The relatively newly-minted Microsoft Gold Partner - as of January of this year - announced on Friday that it has begun offering Microsof Dynamics CRM 4.0 hosting to provide customers with an integrated on-demand customer relationship management solution.
With prices ranging as diverse as $99 for small business solutions, $495 per month for corporate and $4,595 per month for enterprise offerings, the company is seeking to serve a wide range of CRM needs with the solution.
Frontpages provides a pretty wide range of managed and hosted services, including a fairly extensive selection of Microsoft-developed products. It offers SharePoint, Exchange, Project, PerformancePoint, Office Communications Server and SQL, along with dedicated server hosting.
In early May, the company announced that it had added a set of additional management services designed to provide its dedicated customers with a more managed solution.
And in late April, the company announced it had launched a shared hosting solution for Microsoft Office SharePoint Server.
While some hosted Microsoft solutions, such as Exchange, are generally accepted to be the leading products in their respective markets, the company's CRM solution is one of a handful of products competing for share of a more established market. The decision to use Microsoft's solution is likely based more on the company's relationship with Microsoft, and the advantages that holds, than the product's position in the CRM market.
This, more than likely, is an important part of Microsoft's strategy in building appreciation for the CRM product. In its announcement, Frontpages says the solution integrates with Microsoft Office and Outlook to improve business processes for sales and marketing, and customer services teams.
"Our hosted CRM offerings allow customers to begin utilizing the system quicker and at a lower cost than in-house solutions," says Rob LaMear, Frontpages president, in the company's announcement.
