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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."
For those of us who haven't eaten alphabits in a few years, what's a CRM, and why do we care?
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At least in the instance of hosted applications, it's an opportunity for online application vendors to rub their shoulders with the huge vendors such as microsoft.
:)
We've already begun using online spreadsheet tools to replace (almost) a few office applications, but the scope for apps like a centralised CRM database rooted in a b2b myspace style mashup is on the cards now - should be very interesting to see who gets there first.
me first me first!
erm hmmm... Web 3.0 anyone?
"Manages customer relations, duh"
Well thank God that open-source doesn't have that problem.
On a hunch, I typed this into my address bar:
microsoft.com/crm
I followed the handy "Product Information" link and then the even more handy "See it: View the online demos" links.
Wow, I didn't even have to use Google. That's the first time I have used the address bar in weeks!
http://brandonbloom.name
"which uses a single code base to support on-premise and software-as-a-service deployments"
And after that, they're going to leverage their synergies!
But as Novell faces doom thanks to their "partner" when GPL3 comes
The only effect the GPL3 has on Novell is that it makes Microsoft's agreement not to sue meaningless for GPL3 software. Except for the hysterics from people like you, Novell is legally no worse off than they were before the agreement (well, actually, they are $200M+ richer).
With Microsoft CRM, your customer relations can be as good as Microsoft's.
(Note: the monopoly CRM module, including customer abuse and forced upgrades, costs extra.)
In other words, a marketing term. That is, it means nothing. :)
I also think the abbreviation means concent rights management (the same as DRM), though I don't think TFA is about that (didn't read it).
You know all those commercials narrated by William H. Macy (a.k.a. The Shoveler), that all end in the phrase: "Software for the People-Ready Business" ?
Those are about Microsoft's CRM.
The last version was 3.0 and that was released in 2006. Being that it's a web product it's a lot easier for them to push out versions as needed, their are less dependencies compared to what you would get with a traditional product.
Microsoft CRM (Customer relationship management). Interesting idea. WGA. Deciding what can and cannot be played/viewed. Having a great help-desk that only ever gets used because people buy a new video card and need to reactivate Windows. In fact, I didn't even know that Microsoft had customer relationships (apart from, we give you a piece of crappy software and you pay us to try and use it). Last time I was involved in Microsoft CRM, it went something like this:
....
Me: Hi. I just bought a new video card and now Windows is asking me to reactivate.
MS: Thanks for calling Microsoft. How can we help?
Me: I just bought a new video card and now Windows is asking me to reactivate. How do I do this?
MS: Thanks for calling Microsoft. Your call is important to us. All our operators are busy at the moment. Please hold the line. **Microsoft jingle plays**
MS Rep: Thanks for calling Microsoft. How can I serve you today?
Me: Err... I need to reactivate Windows
MS Rep: How many computers do you currently have Windows installed on?
Me: None, it's broken
MS Rep: The Microsoft(TM)(R)(C)(Patent Pending) XP Operating System is for use on one computer only. Because your copy is not installed on a computer, you are in violation of the EULA subclause 287.111, where it clearly says that you must install Windows (TM) (C) (Patent Pending) on ONE computer only.
Me: Yes, I am trying to install it on this computer
MS Rep: You cannot install it on that computer because you are in violation of the EULA by not having it installed on any computer at all
Me:
I guess that's why the OLPC guys decide to not let it eat screen space by default.
"Thanks for all the money you paid to us. We've used it to buy off ISO among other things" -Microsoft
Nah, it's not a marketing term, and not something even remotely connected to DRM. I am a CRM consultant (though not dealing with Microsoft's implementation, but rather SAP). Among the various aspects of business software, CRM is the part that helps a company get new contracts and keep good relations to their old customers. It is indeed (among others things) responsible for sending out Xmas cards, but also for sending new offers to old customers. You can build web shops for B2B and B2C with it, and you can track which of your customers are how "valuable" (i.e. purchase what and how much of it) and are the best targets for new campaigns for new products. This is a booming industry, my company (Germany, ~170 consultants) is currently looking for CRM consultants because everybody and their mother is realizing they need better ways to manage their customers then simply keeping them as debitors in their Enterprise Resource Planning system or as contacts in an Outlook system.
The last time Microsoft tested CRM software, some Microsoft contractor called and thought our company was in New Jersey; that was in error by thousands of miles. Apparently Microsoft has a strict rule: Never release a first version that actually works well.
I don't think its a web based app.
At our company, we're using the Dynamics NAV (Formerly known as Navision) application for some financials and approvals. Its a lousy application. Bug ridden, hopelessly unsuitable for its purpose.
Whats most ridiculous is that its so heavy on network utilisation, that its inpractical to use it in a wide network (ie. we're using around offices in London, Paris, Amsterdam, etc.). So the solution is that you have to use terminal services to connect to our head offices here in London to use the apps. A 100meg network is the bare minimum required for it.
If the rest of the Dynamics family is anything like the Navision application, then the whole venture deserves to crash and burn in spectacular fashion.
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.
Deleted
My company has been "beta testing" this fancy new CRM business for nearly a year. We've moved our customer info out of the old AS/400 and we've moved our help desk from Heat to CRM to track call tickets, projects, etc. I can't say it's been a smooth transition, but that may be due to the fact that the consultant working with us isn't the best. (I won't get into that much but we spent hours in "training" while he attempted to figure out what he was trying to train us.) On the bright side, because we got in so early, I'm told we've had a lot of input into what goes into the program.
There are two sides to this CRM program that I can see. The first is how well it actually manages customer relationships. The second is more technical. As far as the first thing goes, it manages information pretty well (I'm no sales person, but it's pretty straight forward and easy to use). The technical aspect, though, is troubling.
Due to our size, we don't use a hosted solution, we run our own server in house. There's a plugin for Outlook that gives access to the system, or you can use your favorite MS browser to access the system if you don't have Outlook, or if you want it to work faster and not drag your system down. The whole thing is just web based forms. There are two separate clients for Outlook. The "laptop version" and the "desktop version."
The desktop version will do three things - 1. Allow you to access the CRM system. 2. Make starting and closing Outlook an excruciatingly long process. 3. Prevent your computer from shutting down unless you manually close Outlook, with no helpful error/warning messages. It just sits with outlook open, and you can tell it to shutdown over and over.
The laptop version has all the "features" of the desktop version, but it installs a personal version of SQL Server so you can access customer info when you're offline. This has the added benefit of being an incredible memory hog. When I first tried it I only had 512 megabytes of memory, and it was more than happy to use 100-200 for the Outlook/CRM Combo even when I wasn't offline. It was so bad I requested extra memory, but they told me to quit using the laptop version (I don't need all that customer info at my fingertips anyway).
Just recently we discovered that you can aim IE (but not Firefox...go figure) at the server and access the entire system that way without bringing Outlook to it's knees. This has the added benefit of loading the pages more quickly, however there is always lag from when you click on an item to when it creates the new window, to when it puts all the controls on the new window. Sometimes it's long enough to be frustrating, but other times it's just long enough to remind you it's a browser app. If they could make it snappy so it ran more like a local app, that would be a big improvement, but I haven't seen it yet.
Wow, this got long... So in conclusion, with my personal experience the system works, and probably looks great on paper, but suffers from bugs and technical issues more than design flaws. That's not to say it's designed perfectly, but I would go so far as to say it's designed reasonably well. But I'm in the technical department, so I have limited contact with it. Our sales people might have differing opinions.
Open Source, php/Apache/mySQL based, not perfect but way better than any of the offerings from the Borg.
DG
Want to learn about race cars? Read my Book
"I have little confidence in a product which is not written in lean-mean native C++ based code." Silly.
I now typed in www.microsoft.com/unix and got this
:-S
An error occurred on the server when processing the URL. Please contact the system administrator.
I wonder if I crashed something.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
you don't seem to be cursing and spitting as you say 'Microsoft CRM' *spit*, you mustn't have had the joy of trying to get CRM and Great Plains talking nicely via the official CRM-Great Plains integration. On the off chance that you navigated through the undocumented gotchas about how the site could be setup, how long server names could be, and whether you'd made a slight customisation without sacrificing the appropriate number of children - you then had the fun of it working for the first five transactions and then - kaput.
My favourite feature is being able to add fields, but never remove them.
Or is it more like the kind of software that walks into their shop and says `Really nice place you have here, pity if it would burn, eh? Luigi here is really disappointed with your negative attitude to us.'
Well, that's the way Microsoft has managed its partnerships with third party software developers for years. Perhaps they have established their Dynamics CRM solution to leverage that expertise.
Acronym Finder suggests that this stands for Product/Project Lifecycle Management.
Heh, that's my kind of funny. It's not even their 404 "We're sorry" page, but a 500-level internal server error. Seems something is trying to handle it. adding /default.asp does same thing... But
responds with an old looking "page not found" page. Funny old cruft.
For trouble-ticketing?
OMFG. If you're doing trouble-ticketing, Heat just IS the app for you to be using.
Yeah, there's a couple add-ons for various CRM programs that do some trouble-ticketing, but they're sorta poor-mans helpdesk.
Question, which CRM app are you using?
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Aaah! It's crushing my head! It's crushing my head!
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
Product is the P you're looking for.
yay for SAP! I never use it directly but it controls pretty much everything I do in my support job. One thing I'd like to know is why on earth I get mails saying they have to take it offline every single weekend - does it need that much maintenance? Why god, why?
Microsoft's web guys are on top of things:
/. sent enough people trying to view microsoft.com/unix that some trigger was raised on the high number of requests for a particular page which didn't exist.
Try http://www.microsoft.com/unix/123 again now and you get some boilerplate text with links to migrating to Windows, interopability, etc.
I'd assume that
http://brandonbloom.name
Uhm, no, it doesn't need that much or kind of maintenance. Imagine all the big companies, they cannot afford downtime for a whole weekend, every week! They even use scheduling to offload automated heavy work processes to the night and the weekend, and they need the systems up for this. So it must be something else in your place... SAP is kind of maintenance friendly (if you got it running they way you want it, to get it there you have to jump through hoops more often than not).