‘Submit” button and viola, it’s done!
 

Check progress in CRM by going to Workplace and find all records have been successfully added.
 

You can now view your leads by Sales Person…
 

… and open them individually as you wish.
 

Remember that even though we only imported 20 in this example, it could just as easily have been 2,000. And this isn’t just limited to Leads, it could have been your existing Customer base and all your contacts. All this in just a few minutes from an Excel spreadsheet!

In my next blog, we’ll go into how to set up a Marketing Campaign with several different Activities and costings.