The business functions in an organization have changed tremendously over the last decade, and one key feature that has now been an important function is ‘Customer Relationship Management’ famously known as the abbreviated form ‘CRM’. The focus of most organizations have changed from product-centric to customer-centric and CRM plays a vital role in ensuring success of a business company. 

The main emphasis of CRM is to build a company’s relationship with its current customers and potential leads who will become a customer in the future. In the digital age, CRM strategy involves using technology to design, develop, automate, and streamline sales, marketing, and customer service. A purposeful CRM strategy can increase productivity, reduce the cost, and automate business processes to ensure customer satisfaction. Dynamics 365 is one of the most advanced and purposeful software application that has combined two important business processes that includes CRM and ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning). Dynamics 365 not only merges key components of CRM and ERP but integrates a wide range of other important features such as Sales, Project Service Automation, Marketing, Accounting, Finance, Customer Service, and Supply Chain Management. 

The goal of Dynamics 364 CRM is to enhance the customer relationship of an organization. The CRM solution is used to drive sales and marketing efforts, manage the customer support, provide useful customer information and insights, and enable users to access CRM through a mobile device. The Dynamics 365 CRM contains a series of customization tools called solution components and means that any user can build a solution in the CRM system. 

What are the CRM solutions?

A solution is an option where all of the customization tools or components of a specific project is stored. Creating a new solution helps to move the components from one place or environment to another. There are three types of solutions namely, default, managed, and unmanaged. Solutions are like adding numerous documents to a zip folder and then sending it through an email, the CRM system is based on similar concept, but instead of a document, a user adds certain CRM items to the solution. A user can add web resources, workflows, and security roles. 

• Default solution

The default system solution entails out of the box solution components that are already defined in the Dynamics CRM without any customization’s. But many of the components in the default solution can be customized and can be used in both the managed or unmanaged solutions. A user can navigate the Dynamics CRM by going in the Settings, Customization, and then Customize the system. 

• Unmanaged solution

The beginning or initial state of solution is called the unmanaged solution, during this stage, a user can add, edit, remove, update, delete, or test any of the components present in the solution. The user has the ability to impose restrictions on the components within the solution. The unmanaged solution is still under development and not intended to be distributed as it contains all the incomplete customizations. According to default settings, any new solution is an unmanaged solution, but a user can export the unmanaged solution as a managed or unmanaged solution. The key highlights include

• If a person export an unmanaged solution from one organization and then import it to another, then he can edit the solution for the new organization
• An unmanaged solution references the system solution, which means changes made to one unmanaged solution will automatically apply to all the unmanaged solutions. 
• If you delete a solution from an unmanaged solution than component gets deleted permanently from the system 
• Uninstalling the unmanaged solution will not remove the customizations from the system.

• Managed solution

A managed solution is the one that is completed and can easily be distributed and installed. The managed solutions can be installed on any system and other managed solutions. A managed solution is made by exporting an unmanaged solution by putting restriction to prevent further customizations. The key highlights of a managed solution are 

• If a person export a managed solution from one organization and then import it to another, the person cannot edit the solution for the new organization
• A managed solution does not reference the system solution directly
• If a person uninstalls the managed solution, then it will uninstall all the customizations associated with it
• Due to default settings, a managed solution cannot be customized in the new organization

Why use CRM solutions?

The managed and unmanaged solution solutions are used to export and implement items from one CRM system to another. A person can use the solution to develop some innovative feature to a sandbox environment, and after the development is done, a solution is built where the complete features are transferred.

What is the difference between a managed and an unmanaged solution?

The unmanaged solution are basically groups of unmanaged customizations and installing them would look as you have manually done the customization and uninstalling would not remove the customizations. In the managed solution no user can change the solution or remove the components. A person can export his feature with a managed solution and install it in the new environment but uninstalling the managed solution will remove all the customizations and data. 

Author Bio

Nicholas Thomas works as a CRM administrator and knows the value of Dynamics 365 in streamlining business functions. He works freelance and guides many companies on how to implement managed and unmanaged solution in dynamics CRM and achieve success.