Microsoft Dynamics CRM Recognized as Leader by Forrester Research and Gartner

By Rajani Baburajan, TMCnet Contributor

Microsoft has announced that the company’s Microsoft Dynamics CRM has been recognized as a Leader by two leading independent research firms, Gartner and Forrester (News - Alert) Research.

The CRM suite earned a Leader position in The Forrester Wave: CRM Suites Customer Service Solutions, Q3, 2010 (July 2010) report, while it was also recognized by Gartner (News - Alert) as a Leader in the Magic Quadrant for Sales Force Automation (July 2010) report.

Forrester evaluated the customer service strengths and weaknesses of the top CRM suites vendor products against 196 criteria organized into three high-level categories: current offering, strategy and market presence. According to Forrester, vendors in the Leader category have both a strong product and strategy.

“Microsoft (News - Alert) Dynamics CRM shines by offering customer service flexibility for large and midsized organizations,” William Band, vice president and principal analyst, and James Kobielus, senior analyst, Forrester Research (News - Alert), in the report, noted.

Forrester acknowledged that the solution supports flexible options in deployment (on-premises, on-demand and partner-hosted deployments); how to pay (license, subscribe, finance); and how to use (Outlook client, browser, SharePoint site, other interfaces).

“Microsoft Dynamics CRM provides strong support for: phone agents; call center infrastructure; agent collaboration tools; knowledge base; customer data management; analytics; email response management; architecture and platform; business process and workflow tools; integration; security; and Web 2.0 tools,” researchers noted.

Gartner's Magic Quadrant for Sales Force Automation evaluates vendors on their ability to execute and completeness of vision. The criteria for evaluation were product/service, overall viability, sales execution/pricing, customer experience and operations, and offering (product) strategy, business model, innovation and geographic strategy, respectively.

“Vendors placed in the Leaders quadrant of Gartner's Sales Force Automation Magic Quadrant demonstrate a market-defining vision of how technology can help the top sales executives achieve business objectives,” researchers at Garnter said.

Leaders have the ability to execute against that vision through products, services and demonstrated solid business results in the form of revenue and earnings, according to Gartner. They also have significant successful customer deployments in North America, EMEA and Asia/Pacific in a wide variety of vertical industries with multiple proof points above 500 users.

Microsoft Dynamics CRM was also placed among the Leaders in The Forrester Wave: CRM Suites for Midsized Organizations, Q2 2010 (June 2010), The Forrester Wave: CRM Suites for Large Organizations, Q2 2010 (June 2010) and the 2010 Magic Quadrant for CRM Customer Service Contact Centers.

“We provide a strong vision and a road map of ongoing innovation to help customers get the maximum return from their CRM investments,” Brad Wilson, general manager, Microsoft Dynamics CRM, said.

“With the upcoming release of Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011, customers will reach new levels of productivity and collaboration with a low total cost of ownership, and partners will unlock new opportunities with a single development environment for cloud-based and on-premises deployments,” Wilson added.

Microsoft is planning to release Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 in September this year, according to company’s CRM Team blog. The new CRM will deliver on “Dynamic Business” vision through the “The Power of Productivity,” giving customers familiar, intelligent and connected experiences for people inside and outside an organization, the blog said.

(source: http://sharepoint.tmcnet.com/topics/sharepoint/articles/94329-microsoft-dynamics-crm-recognized-as-leader-forrester-research.htm)