One of its objectives is to create a situation where users will not know where Outlook ends and CRM begins.
CRM should be a normal part of work because if it is separate, that is when it breaks down, said Brad Wilson, general manager of Microsoft CRM [If] you have to leave Outlook and do something extra, the doing something extra is where CRM breaks down.
Microsoft views simplicity as the killer issue as far as CRM is concerned, but it is not alone. One of the reasons Salesforce.com has been so successful is because it was able to offer an easy to use, easy to access application that avoided complexity.
SAP is also moving in this direction through its joint Microsoft Mendocino development project which aims to provide access to SAP processes from Microsoft’s desktop applications.
SAP is moving from a complex experience to the familiar, said Wilson. He said they tried to force uses to work inside the SAP environment but are in the process of change.
However, as Chris Boorman, VP of marketing for EMEA at Salesforce.com observes, Windows is not the only familiar environment: Users are familiar with the Windows world but at the same time they are familiar with the internet.
Competitors have been quick to condemn CRM 3.0 as Outlook with contact manager extensions but Wilson refutes this. With the addition of marketing resource management capability to the existing sales and service functionality, 3.0 is now a full suite CRM system, he said. It also features high-end capabilities such as scheduling within the service component.
The development environment has also been improved to allow for easier customization using Web services interfaces. Vertical functionality should also be easier to build because users and partners can create new types of data objects but also create relationships between them. In terms of management, users and partners can create the objects but the CRM application creates and manages the metadata.
Wilson also believes its inbuilt management information functionality is wider and deeper than that of Salesforce.com and illustrated the business value that can be gained from the Outlook aspect.
He cited a customer that analysed the hard disk of one of its salespeople for information related to a particular sale, including contact and communications contained within emails and responses, and compared the number of instances with those logged in the CRM system.
Of the 1,200 instances found on the hard disk, only 12 were logged in the CRM system. With Outlook-centric CRM 3.0, information logging and tracking can be engaged from the outset with one click.
Siebel says it is just Outlook and stuff, but just by tagging we track all in and outbound [emails] and capture hundreds of pieces of information about how the deal has gone down. It’s a huge step, said Wilson.
He also believes the sniping is an acknowledgement of the threat Microsoft CRM now represents. The level of people’s response is the level of the perceived threat, he said.
However, with a customer base of 5,500, developed over a three-year period, Microsoft has not made much of an impact on the CRM market so far although Wilson said it is growing at 100% a year and expects the trend to continue because consolidation in the market is causing customers to rethink.
Microsoft CRM still has a way to go on the development front. Although it has introduced a subscription-based licensing program which provides its partners with a more economic way of providing a hosted service the application has not been designed for a hosted environment and still uses a single rather than a multi tenant architecture.
As Wilson points out the architecture makes no difference to the end user but it does affect the price at which the service can be offered. He did point out that some organizations like local government may not buy into the shared nature of multi tenant architecture though.
Under the terms of the new subscription licensing agreement users only pay for what they actually use on a monthly basis and are not compelled to pay for an application license as well as the hosting service. UK partner Aspective has launched a hosted Microsoft CRM service on the back of the new license program, although it did offer some hosting under the old program.
While downplaying the importance of multi tenant architecture, Wilson said that the next CRM version will be multi tenant in order to facilitate lower price hosted offerings from its partners and to increase customer choice. Annette Giardina from Aspective says multi tenant architecture will facilitate the development and deployment of hosted micro vertical solutions.
Microsoft’s next CRM release, known as Titan, is slated for release in around 15 months. Major themes will be multi tenant architecture and work to leverage Office 12 which is due next year.
