FedEx and Microsoft Dynamics CRM?

February 13, 2008 21:49 by menno

As you probably have read on several blogs, FedEx has announced the launch of FedEx QuickShip during the keynote at ODC, an Office Outlook add-in for Office 2007 and Office 2003 that delivers a seamless shipping and package tracking experience completely from within Office Outlook. FedEx QuickShip offers the capability to find rates, print airbills, find drop-off locations, schedule pickups, and track packages.

Users can simply start using it by clicking the correct option on the FedEx toolbar or right click a contact from within Outlook. The menu bar should look familiar to the one we use in our CRM solution.

Just think how powerful this tool can become for users / companies that actually have Microsoft Dynamics CRM in place. Everybody in your organization would then have the ability to FedEx their packages to "centrally" stored and "managed" contacts. Now that's S+S for you!

You can learn more here by downloading it for free, or giving it an interactive test spin at: http://www.fedex.com/quickship

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February 13. 2008 22:27

Taking it even further, imagine if your Dynamics CRM system + Office Outlook + FedEx services gave you the ability to see shipping history and status for all customers from within Outlook -- whether you made the shippment from Outlook or not. Maybe could even mashup shipping data on a Virtual Earth map inside of Outlook....

John Mullinax

February 13. 2008 22:47

I like your thought John. I think especially that last part is a great opportuniy for our partners or the more advanced customers. It would be nice to see your FedEx history in CRM or have an iFrame display a Virtual Earth map where you package is in correlation to your customer.

mennotk

February 14. 2008 10:31

One of the integrations we have build Beween CRM and Dynamics SL is ship tracking. What we are doing is pulling the Fedex and UPS numbers off the shiptracking fileds from the SL shippers. Copying it into a field that contains the full url to the Fedex and UPS tracking areas. Which allows a customer care person to open an order, click ship tracking and see the mutiple tracking numbers, and pull them all together in one area.

What amazes me when we talk about this stuff though it points out the kind of 1/2 baked approach of Microsoft on this stuff. So most companies that use fedex use it in the back office, it is in the shipping and ERP where it is done, not in outlook. An order would have maybe 5 tracking numbers and most ERP apps, including GP, NAV, AX, and SL make a SHIPPER. CRM has no current method for handling any of the real world issues faced with this. The CRM guys are like.... What is a shipper?

I do agree that there is a great partner opportunity to add improved ship tracking mashups in CRM. My question.... Why doesn't MSFT have Mapping and ship tracking just built into the product?

Pierre Hulsebus

February 15. 2008 15:16

Hi Pierre, it is great to see you found my new blog location. Hope you like it!

I wish I could provide you with an answer on why MSFT does not have Mapping and Ship tracking out of the box on any of the products you mention.

I have to disagree with you on the fact that shipping mostly happens in the back-office. What about all of the medium sized business with an office-manager mailing packages on a daily basis? So integrating FedEx in Outlook and ultimately making it work with CRM would be a great Partner Opportunity. Slap on Live Maps and its really sexy!

Have you provided this feedback to the CRM product team?

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