Enterprise CRM

Dynamics CRM Upgrades to Social Listening: Why Microsoft Needed Netbreeze

Gareth Cartman

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Microsoft Dynamics already delivers a multi-faceted mobile platform that’s easily scalable and highly effective, and competes well against the likes of Salesforce and other top vendors. The Microsoft CRM solution’s automated marketing processes help staff prioritize tasks and provide different departments with the opportunity to connect, personalize and turn more leads into sales. This results in a better insight of the customer journey, and therefore greater loyalty, satisfaction and return on investment (ROI).

With no less than eight releases scheduled for 2014, it’s shaping up to be another year of fast-paced updates from Microsoft Dynamics CRM. In addition, there are now two new tools that can be leveraged through Microsoft Dynamics CRM to help businesses engage with new and existing customers.

The arrival of MarketingPilot 15 and Netbreeze, an online marketing management solution and a social monitoring tool respectively, will now give users the opportunity to understand customers better, gain unprecedented control and offer insight into budgets and resources, all while gaining real results through automated, measurable, multi-channel campaigns. Plus, they’ll be able to do all of this while analyzing and acting on marketing intelligence from social conversations.

What Will Netbreeze Bring to the Table?

Twelve months ago, Microsoft acquired Netbreeze, a Swiss social media monitoring and analytics company offering solutions that allow businesses to “listen” to what’s being said about them, their products and their brands.

What’s unique about Netbreeze is the way it combines modern methods from Natural Language Processing (NPL), data mining and semantic text analysis to support 28 different writing systems including English, French, German, Spanish, Russian, Arabic, Japanese, Traditional Chinese or Mandarin. Microsoft researchers are also working on a translation system for “young people speak,” which would take slang and internet short codes and translate them into natural language to be interpreted by the system.

Microsoft stated that these new capabilities will enable them to bring social analytics and monitoring to Dynamics CRM customers to help them drive sales, optimize campaigns and cultivate customer loyalty. What’s more, Netbreeze also delivers the ability to monitor multiple channels including Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. Plus, it’s still got room to keep a close eye on 6,000 online news websites, 18 million blogs and 500,000 message boards.

So what does that translate to in terms of Dynamics benefits? Here are 4 benefits that Dynamics CRM customers will likely gain.

1. Improve response times. In today’s world, consumers expect that their issues will be resolved almost immediately. Companies will be able to ensure their customers remain satisfied, since they will know that they’re being listened to and provided with prompt responses.
2. Increase insight. Learn more about the public perception of your products and brands so that when it changes, you can respond before any serious damage is done.
3. Discover prospects. Find information that you might not know about your company yet.
4. Track keyword mentions. See what your audience is talking about and set alerts around keywords to keep tabs on competing businesses and products generating hype. Then, craft a compelling, timely response.

When Will Dynamics CRM Customers Reap the Benefits of Netbreeze?

Social listening will roll out in Q2 to Dynamics CRM Online Pro License customers on the Office 365 platform at no additional cost. On-premise customers will be able to add this service for an incremental cost (UK price still to be confirmed). Further social enhancements will be added in Q3 and Q4 that will extend these features, including geo-analysis and automated social triggers.

Social listening and CRM will be fully integrated, allowing posts to be converted to CRM cases, leads and opportunities later this year (for users on the new CRM Enterprise license tier).

According to Microsoft, Netbreeze is essential in today’s analytics market, where companies are contending with Big Data and looking for ways to gain more knowledge and value than ever before:

Netbreeze delivers cutting-edge native language analytics combined with data mining and transactional and text analysis capabilities. In this world of the new customer you need to know what customers are saying, what they are thinking. You need to be able to quickly respond to things, both positive and negative. Netbreeze basically gives us the ability to do that and be able to act on it.

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• Consultant

Gareth Cartman

Marketing Manager, Clever Little Design
Business blogger with interest in CRM, IT, Marketing and HR.

Gareth Cartman is a business blogger with a particular interest in marketing, CRM, IT and human resources. With several years' experience managing acquisition and digital marketing for HR outsourcing, Gareth knows how to deliver value and success.