Microsoft CRM Integration with IBM Lotus Notes Domino - Machinery Dealership Example

IBM Lotus Notes with Domino e mail server is traditional document workflow management solution for huge corporate business, where you need audit trail on approval cycle and decision making. Microsoft Business Solutions CRM is cost efficient solution to automate sales method. It might be surprising, but they see nice strata of clients who are willing to deploy and integrate both systems: MS CRM and Lotus Domino. In our view these clients are balancing ERP platform risks and trying to protect and deploy investments in to Lotus licenses, while deploying new and already leading CRM solution - Microsoft CRM. In this small news story we'll give you the integration example - European division of of the widely known machinery manufacturer dealership network.

o          Custom Lotus Database. In our case client had custom database, which was designed back in the beginning of 1990th. Some dealers had Lotus Notes Domino four.0 and a number of them had 6.0 and 6.5. Technical excurse - in Lotus Notes Domino 6.0 you can use Java two agents, and it appears to be platform independent (Microsoft Windows Server, IBM AS/400). To synch all the dealerships - the decision was made to upgrade across the network to Lotus Notes Domino 6.0 (to be a bit conservative)

o          Domino Messaging. Obviously you need to have e mail server assigned to your url domain, and as historicallyin the past Lotus Domino was the e mail server - the replacement with Microsoft Exchange 2003 (which is natural choice in the event you buy Microsoft CRM) was not an option. With Alba Spectrum Technologies MS CMR Lotus Notes Domino connector you can switch e mail messaging to Lotus Domino

o          Lotus & MS CRM events synchronization. IBM and Microsoft application designers designed CRM & Lotus events differently. Second phase of the project implementation will synchronize appointments, calendar events, etc. between Lotus and MS CRM.

o          MS CRM ODBC lookups to Lotus database. As the second phase they plan to implement lookups from MS CRM Account to cases with custom fields and Lotus notes lookup tab. This tab will be realized as web .net application, integrated in to MS CRM web interface. Enterprise resource planning  This web application will have machine serial number, warranty & service information. As you  certainly know in MS CRM three.0 you can deploy custom table in link it to MS CRM object as one-to-many. The most important is that it will be synchronized by MS Outlook and will permit you as a salesperson to work offline.