Infor recently launched CRM 8.3 with exciting new features which include improved overall user experience, enhanced mobile features and offline functionality.

What’s New:

• Increased productivity with better understanding of customer and buying behaviour
• User efficiency due to an intuitive smart design that reduces the need for training
• Mobile 3.4 changes including offline data access to deliver superior customer experience
• Advanced customer engagement tools with great performance improvements
• Expanded import capabilities for accounts, contacts, tickets, opportunities, etc.
• Streamlined UI touch screen accessible
• CPQ integration with Quote integration
• Xbar updates
• Windows 10, Edge and Office 2016 support

There have been significant investments in research and development and the new CRM reflects current and future CRM trends, which includes more insightful customer interactions via new mobile capabilities. Some of the most prominent following features are introduced in Infor Crm 8.3.

• Enhanced Data Tools– You can now apply mass data changes to selected fields for increased efficiency gains.
• Improved Calendar & Outlook Integration– New Outlook integration capabilities enable CRM data to be embedded in Outlook. It is also possible to associate an Outlook Calendar appointment with an Account, Contact, Lead, Ticket or Opportunity for improved productivity.
• In-Depth Reporting and Analytics– In the new release the reporting capabilities have been transformed. Infor CRM offers new widgets and upgraded reporting engines for improved analysis. It enables users to schedule reports, view past reports as a snap shot and save reports as attachments.
• Enhanced Mobility– Customer data, including profile and activity information, can be kept locally on the mobile device, while recently accessed data remains cached on the device as well, thus boosting productivity.
• System compatibility– There is improved support for browsers, including the latest versions of Chrome, Microsoft Windows Edge, Firefox and Safari. Added to this, this release is compatible with Microsoft Windows 10 and Office 2016 including Office 365.
• Offline access– Records can be added to “My Briefcase”, allowing them to be accessed offline, when no internet connection is available.

Choose your own deployment options

• The Windows client– installed locally and accessed using a PC, ideal for office based users.
• The Web Client– installed on your local network and accessed via a web browser, ideal for field based users.
• The Mobile Client– with the introduction of Infor Mobile CRM it is possible to have Mobile Only users (Infor CRM is the first to offer this), ideal for users that are field based.

Other than these, Infor CRM 8.3 also introduced large set of productivity and relationship building improvements in Xbar for Microsoft Outlook.

• Ability to Edit and update a Ticket’s area, category and issue from the member panel.

• Scheduling Activities now has ability to easily link to information in Infor CRM and keep a richer set of communications automatically inside Infor CRM.
  • Each activity can now be quickly linked so there are no orphans or unconnected Outlook activities.
  • You can alsolink the Outlook activity to related entities such as other people, accounts, opportunities, tickets, users, etc. to build a richer history of the interactions and relationships. This is like the multiple attendee ability found in Infor CRM 8.2

• Now each Outlook activity can be linked to CRM as a meeting, To Do, Personal event
• Activities can be completed in Outlook directly and will make the needed change in CRM for the completed activity to be moved into history.
• Ability to control the amount of information you will see on a Member Card.

• Set the number of member cards to display for emails with lots of email addresses
• Use an Opportunity group and a Ticket Group to narrow the results shown on the member card- helpful to only show information that you care to see.

Enhanced viewing and management of Activities and History lists

• Notes/History, Activities and Ticket Activities tabs preview now displays up to 256 characters below the record instead of in a separate panel to the right as in previous releases.
• The Show/Hide Preview button allows the user to show or hide the preview data with one click

New user options

• Ability to enable the Username/Time Stamp button to add your name, the date and time to memo boxes (when turned on by the Administrator). This is helpful to add quick information to those long memos and identify who made the update.

Most useful to people who do Quoting and even CPQ:

• Infor 8.3 allows various workflow from an Opportunity to the eventual order
• Improved quote and sales order processes have been separated quotes from sales orders
  • Ability to add a quote or sales order for an opportunity, including any products
  • Ability to add and manage quotes, including converting a quote to a sales order or generating a proposal.
  • New Quote tab on the Account and Opportunity detail views
• Infor Configure Price Quote (CPQ)is now integrated with Sales Orders, Quotes and Opportunities in the Web client. CPQ provides web users with an image-driven interface for building out customer requirements.

Most useful for administrators:

• Import accounts, opportunities, leads, users, ticket, lead sources, and products (from Common Tasks)
• Copy user profile information to multiple users
• Manage office profile information, including office hours, service and support options. password options, currency, help configuration, and licenses
• If a user is denied access because there are no remaining concurrent licenses available, the User Audit Additional Info column is updated to indicate that No valid concurrent licenses were available.

Most Useful for BackOffice / ERP Integration Users:

• Back office integration is now available within the base product, including:
  • Bi-directional synchronization of quotes and sales orders
  • Inbound and outbound processors can now support custom country codes
  • Promotionof Infor CRM accounts, contacts, Bill-to, Ship-To, Pay-From, Quotes and Sales Orders to ERP through the ION integration is possible

Infor ION
Infor ION enables intelligent business operations by simplifying integration between disparate systems, while combining contextual business intelligence, common reporting and analysis, streamlined workflow and business monitoring in a single, consistent architecture. The solution also unifies reporting services, mobile services, and cloud services into one elegant network built on four principal elements.

• Easily integrate both Infor and third party software applications.
• Create workflows and alerts that dramatically improve exception management.
• Design, standardize, monitor, or change any business process without IT involvement.
• Connect applications to the actions that take place outside of them.
• Easily monitor your entire business and make better decisions faster.

Over 180 Added and updated Help Topics

• Now the help system can be pointed at the Infor CRM web site or at your internal system (as was done previously

Ambit Software is an Infor Associate Partner with extensive experience in implementing Infor CRM across diverse verticals. For more details on Ambit’s Infor practices, Click Here.