As organizations make investments to accelerate business outcomes, they continue to look for ways to achieve greater efficiency and productivity while minimizing costs. A significant area where you can use technology to improve business efficiency is by integrating OneDrive for Business with your Dynamics CRM 2016 system. By integrating these two, you can leverage numerous benefits like improved collaboration and increased visibility, augmenting productivity in the long run. Let’s look at the two systems individually and then see why and how integrating them can achieve increased productivity and efficiency.

According to the Harvard Business Review, “Big Data threatens to create a deep divide between the have-datas and the have-no-datas, with big corporations gaining advantage by crunching the numbers and small firms left to stumble in the dark.” Collecting and having access to customer data is oftentimes seen as a costly expenditure that small to medium sized businesses forego in favor of cutting costs; new research, however, has begun to demonstrate just how powerful customer analytics can be – especially for SMBs.

Loyalty programs are a powerful tool for retailers but they are often neglected or underused by companies and customers alike. While the benefits of returning customers have been well documented by numerous studies, experts, and organizations, retailers are still lagging behind when it comes to efficient loyalty marketing. In fact, one study by Colloquy indicates that only 42% of loyalty program memberships are actively participated in. This shows a stunning lack of utilization, but thankfully it’s a mistake that can be rectified. Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software is the leading method of implementing and managing customer loyalty programs.

According to MarketingWeek, CMOs are looking to spend more of their budget on customer retention than acquisition. This shift in focus is largely due to numerous studies that have demonstrated the power of returning customers. In fact, according to Forrester Research, it costs 5 times as much money to gain new customers as it does to keep current ones.  When you compound that with research from Gartner that predicts that 80% of your company’s future revenue will come from just 20% of your existing customers, the importance of keeping your current customers happy truly comes to light.  As a result, customer relationship management (CRM) software has become increasingly popular as a method of advertising and promotion.

Investing in a campaign management solution is a strategic decision that helps your company effectively drive cross-channel marketing strategies to deliver optimal results. Dynamics CRM incorporates a built-in campaign management module that offers marketers a single, intuitive platform to plan, target, execute, and measure their marketing campaigns. As a Niche Player in Gartner’s 2015 Magic Quadrant, Microsoft offers Dynamics Marketing for multi-channel campaign management capabilities in the cloud that works in conjunction with Dynamics CRM for integration of sales and service. Dynamics CRM not only helps you promote your business but also can help drive sales through targeted marketing campaigns.

Enterprise resource planning (ERP) and customer relationship management (CRM) software are both integral aspects of any retailer’s business strategy. With ERP, your business can achieve centralized store management and powerful merchandising. With CRM, employees will be able to delight customers with social listening and service functions. Both systems are equally important in allowing your business to flourish, but more often than not, they operate independently of each other.

So why would you bother trying to integrate an ERP and CRM?

Dynamics CRM 2016 focuses on maximizing customer engagement. Dynamics CRM 2015 offered a simple and seamless user experience across the application that focused on improved productivity of customer-facing employees through applications like Exchange, Excel and OneDrive for Business for easier task management. The 2016 version provides additions to CRM for marketing and several enhancements with intelligence and mobility features, including integration with applications like BI and Office 365.

Worldwide sales for the retail industry in 2014 is $22 trillion and growing. It is more important than ever for retailers to deliver amazing experiences to customers and stay ahead of competition. Customer relationship management (CRM) software can be used by almost any industry, but comes with several unique qualities that optimize performance for the retail sector.