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Excel—the best friend of corporate employees, sales managers, small business owners, data analysts, and more. It’s a well-known, widely used application, and every CRM vendor guarantees that its system offers “data export to Excel” and fully supports integration between those familiar spreadsheets and their CRM solution. But what if I told you that Microsoft Dynamics 365 takes the integration between Excel and the CRM system to an even higher level?
There is only one king
No matter how many systems we implement in our company or how many advanced IT tools we use, Excel will remain the undisputed king of the applications our users will rely on. Datasets, quick calculations, spreadsheets, budgets, charts—it’s the standard. It’s hard to walk away from Excel. It’s hard to say goodbye to Excel. Even if we’ve just rolled out the best CRM on the market.
The challenge, therefore, is to integrate CRM solutions and Microsoft Excel as closely as possible so that we can make the most of all the data stored in XLS files. And, if possible, to continue using Excel for operations such as bulk data editing, importing new information into the CRM system, or adding new information.
Better is the enemy of good
An old proverb says, “Better is the enemy of good.” Microsoft took this same approach when it introduced direct integration of CRM applications (such as Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales and Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Service) with Microsoft Excel Online as part of its Online solution. In short, if your company uses these tools, you can start reaping significant benefits from them.
And the simplest of these is the ability to open any data view in the CRM system as an Excel file. We can first customize it in the CRM, create all the filters we need, add columns, and then view it as an editable spreadsheet. So, if we open a list of our customers in Excel Online and see that the industry field is missing for some of them—it couldn’t be simpler. We can quickly review the data and update this information across multiple entries, taking advantage of the integration between Microsoft’s CRM-class applications and Excel Online.
Directions for Use
Adding new data? Nothing could be simpler. From the same view, we can simply add a new row, enter the customer’s name, basic address information, and phone number—and we’re all set. After a brief data processing period, the customer will be added to the system. Of course, this might not make much sense for a single entry, but what if we have 20 such entries? 50? 1,000? That’s when this integration becomes incredibly helpful.
There are, of course, many possible scenarios. Quickly import a database of leads collected at a trade show or from a website. Perform bulk editing of data, such as the probability of your sales opportunities. Or even perform quick data analysis in a custom view. All of this is possible thanks to the native integration of Microsoft Dynamics 365 with Excel Online—right out of the box.
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