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Microsoft CRM 3.0: Ten Things You Need To Know.Sizing up the salient points in Microsoft CRM’s 3.0 announcement. By DAVID SIMS TMCnet CRM Alert Columnist 1. It’s still scheduled to be released at the end of this year. 2005. That’s a Microsoft PromiseTM, friends, so count on it as you would any Microsoft PromiseTM. 2. The time and effort required to integrate it with other apps, or create customized versions of the software for your particular verticals will be shortened, Redmond says. Gee… thanks, guys. a. “Partners will be able to obtain the necessary software development kit for CRM 3.0 through the Microsoft Developer Network later this year,” according to ComputerWorld Singapore [ http://www.computerworld.com.sg/ShowPage.aspx?pagetype=2&articleid=1815& 3. It’ll come in two modules, one for automating the management of direct marketing campaigns, and one managing personnel and resource scheduling. 4. Service Provider License Agreements will let hosting partners pay as they go. 5. According to Barbara Darrow [ http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/cmp/20050706/tc_cmp/165600486 ]there’s a Quick Campaign module “for sales staff who might need to devise a fast plan of action for a call.” a. The main marketing stuff is for professional marketers, Brad Wilson, general manager of Microsoft CRM says, with campaign planning and approvals. “This is more for a sales guy who finds a prospect and wants to put something together quickly, plan a golf outing and pull a list together.” 6. It’ll be more tightly integrated with Office and Outlook than Microsoft had let on before – it’ll look quite a lot like Outlook, actually. 7. A new synchronization feature will let users update only what they want. “If you’re a regional manager, you may not need all of the objects in the system to sync but just those that have to do with your region and accounts,” Wilson said. 8. It will offer a Small Business Edition “optimized for easy installations and to run with Microsoft Small Business Server 2003,” Darrow says. 9. It’ll be available as either a purchase or as a hosted application, a la salesforce.com. a. Company officials claim Microsoft currently offers hosted CRM, although careful scrutiny has failed to find any actual customers using it. b. Which means the price of hosted Microsoft CRM on places such as NaviSite, currently about $99 a month, will come down, presumably to something in salesforce.com’s $65 a month range. 10. It’ll be called 3.0, even though the current product is 1.2, which came out in December 2003 because, as Wilson said, “A lot of what our partners had asked for were things that were already in our 3.0 road map,” a. Which means yes, Microsoft really does ration out improvements and upgrades on marketing-dictated schedules instead of putting out the best technology they can at the time – “Hey, that’s cool. Save it for the 2007 upgrade.” b. But you already knew that. ----- David Sims is contributing editor for TMCnet. For more articles by David Sims, please visit: http://www.tmcnet.com/tmcnet/columnists/columnist.aspx?id=100005&nm=David%20 Sims |