The Secret

The User Adoption challenge of Business Applications has been solved! But not everyone is aware of it. What is the “secret”? Role-based Apps. Gone are the days when a user with a specific role had to wade through a maze of irrelevant functions to try and do their job. Frustration often leads to minimal use. Role-based apps are easier to create and deploy than you might think.

When did this happen?

This has been available for several years now. When Microsoft separated their Dynamics 365 apps from the platform they ran on top of, now known as Dataverse, they also introduced the concept of “Apps”. Dynamics 365 Sales is an example of an “App”. RapidStart CRM is also an “App”, and both are built on Dataverse.

The original idea of RapidStart CRM was to create a CRM app that was easier to use than Dynamics 365 Sales and Service. Dataverse gave us the blank canvas to build only what was needed to accomplish our goal. And we succeeded with a vastly simpler solution than Microsoft’s offerings to solve the same problems.

Role Based

Our original RapidStart CRM app is much easier to use and includes both Sales and Service capabilities. In a smaller business where users wear many hats, this worked great. But as larger businesses began to discover RapidStart CRM, it became clear that Sales and Service are often two different functions in larger organizations. Occasionally there are also information-sharing limitations between departments.

About a year ago, we introduced two new apps to RapidStart CRM, a Sales-focused app and a Service-focused app alongside our original App. While our original app was already easy to use, we saw an opportunity to make our focused apps even slimmer for dedicated sales or service users, in addition to isolating relevant data.

Below is a view of a Case from our Service-focused app. You can see the Sales areas are removed.

In addition to the navigation changes, references to sales have also been removed from Account and Contact forms, leaving only Service-related capabilities. Likewise, in the Sales-focused app, Service items have been removed.

Advantages of Role-Based Apps

Among the advantages of role-based apps are the following:

• Improved security: Access to specific features and data can be restricted based on the user’s role, leading to better data protection and security.
• Increased efficiency: Users can perform their tasks more efficiently because the app is tailored to their specific roles and the functions they need to perform.
• Better collaboration: With role-based apps, different departments or teams can work together seamlessly as each user has access to only the information and features they need to do their job.
• Improved user experience: The app becomes more intuitive and user-friendly by providing users with only the features and information they need.
• Scalability: As the organization grows, role-based apps can be easily updated, expanded, or added to accommodate new roles and responsibilities.
• Less training: Role-based apps can streamline training processes as users only need to be trained on the features and functions relevant to their role.
• Enhanced adoption: By providing a personalized user experience, role-based apps can increase user engagement and encourage wider adoption of the app within an organization.

Role-Based for You

We have RapidStart CRM customers who have had us build dozens of highly targeted, super slim applications for multiple roles in their organization. Each app is a unique “window” to a common Dataverse data source, so the dream of a “single source of truth” is achievable. And not just slicing and dicing our existing apps but entirely new apps with unique new data tables and common tables combined to provide users with particular roles, everything they need, and nothing they don’t.

Summary

The Role-based app capability has been around for a while now and if you have not adopted this option your organization has no doubt suffered as a result. The ROI on this effort is off the charts. Since RapidStart CRM is completely unlocked and customizable, you can build Role-based apps yourself if you have the knowledge. If not, we have options to help you here.

If you have any questions, please post them in our Free Support Forum.