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

What's a CRM?

[seebs]

For those of us who haven't eaten alphabits in a few years, what's a CRM, and why do we care?

Re:What's a CRM?

[Meatloaf Surprise]

Manages customer relations, duh

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

Re:What's a CRM?

[mean pun]

Manages customer relations, duh

You mean it sends them a Xmas card, goes to visit them from time to time, and if they are really good customers it takes them to dinner sometimes? 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.'?

Re:What's a CRM?

[Linker3000]

CRM is one of a broad range of software applications that can be purchased off the shelf, obtained through Open Source channels or implemented by a software consultancy firm that spends a lot of time with you to determine your needs, develops a draft spec, agrees a stonkingly large fee and then sends a team of developers to live with you for many months, drinking your coffee, attempting to get off with the secretaries and hacking your vending machines.

Soon, the consultancy company realises they have underestimated the complexity of your requirements and that it is going to take much longer to implement, but they demand more money and time on the basis that YOU have changed the spec. After an extended period of development, a highly-personalised software application is handed over to you and you soon discover that it works pretty much to specification but with quite a few rough edges that will be "dealt with as part of the 5-year snags process".

The system is so complex to manage that the only people who can support it are the original developers - but they are mostly working elsewhere on other projects by now or have left to become 'independent consultants' advising other customers who are having terrible problems getting their CRM system to work properly due to poor implementation.

Even though the software consultancy firm cannot support your system to your satisfaction, you are locked into a support contract that means you pay an annual fee to them for the rest of your life. Eventually you begin to abandon parts of the software "'cos it's quicker and easier to do it in a spreadsheet".

What's a customer?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Manages customer relations, duh"

Well thank God that open-source doesn't have that problem.