If your people are familiar with Microsoft Office products such as Word, Excel and Outlook, then learning to use Microsoft Dynamics applications will take them little time. By allowing them to quickly and easily start using the new applications to complete daily tasks, you'll help workers and partners across your organization increase productivity.

> For example, consider a sales associate who wants to respond to a customer request regarding the order status of a product. With Microsoft Dynamics applications, the sales associate can quickly open the Business Data Lookup task pane in Microsoft Word and easily locate the Microsoft Dynamics AX sales order information he or she needs for the customer. Since that person is already familiar with Microsoft Office and Word, he or she can copy the data into a Word document and e-mail it directly to the customer-and move on quickly to another customer request. Quick response not only boosts efficiency for the sales associate, it also helps improve customer satisfaction.

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Too often, people find themselves moving between several applications to find all the necessary information about their customers, suppliers, and inventory. With Microsoft Dynamics applications, users can access Microsoft Dynamics data easily from within Microsoft Office, as well as store Microsoft Office documents as part of the Microsoft Dynamics database. With a single repository of customer information-both structured and unstructured data-employees can increase productivity and experience greater operational efficiency.

> As an example, imagine a sales representative's communication attached to a customers' Microsoft Dynamics CRM record. When working with customers, the representative can quickly find all related information, because it's stored in one place. It's not necessary to dig through multiple applications and folders to successfully complete a sale. In addition, while that representative is on leave from the office, peers can access appropriate information to manage customer requests, helping maintain a high level of customer care.

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Training is essential to ensure that people across your organization follow appropriate processes-but it can be costly and time-consuming. Microsoft Dynamics requires minimal training, since many people are already familiar with Word, Excel, and Outlook. It can help enhance people's capabilities across processes with ease and efficiency.

> For example, consider an accounting firm where most employees are familiar with Microsoft Office. They can use Outlook for e-mail, Word for memos, and Excel for spreadsheets and reports. Imagine that a new manager wants to implement a system for tracking time spent on a certain project and client, but wants to minimize training and process time needed for tracking. Using Microsoft Dynamics applications, the manager can link Outlook to Microsoft Dynamics AX time entries, letting him or her see meetings and appointments related to certain projects and clients. This helps both the manager and the employees working on the project to more easily track project time.

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Screen illustration: A snap-in application developed for Microsoft Dynamics AX allows employees and managers to track time in the software most familiar to each person, and the information flows among the programs.