Case Study: Using Scribe Insight to Integrate Microsoft CRM with 4 Other Systems

This summer I worked on an interesting and challenging Microsoft Dynamics CRM project for a large university. This project involved not only implementing Microsoft Dynamics CRM, but also integrating 4 other systems with CRM so that CRM became the central repository of student and alumni data, making it easy for users to find data and report from one system.

The kicker is that each of the 4 systems used a different database platform!

The key to making this project successful was the use of Scribe Insight, a tool from Scribe Software (http://www.scribesoftware.com/) used to migrate data into just about any system, and integrate systems. Thanks to the power of Scribe Insight, we were able to integrate all systems with Dynamics CRM.

Here's the rundown of the applications we integrated with Microsoft CRM:

Application: Web-based career center management application
Source Data Format: Text files created by exporting data from the source system
Integration Type: Periodic batch load to CRM

Application: Campus calendar application with events that students register for
Source Data Format: mySQL database
Integration Type: Ongoing two-way real-time integration with CRM

Application: Student information system
Source Data Format: Sybase database
Integration Type: Initial batch load and ongoing one-way real-time integration to CRM

Application: Alumni information system
Source Data Format: Oracle database
Integration Type: Initial batch load and ongoing one-way real-time integration to CRM

Conclusion:
If you ever need to do ANY kind of systems integration work regardless of whether a Dynamics product is involved or not, then I recommend you check out Scribe Insight.

Notes From Convergence 2008

For those of you at Convergence this week - whether or not you've attended any Microsoft CRM specific sessions - you've heard all the buzz about Microsoft CRM anyway.

Not surprising, especially considering the recent launch of Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 and the soon to be released Microsoft CRM Live (a SaaS version of the same product).

For the Microsoft Dynamics CRM related sessions that I've been able to attend, the repeating themes include:

- Prebuilt in-application dashboards (not SharePoint dependant)
- Improved integration with other line of business Dynamics applications (GP, SL, AX, NAV, SharePoint)
- Enhanced customization tools (i.e., do really cool stuff with even less need for coding)
- Even better Outlook client performance and stability
- And the best for last... interoperability with PerformancePoint (promise to blog about this in detail later!)

Stay tuned...

PS - Got a sneak peek at CRM 5.0 as well but can't really say anything about it since they asked us to sign NDAs.