Executive Summary

For over 75 years, Connecticut-based Dexmet Corporation has been working closely with customers—including wellknown brands including Boeing and Airbus—to engineer and manufacture custom precision expanded metals. Having recently implemented Microsoft Dynamics 365 to help them manage data and automate processes in a scalable, cloud-based environment, they discovered that their CRM was not accommodating the space they needed to run email and attachments, leading to increasing storage costs.

Exceeding Storage Limits, Increasing Costs

When Dexmet started running email through their Microsoft Dynamics 365 CRM, they didn’t foresee storage as an issue. Over time, they began to see their storage costs rise, a common challenge companies face as the number and size of emails they send—particularly those with large attachments—increase.

Not only did their CRM app run out of space, but Microsoft’s CRM storage costs jumped from $5 per gigabyte (GB) to $45 per GB. These additional storage costs became a more significant pain point as Dexmet calculated annual costs into the thousands. They needed a storage solution that would allow users to maintain their email workflows while making better use of budget resources.

Freeing Up Space for a Growing Business

MIBAR technicians identified the opportunity to take advantage of Microsoft Flow, a standard integration tool that allows customers to create and automate workflows and tasks across multiple applications and services. By using Flow to seamlessly connect Dexmet’s CRM tool with SharePoint (another standard Microsoft app with a more affordable storage pricing structure), they essentially re-routed the email workflow to “send and store” in a SharePoint library natively embedded within the CRM email, instead of using CRM storage.

A key advantage to this solution is that it enables Dexmet to continue viewing email attachments in each customer account. While attachments are no longer stored in the CRM, a “dummy” attachment is created and indicated by a paper clip icon in the email record visible through the CRM. The only change to the user experience is the way they access attachments to include in emails—with the new workflow, they navigate to a different location in CRM to access and download their email attachments.

Reducing Costs with a More Efficiently Configured Workflow

Dexmet is able to access a view in their Microsoft Dynamics CRM dashboard that shows how much storage they see over time. After MIBAR’s routine finished processing their historical data, Dexmet’s overall usage went from a peak of 27,858 MB to 16,293 MB, and their production environment went from 14,612 MB to 7,524 MB. The result is a close to 50% savings in storage costs.

Looking to save money on your Microsoft Dynamics 365 CRM storage costs?

We can help! The MIBAR experts can help you leverage Microsoft Flow to create and automate workflows and tasks across multiple applications and services. Click here to schedule a free consultation, or give us a call at (212) 869-9300.