How Associations Benefit with Microsoft Blog Series: Outlook
Enable end-to-end capabilities between Microsoft Office and your Microsoft CRM. Why Altai Systems, built within the Microsoft Power Platform is the right fit for associations. Email has changed our lives. And while it can be a distraction, it’s also where a lot of work gets done. Consider how often we’ve all walked out of a meeting or closed a Zoom or Teams video thinking that an email would’ve been so much more efficient. Because that’s what email can be – an effective and economical tool to convey information. But what if you’re not harnessing all that it could be. Think about how often you communicate with your members. You get an email from a leader about material prep for an upcoming meeting or you get a complaint from a member threatening to drop. What if you could see key information without toggling to your CRM. Or update data like job titles and contact info directly from the email. With Microsoft, you can do just that. Microsoft’s Power Platform connects its suite of functionality including Microsoft’s CRM and Outlook to work for you seamlessly. Microsoft is turning the tools you use into a collective Customer Engagement ecosystem that will sustain your work now and into the future. Features that you don’t want to miss out on include: Linking email messages and meetings to a record in your Microsoft CRM. This connection allows your colleagues the opportunity to understand past interactions to ensure consistent, engaged customer service. In addition, studies have shown that this synchronization saves the average user 30 minutes per day from copying/pasting. Syncing contacts between Outlook and the CRM. Do you regularly email your leaders directly? You’re likely to get a contact update before it’s updated in the CRM. Now you can sync the data so everyone can send timely information to the right address. Add email templates to share valuable content when you create an email message or set up a meeting. You want your messages to feel authentic and maintain a personal touch. But you also want to make sure your team remains on point. Email templates from the CRM can be accessed in Outlook to do just that. Contact lookup. Can’t remember a contact’s phone number. Allow outlook to search Dynamics, find the right contact, and display his/her contact information without having to leave Outlook or log into the CRM separately. Send group messages to the right people in the group. As people are added and removed from certain groups, Committee members, for instance, the two solutions can synchronize those contacts for you so that the right people are always immediately reachable. Assigned Tasks for your team are also synced with Outlook’s Tasks so that nothing slips through the cracks. Outlook even works with the CRM when you are offline. The system will sync when you come back online. Contact us to learn more about how we can incorporate Altai and Microsoft’s functionality into your Association.
How Associations Benefit with Microsoft Blog Series: Power Automate
Why a system built on the Microsoft Platform is the right fit for associations. We’re introducing a new series about Microsoft features and how Altai Systems has adapted them for associations. Automate the Mundane. Altai champions this phrase to all of our prospects and clients. So do lots of other people based on how many hits you get when googling the phrase. But what does it really mean? And how can it help associations and you move your mission forward, better serve your members, and help your career development? Altai talks about automating the mundane because not only do we think that technology frees you to spend time on directly serving your members, but it also opens up new opportunities to leverage the system you’re using in new and different ways. So how can you turn your repetitive tasks into automation that works for you? Microsoft has solved this by using low-code/no-code technology that can not only automate your tasks but make you a citizen developer! Really, that’s just a fancy way of saying that it’s built with the user in mind. Just as you want to be productive by automating these repetitive tasks, you also want to be productive without waiting for resources to build your automation. Microsoft’s Power Automate uses “flows” to make it happen. A Flow puts the proper steps in place to determine what happens during the automation process. Event-Driven Flows. Do you want to create an automatic update to a member’s record when they update their job title in LinkedIn? Do you want to automatically forward an email to the right department? Event-Driven Flows are designed to be trigger or time-based so you can set it and forget it. Business Process Flows. These are flows designed to guide you through a process. Are there repeated steps you follow to save a canceling member? Creating a business process flow will guide any staff to follow your win-back process to save the member. By having the system lead you through the steps, your staff can be confident the most effective steps are being taken. Desktop Flows. Do you have a process that is unique to you or a small group of staff? Documenting processes are important but time-consuming and often get de-prioritized. With Desktop Flows, you can record your actions for the flow to be triggered to repeat those actions. Altai uses each of these flows to make Altai’s Association Business Platform your Association’s Platform. By building on Microsoft’s Power Platform, we’re able to leverage the latest technology tools to keep our functionality up to date – and to future-proof your solution. And best of all, Power Automate is now free with Windows 11. Contact us to learn more about how we can incorporate Altai and Microsoft’s functionality into your Association.
