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Microsoft Boosts CRM Solution To 3.0
At its conferences in Minneapolis and the Netherlands, Microsoft moved its CRM solution from 1.2 forward to 3.0.
Microsoft plans to make the familiar look and feel of its widely used Office and Outlook applications a significant part of the next version of its customer relationship management package. Version 3.0 will be available to its current 1.2 users by the end of 2005.
For others considering a change from Siebel, Salesforce.com, or even Oracle, CRM 3.0 will be widely available in 2006.
The Redmond-based software and game console company says its suite will offer a familiar look-and-feel on top of extendible reporting and data integration options. Interfaces for both the web client and the Outlook client have been redesigned to offer a more expected appearance to users.
One option will be the capability to pull data directly from CRM 3.0 into Excel. The spreadsheet program gives users access to the customized charting and table creation that many Excel users consider a workplace necessity.
A number of prebuilt reports will be included in CRM 3.0, for quick analysis of trends and issues. That analysis can lead a savvy Excel user to draw on the CRM data itself for further review and report generation.
Mobility has received attention from the CRM 3.0 team, which has provided a new high-performance synchronization engine for laptop users. With many companies' rainmakers being personnel who live and work on the road continuously, they have to be able to sync reliably and quickly with their home offices.
CRM 3.0 finds a place on the mobile handset as well, with an improved Windows Mobile client being delivered as part of the new solution.
Microsoft's CRM engineers have tried to anticipate and resolve repetitive tasks through automating process. A marketing automation module will be available to handle the management of campaigns, lists, marketing resource, and closed-loop responses.
A new module focuses on handling the complexities of service scheduling. When specific people or resources must be allocated within an enterprise, bottlenecks and confusion can cause service to be undelivered in a timely fashion.
This new module automates the management of those particular people and skills, to ensure that requests for their services don't overlap with each other. Microsoft claims its modules will be configurable and workflow-driven.
"Every business - whether large or small - needs a fast, flexible and affordable way to manage and grow their relationships with current and prospective customers," said Brad Wilson, general manager of Microsoft CRM.
To that end, Microsoft will offer CRM 3.0 as a subscription-based hosted service in addition to the usual site-based installation. While Microsoft has been tweaking its installation process to assess over a hundred system and network settings, there will be smaller firms that will prefer not to have to manage the service themselves.
And, if a small business grows into a large enterprise, it will be able to change its deployment model from hosted to site-based, or even vice-versa if it so chooses. Currently, Microsoft says more than 4,000 businesses globally use its CRM product.
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David Utter
