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."

What's a CRM?

[seebs (15766)]

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

Re:

[Henry 2.0 (1017212)]

Customer Relationship Management.

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[HTH NE1 (675604)]

Costs Ridiculous Money

Re:What's a CRM?

[by Anonymous Coward]

Crap Released by Microsoft

Re:What's a CRM?

[Linker3000 (626634)]

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".

Re:

[D-Cypell (446534)]

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.

As someone who spent years developing CRM products, this

Re: PLM

[emurphy42 (631808)]

Acronym Finder [acronymfinder.com] suggests that this stands for Product/Project Lifecycle Management.

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[hdparm (575302)]

Interesting question! Second part of it ('why do we care?') sounds like you had a hunch that CRM has to do something with customers :o)

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[LibertineR (591918)]

CRM = 'Consultant Revenue Massively'

CRM is the perfect way to turn that nice little 6 month engagement into a 2 year gig resulting in a new home and car for the Consultant.

First, you pitch the incredible benefits of being able to essentially share your contact list and tasks with others, but with the added coolness factor of being able to link contacts, accounts, activities, tasks and messaging inside MS Outlook, or over the Web. (yeah, I know, Outlook does this even WITHOUT CRM.)

You can tell during th

Re:

[Bacon Bits (926911)]

We're a 10-year-old engineering firm with about 50 employees. Out current contact database is 15,000 individual contacts.

CRM is when Outlook and Exchange alone aren't good enough. CRM software is a combination of an address book, calendar, and record keeping system. Basically, it lets you record all the information about every customer or potential customer you interact with, and it will then record every email, phone call, sale (won or lost), purchases, customer interests, etc. It then lets you manip

Re:

[jc42 (318812)]

Hmmm ... That was my question, too. So I read TFA. I still didn't have a clue. So I read most of the articles in this thread and a few others here. Still not much of a clue. I think it has something to do with businesses and customers and keeping data about customers so you can target them.

But somehow I don't yet think I'll be installing CRM on my home linux server.

Maybe if I understood what it was supposed to do for (to?) me ...

Re:

[seebs (15766)]

Thanks! But what's it DO?

Re:What's a CRM?

[Meatloaf Surprise (1017210)]

Manages customer relations, duh

What's a customer?

[by Anonymous Coward]

"Manages customer relations, duh"

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

Re:What's a CRM?

[mean pun (717227)]

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.'?

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[Jussi K. Kojootti (646145)]

You mean it sends them a Xmas card...

Actually, that seems to be the main purpose of many expensive CRM installations.

Not just CRM...it's MICROSOFT CRM

[WebCowboy (196209)]

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.

Re:

[marcosdumay (620877)]

Well, it usualy is used to keep the name of your clients on a database, send them those cristmas cards (the main use), run nebulous data-mining programs that send discount cards (you probably know how often they get this right), and takes money apart of your boss.

Now, this one is designed by Microsoft... So, it may very well be usable for `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?

[SeaFox (739806)]

I thought it was Cranial Rights Management. A new way to keep you from enjoying the portions of copyrighted music you remember in your head.

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[h2g2bob (948006)]

Or as the FSF calls it, Cranial Restrictions Management.

Didn't The Kids in the Hall come up with that?

[HTH NE1 (675604)]

Aaah! It's crushing my head! It's crushing my head!

Re:What's a CRM?

[Henry 2.0 (1017212)]

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 [wikipedia.org]

Re:What's a CRM?

[by Anonymous Coward]

Ok, that sounds great ... but what does it DO?

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[GhaleonStrife (916215)]

I think it came before DRM.

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[$pearhead (1021201)]

I think it came before DRM

Yeah and first came ARM. However, all that crap is really old compared to the new and exciting E(rr)R(h)M!

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[by Anonymous Coward]

If the rest of this thread didn't tip you off, it's an overloaded term that means fuck-all to anybody except people responsible for buying and selling software. CRM platforms tend to do whatever the squadron of consultants who set them up tell them to, and tend to be enormous monstrosities to that end.

Think of the suite of applications you or your employer run to keep the business going. Now, imagine that those things were all hooked into an enormous, proprietary back-end (if you're running Windows, you're

Re:

[eggoeater (704775)]

That's mostly correct except the nobody-really-needs-it part.
CRMs are huge in call centers.
I work for a large US bank as a call center programmer.
CRMs are great for call centers for a variety of reasons; mainly they help the agent better service the customer and reduce AHT (Average Handling Time).
They are usually built to provide interfaces to a number of different legacy systems, so an agent doesn't have to keep switching applications in order to service or set up an account.

The CRM we use is home-

Re:

[Hatta (162192)]

That's mostly correct except the nobody-really-needs-it part.
CRMs are huge in call centers.

Nobody really needs call centers either.

Re:

[CastrTroy (595695)]

What about the Open Source CRM Systems [sugarcrm.com]?

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[Chas (5144)]

"If the rest of this thread didn't tip you off, it's an overloaded term that means fuck-all to anybody except people responsible for buying and selling software."

Actually, it's useful for selling more than software. Pretty much anyone involved in sales (of any sort) can benefit from CRM solutions.

"CRM platforms tend to do whatever the squadron of consultants who set them up tell them to"

True, but a decent vendor (and believe it or not there actually are a couple) tells it to do what the customer wants it t

What's a CRM? Basically a ticket management system

[Colin Smith (2679)]

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.
 

Re:

[LibertineR (591918)]

What does it do?

Everything that Outlook does, but without the learning curve, since it comes with a team of consultants to show you how to assign all your tasks to the flunkies below you.

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[AuMatar (183847)]

So is toilet cleaning. But I don't care about that industry either.

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[Dunbal (464142)]

So is toilet cleaning. But I don't care about that industry either.

      Let me guess, you own a gas station?

Re:

[Godji (957148)]

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).

Re:Wikipedia says:

[cyxxon (773198)]

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.

Good for web apps?

[Henry 2.0 (1017212)]

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? :)

and after *that*...

[by Anonymous Coward]

"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!

with Microsoft CRM

[oohshiny (998054)]

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.)

Typical CRM

[Psychotria (953670)]

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: ....

Re:

[just_another_sean (919159)]

Adding an NVidia card to my Shuttle to replace the i810 graphics *did* cause me to have to reactivate my MSDN copy of XP.

What bothered me more was a time when I disabled my network card to stop the netbios chattering while I was playing a game. I finished playing, shut down the machine and went to bed. When I tried to boot up the next day I was greeted with the activation message. Now, when it happened with my video card I was able to activate over the internet. Stupidly because my network card was installe

"The whole world is our beta tester."

[Futurepower(R) (558542)]

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.

Beta Testing

[LlamaDragon (97577)]

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.

Try vTigerCRM

[DG (989)]

Open Source, php/Apache/mySQL based, not perfect but way better than any of the offerings from the Borg.

DG

Wait, you moved OFF heat to a CRM?

[Chas (5144)]

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?

Re:

[SnprBoB86 (576143)]

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!

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[pembo13 (770295)]

I guess that's why the OLPC guys decide to not let it eat screen space by default.

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[Jugalator (259273)]

I now typed in www.microsoft.com/unix and got this

An error occurred on the server when processing the URL. Please contact the system administrator.

I wonder if I crashed something. :-S

stop making things up

[oohshiny (998054)]

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).

Re:

[quick_dry_3 (112334)]

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