Microsoft Offers Peek At Next-Gen CRM

4foot10 writes "As reported by VARBusiness.com, Microsoft's next release of its Dynamics CRM application, code-named 'Titan', is moving a little closer to completion. Today, the vendor is making the new software, which uses a single code base to support on-premise and software-as-a-service deployments, available to several hundred business partners for testing, giving them an early start on developing complementary solutions."

Comments

Re:What's a CRM?

[Henry 2.0]

Customer Relationship Management.

Re:What's a CRM?

[Henry 2.0]

From Wikipedia

Customer relationship management (CRM) is a broad term that covers concepts used by companies to manage their relationships with customers, including the capture, storage and analysis of customer information.

There are three aspects of CRM which can each be implemented in isolation from each other:

• Operational CRM- automation or support of customer processes that include a company's sales or service representative
• Collaborative CRM- direct communication with customers that does not include a company's sales or service representative ("self service")
• Analytical CRM- analysis of customer data for a broad range of purposes

Full Article

What's a CRM? Basically a ticket management system

[Colin Smith]

If you work in support you probably use something almost identical already. You know; RT, OTRS, Bugzilla, Remedy.

A CRM usually has a couple of add ons though. A link to a comprehensive database of customers which records all interactions with them via email, telephone, snail mail etc so that marketing can look for purchase preferences to send them junk mail and customer services can make sure customers are happy rather than annoyed.

The other thing is usually a workflow add on (many ticket systems already have this) so that you can take a customer request through various business processes, be that a sale, a problem resolution, whatever. It makes sure that they eventually get through to the end without dropping through the cracks.

There's various other features depending on the vendor but you can pretty much roll your own CRM system using some of the open source ticket management systems, they just need a little tweaking.