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Deltek's Vision Connect Synchronizes CRM Tasks Directly in Microsoft Outlook

By Rajani Baburajan
TMCnet Contributor

Deltek, a provider of enterprise applications software and solutions for project-focused businesses, announced Deltek Vision Connect for Microsoft (News - Alert) Outlook.

Vision Connect for Microsoft Outlook is scheduled to be released in June 2010.

The new solution, displayed at Deltek's Insight 2010 user conference, integrates Deltek Vision with Microsoft Outlook, enabling business development professionals, marketing professionals, and executives to perform key Vision CRM tasks directly in Outlook, company officials said.

"To win business in these dynamic times, leading professional services firms are embracing technology to streamline and improve their sales and marketing processes," Ted Kempf, vice president of Product Marketing for Deltek Vision, said. "With Vision Connect for Microsoft Outlook, we are providing an innovative solution that increases the efficiency and effectiveness of business development processes and helps increase user adoption of critical CRM systems."

The new solution automatically synchronizes the work done in Outlook with Deltek Vision and ensures that all sales and marketing activities are recorded in one customer relationship management or "CRM" system of record.

In many organizations business development professionals use two systems, Microsoft Outlook and their internal CRM system, to manage marketing and sales activities with prospects and customers. Juggling of two systems can lead to data inaccuracies and inefficient work processes, according to company officials.

Vision Connect for Microsoft Outlook helps business development professionals manage their business appointments, e-mails and contacts, as well as manage clients, activities and opportunities - all from Microsoft Outlook, they added.

User adoption of Deltek Vision CRM enables personnel to manage the Deltek Vision records directly in Outlook and can expand significantly within organizations that use both solutions.

Vision Connect for Microsoft Outlook offers numerous innovative capabilities that will streamline important business development processes.

The Client, Vendor and Opportunity Management feature makes it easy to enter and update client, vendor and opportunity records within intuitive Outlook forms. Users can identify and select the most important records users need to manage to drive their business development activities forward.

The Contact Management feature makes it simple to maintain Vision contact information within the native Outlook contact form. The solution manages personal and business contacts that are shared and stored in Deltek Vision all in one place so there is no need for multiple contacts folders.

With E-mail Management, Vision Connect provides a seamless way to create and send e-mails in Microsoft Outlook that are captured within Deltek Vision. To maintain one repository of all business development activities the solution creates permanent activity records and links e-mail attachments to appropriate records within Deltek Vision. 

Vision Connect also offers bi-directional synchronization that ensures information between Vision and Microsoft Outlook stays consistent and up to date.

Vision Connect users can perform all the necessary work they need to do with Vision data in Outlook while offline and Vision Connect for Microsoft Outlook then synchronizes this data to Deltek Vision as soon as they re-connect.

These important synchronization capabilities greatly increase productivity, empower professionals to do work from any place at any time, company officials said.

At the Deltek's Insight 2010 user conference, the company also announced the winners for the third annual Project Excellence Awards. The winner of the Business Impact Award is VSE Corporation, one of the fastest-growing government contractors in the nation. The winner of the Innovation Award is Ballinger, a leading architecture and engineering design firm.