Key breakthroughs within Microsoft Dynamics CRM 3.0 are role-based capabilities and a native Microsoft Office and Outlook experience designed to drive user adoption and extend CRM to a wider user base within organizations.
Describing the rationale and the benefits, Jeff Raikes, president of the Microsoft Business Division, said: We are bringing the power of CRM to information workers, enabling them to better understand their customers, be more productive and have a positive impact on their business’ bottom line.
Competitors believe that the look and feel does nothing to help business fundamentals, however, arguing that all it does it extend personal productivity tools. In truth, this latest launch is unlikely to have any major impact in the CRM market. This latest version is merely an extension to Microsoft Outlook with additional contact management, and is only the second release in three years, said Neil Morgan, VP of marketing for EMEA at Siebel Systems Inc. However, it should be acknowledged that Microsoft is playing a useful role by introducing people to the concept of CRM, but only for the smallest of businesses. As users begin to distinguish between personal productivity applications, such as those from Microsoft and the heavy weight customer management tools, which include the likes of full campaign management, field service and self-service, they realize that they need more than just a contact management system.
Chris Boorman VP of marketing for EMEA at Salesforce.com took a similar stance. It is an addition to Outlook for contact management [purposes] and packaged as CRM, he said, adding he was disappointed that Microsoft had not done more. It is more of the same, traditional software and it complexities. He said the CRM 3.0 capabilities position the applications for small companies, and that it is too little, too late.
The problem is that they are struggling with regard to innovation. Salesforce.com is on its eighteen release, nineteenth at the end of quarter, he said. Microsoft is not able to innovate for the internet like Salesforce.com and Google can. Microsoft appeals to organizations that use and are familiar with Outlook [but that does not] drive the company forward.
Microsoft offers two versions: a Professional Edition and a Small Business Edition, and stresses that several additional capabilities means the application is appealing to larger enterprise customers and global systems integrators.
Microsoft Dynamics CRM 3.0 provides a new alternative for enterprises running Microsoft Office applications, said Woody Driggs, managing director of the CRM Service Line at Accenture. For those organizations, this new offering can provide them with the familiarity, ease of use, and integration options they’ve been seeking from their CRM solution.
As far as high-end functionality is concerned, it includes event-driven workflow capabilities, reporting and analytics capabilities based on Microsoft Excel and SQL Server Reporting Services for real-time visibility into business process and customer interactions, and a configurable platform built on web services and other standard tools and technologies. UK-based early-adopter Essex Medical and Forensic Services chose Microsoft because of the flexibility it offered in relation to the company’s own changing business processes.
The other major change ushered in with the release of 3.0 is subscription-based licensing, which is being made available to Microsoft partners so they can offer a more cost-effective hosted deployment model to their customers. The decision to offer subscriptions alongside traditional licenses means partners can offer a range of deployment models.
Existing customers will be the first to access 3.0, which is immediately available in English on a worldwide basis. Dutch, French, German, and Russian versions will be available on January 1, 2006, and 17 more language versions to be released in the months following. It is available through Microsoft Volume Licensing programs with the price depending on the license program being used. The full-suite Professional Edition is priced between $622 and $880 per user and $1,244 and $1,761 per server. Full-suite Small Business Edition, which is a requirement for the Small Business Edition, is priced between $440 and $499 per user and between $528 and $599 per server.
