Friday, November 28, 2008

How Microsoft plans to make its mark in CRM

Microsoft Dynamics CRM has become a key product for the company, according to CRM division general manager Brad Wilson--and it's an area the software maker plans to invest in further.

According to Wilson, when Microsoft earlier this year committed itself to investing $1 billion annually in the construction of new data centers to support the Microsoft Live portfolio of on-demand software, some of that sum--he declined to specify how much--was earmarked for customer relationship management.

Earlier this month, CNET News sister site ZDNet UK spoke to Wilson to find out how he intends to make that CRM investment and whether he thinks it will be sufficient to beat on-demand CRM leader Salesforce.com on its own turf. Wilson made it plain that, despite the SME (small and medium enterprise) bias that Microsoft CRM may have acquired, it is equally aimed at the enterprise.

Q: Microsoft has been in CRM for some time, but just how long?
Wilson: We've been in the CRM market for five and a half years, and have more than 16,000 CRM customers and more than 750,000 users.

Microsoft is investing more annually on data centers than the complete revenue of all the on-demand players--$1 billion annually. As a company, we are investing heavily.

How is that customer base made up?
Wilson: More than half of the business is international--outside the U.S.--and, although we started out as an organization focused mainly on the small and medium-sized businesses, more than half of our revenue now comes from large enterprises.

Salesforce.com is very popular, so how do you compete with it?
Wilson: We do and we have people who switch from Salesforce.com fairly routinely. But there are a number of companies that compete in this space and everyone wins some and everyone loses some.

What I like about our strategy is that Salesforce.com has a single operating model, which is that you rent it from them forever. Our software comes with a choice of either having an on-demand subscription offering or buying the software. If you talk to analysts today, they will tell you that, of all the CRM in use throughout the world, probably about 90 percent is deployed on the premises.

We want to give our customers the choice. Whether you want to go on-premises or to a cloud-based offering, the choice is yours.

Does this mean you don't find the cloud particularly valid?
Wilson: It is not so much that--and this is a somewhat controversial view--but I don't really care. I have an agnostic model: if you want to buy the CRM software, great; if you want to go ahead with on-demand, that's also great.

For us, it is a single codebase. It's literally the same software running.

There is no difference between on-premise or on the network. The only difference is how long your network cable is. I think sometimes people get too caught up in it. The world is not really binary.

What new products are coming up?
Wilson: About 11 months ago, we shipped our CRM 4.0, which is a fully multi-tenanted system that you can deploy from outside the cloud.

What we announced (earlier this month) is a new set of accelerators for CRM 4.0 (on sale December 1). These are extensions to the core system so that, when you add them to CRM 4.0, they offer capabilities such as e-service for handling Web cases. This lets customers submit cases online and check things such as status very easily.

What do you mean exactly by "cases"?
Wilson: Well, if you have a broken fridge and you want to contact the retailer or manufacturer, then you can go to the Web site and that will submit information that will flow into the CRM system and then trigger a workflow.

So e-service is really that Web interface to customer services, as opposed to the call center. What we provide is the data and the workflow to support e-service scenarios.

Another one is extended sales forecasting, which is a way to lock and manage forecasts that goes deeper than the usual sales-automation facilities.

There are new analytics in business intelligence; sales methodologies. And then there is enterprise search integration through SharePoint.

But are these new?
Wilson: We talked about them at our partner conference back in July in Houston but...we haven't had a customer launch before (this month).

So presumably these are intended to deal with the view that Microsoft has not been in the CRM market very long and that, to understand and execute sophisticated CRM, you need a specialist supplier?
Wilson: The wildly less popular ones? The ones that have had staggering adoption problems over the past 10 years? I think there is really a philosophical difference (between Microsoft and those suppliers). We are not going to give you a gigantic list of features. You know how you want to run your business.

So, for us, user adoption is key. If they (the users) are not going to use the system, you are pretty much guaranteed a failed deployment.

We give you enough flexibility so that you can run the system how you want to. So I find we will beat a classic offering from your CRM vendors on end-user adoption and platform flexibility. Those factors will far outweigh the fact that other people have more prebuilt stuff.

We went into a sales opportunity against a classic CRM vendor and measured its software. Out of the box, its software had only a 7 percent fit (only 7 percent of the software could be run without modification).

When you think about it, it is very difficult to sit in Palo Alto...and design something that is going to fit any business--a system that will work with every business in the world, whether it is in Turkey or South Africa. So the key now is flexibility. How easy is it to add the stuff we need?

I think the old model of 10 years ago, where you built a system that had a big slab of stuff that you had to adopt, has gone.

At the same time, we will still bring out our accelerators with pre-packaged software, and more and more of them. But we release them as open source. The idea is that we just put this stuff out there and let people use it. And, if our partners use it, all the better.

So are these products free?
Wilson: Yes.

But you are charging people for the software.
Wilson: You have to buy the core license but, once you have bought it, we are not going to try and nickel and dime people for bits of process and functionality. We don't believe in that.

We are taking the approach of wanting to make CRM much more affordable. Affordable in terms of TCO (total cost of ownership).

Part of that is in the core. We think we've done a pretty good job there and we keep adding pieces of incremental value through the accelerators. Even in the on-demand space, we want to go in and make it more affordable. CRM in on-demand tends to be relatively overpriced. So we want to make that price come down.

How do you charge? It is on a license basis?
Wilson: We have a server price and a user price--what we call a server license and a client-access license. The server price is nominal, relatively low and doesn't tend to go up. The primary driver of price is how many people use it.

Colin Barker of ZDNet UK reported from London.

Monday, November 24, 2008

Energizer says Microsoft's a great host

One might think that as a CIO, it would be tough to have someone else running all of your desktops and many of your servers.

Not so, says Randy Benz, CIO of Energizer. For more than three years, Energizer has handed off much of those duties to Microsoft. And he'd be fine with Microsoft running just about everything, save perhaps for the company's iconic battery-powered bunny.

"If I never run another server in there for the rest of my life, I'm as happy as can be," Benz said over lunch last week following the launch of Microsoft Online, essentially the company's effort to turn the Energizer experiment into a business.

Initially, Microsoft is offering to host only a few of its server products--Exchange and SharePoint, although over time businesses will gain the option to run most of Microsoft server products as a service running from inside the software maker's data centers.

So, one might reasonably ask what Benz and his team are doing if they aren't running all the servers and managing desktops?

For one thing, his group now offers a much broader range of computer training for Energizer workers. Beyond just teaching how to use specific products, Benz said Energizer now has classes for different types of workers focused on their particular role. One recent creation is a specific program just for road warriors.

"It cuts across products," Benz said.

Of course, businesses that don't want to handle the more mundane IT tasks have had other options for a while, such as more conventional outsourcing in which a third-party company comes in and handles things like help desk and server management.

The problem, Benz said, is it typically doesn't save much money. Any efficiencies the outsourcer gets because of its expertise are offset by its profit margins.

By having Microsoft run its software from its own data centers, though, Benz figures that it will have enough scale to actually be more cost effective.

Not everything that Microsoft has been doing with Energizer is going to be offered broadly. But, Benz said, that has more to do with the fact that some of the things aren't good businesses for Microsoft, as opposed to the fact they didn't work out for Energizer.

"There's nothing we've done that I'm disappointed in," he said. Rather, he is looking to what he can hand over next. The two companies recently added a hosted business intelligence offering, something that isn't yet part of the services Microsoft is offering broadly.

Benz also knows the managed service route isn't for all customers. Even though it resembles outsourcing, he said it is actually more suited to customers that want to be on the cutting edge. Having Microsoft manage their software means that Energizer is always running the latest versions, for better or worse.
,p> "This has to be targeted at people that want to keep up," he said. "The reason we got into services arena is to avail (ourselves) of newer stuff."

One of the areas the company is looking at keenly, Benz said, is Microsoft's plan to offer Web-based versions of Office applications, the company licenses the full version of Office for every PC, but limits the number of PCs it gives out accordingly. Having a lower cost Web-only option for workers that only need light editing abilities might mean more workers get access to technology

"It may be a breakeven for us but we are reaching more of our people more appropriately," he said. "We'll revisit it when the products are out."

Microsoft has said it will have technology preview versions of the Office apps will be available later this year, but hasn't said when the product will be formally released or when the business version might be available. For consumers, the Office Web apps will be part of Office Live, while businesses will be able to provide access as part of Microsoft's SharePoint server software.

Source:news.cnet.com

Wednesday, November 19, 2008

Microsoft Readies Dynamics NAV 2009 Apps For Midmarket

Microsoft unveiled Dynamics NAV 2009 Wednesday, a long-awaited upgrade of one of the vendor's key midmarket ERP application suites, and will begin shipping the product on Dec. 1.

Kirill Tatarinov, who as corporate vice president of Microsoft Business Solutions manages the vendor's Dynamics application lines, made the announcement in a keynote speech this morning at the Convergence 2008 Copenhagen conference in Denmark.

Topping the list of enhancements in Dynamics NAV 2009 is a set of tools and data access capabilities called "personalized role centers" tailored toward workers and managers in 21 job functions such as finance, purchasing, sales and human resource management. Microsoft has been adding such capabilities to its other ERP application suites, including Dynamics AX that began shipping in June, and Dynamics CRM 4.0 that was released late last year.

One of the biggest challenges faced by customers using ERP systems is how to get started using the right functionality in the applications, said Scott Brennan, managing consultant with Sikich, an Aurora, Ill.-based solution provider and Dynamics NAV reseller. "With the release of NAV 2009 and its new role-tailored client, we finally have a great answer for that challenge," he said in an e-mail interview. Those capabilities allow users to focus on the 20 percent of the application's functionality that they need to do their job and push the rest into the background, he said.

For the first time, Dynamics NAV 2009 fully supports Microsoft's .Net Web services architecture, a move that will make it easier for partners to integrate the software with their own applications and install it into customer IT environments, said Chris Caren, general manager of Microsoft Dynamics marketing and product management.

The software is fully integrated with Microsoft's SQL Server database, allowing users to use the built-in reporting and analysis capabilities to drill deeper into the data. It also works with Microsoft's Office SharePoint Server and Office Communications Server.

"One of the big topics in our industry these days is business intelligence," Brennan said. "Our customers want to be able to see certain business metrics without spending hours digging through a database or ERP system for those answers. NAV 2009 delivers on this concept and can incorporate those kinds of metrics into [their] daily ERP user experience."

Dynamics NAV is targeted at midsize businesses with between 50 and 1,000 employees and Caren said the vendor is particularly focusing on customers in retail, manufacturing, distribution, public sector and professional services markets. The applications compete with ERP software fromOracle, Sage and SAP.

Microsoft positions the software as a horizontal platform, leaving it to the approximately 2,000 resellers and solution providers that work with Dynamics NAV to customize it and develop applications for vertical markets. "We see a big demand for this new release, along with a big change in the user experience," Brennan said.

Thursday, November 13, 2008

Salesforce.com Customers Crave Application Leadership

Salesforce.com opened the second day of its annual conference with even more splash as it focused on its applications for business. Earlier this week I highlighted the energy that salesforce.com is bringing to cloud computing. Now let's examine the company's applications strategy. Salesforce.com's focus on managing business information, sharing applications and providing a platform for building applications was highlighted as the key emphasis. The challenge for the company is how much it can invest to lead customers with innovations in applications, as opposed to technology infrastructure in the platform. Salesforce.com asserted it is doubling down on CRM with R&D investments in 2008 compared to 2007, but now it will be up to customers to set their R&D priorities for their business.

The keynote highlighted the latest salesforce.com release called Winter '09 which is the 27th release in nine years, and they are excited about the technology accolades they are getting. But will business be as excited? In the marketing department, they have added Google adwords support, email templates, site landing pages, campaign hierarchy support and influence, and analytics snapshots. The demonstrations provided some insight to handling landing pages, which provide the Web analytics to then be able to manage influence across campaigns providing the basics of lead nurturing. Some of these capabilities are already being delivered by partners like Marketo and MarketBright, which automate other elements of this process and will need to compete against their partner as they advance their efforts.

For the sales department, salesforce.com has added Apple iPhone support along with mobile reports and dashboards to view information and visualize specific metrics like quota and progress to targets. The company has also added opportunity splitting, where you can assign multiple sales people to an opportunity for quota credit and collaboration. In addition, it has built in scheduling capabilities to deliver reports and content. The company also brought forward content management for supporting CRM, which can provide the basics needs of sales organizations in accessing and sharing content. Salesforce.com has focused on the sales-to-prospect interaction and ease of sharing information required to help them understand how to do business together. Salesforce.com also brought forward the ability to link up companies to interact and support business-to-business collaboration around information. In the customer service area Salesforce.com recently acquired a company called Instranet, which gives salesforce.com knowledge to simplify the quick access to information needed by customers, including support for customer service teams. All of this will help improve the productivity of sales organizations for many tasks at the individual level.

Salesforce.com states it supports the complete front office business processes for CRM but it's unclear which organizations they are modeling after. What was interesting was talking to executives from many different customer organizations at the event who were looking for leadership on how to help them manage and operate sales, and gain easy access to information and data within applications — from reporting and analytics to understanding how to best interact and optimize customer relationships. This is where more clarity is needed, as many organizations need to address specific sales activities and processes, like forecasting, analytics, coaching, reporting, pipeline management, compensation, and rewards, all of which are supported across a broad spectrum of salesforce.com partners. For many organizations, the ultimate blueprint for sales management and sales operations is not clear, let alone the costs to bring it to a reality. Ventana Research recently built a blueprint for sales to ensure that it is clear and easy to understand what is needed to automate and drive sales effectiveness and eliminate older applications or spreadsheets that hamper efforts.

In the expanding and increasingly important real of analytics and business intelligence (BI) for CRM, salesforce.com is desperately working to catch up to efforts at Oracle and others. In the keynote, on the exhibit floor and at executive sessions with industry analysts, salesforce.com made it clear that they are focused on this piece of their business. Though this will encroach on partners like Business Objects an SAP company and PivotLink, who were at the event, customers were vocal in detailing their issues and offering their opinions at the conference. Salesforce.com will need to build credibility on analytics and BI as the efforts over the last three years have fallen short of customer's expectations and have increased skepticism.

Highlighting the alternative approach to Microsoft, Google and its enterprise leader Dave Girouard demonstrated Google electronic mail, documents, spreadsheet, instant messaging, calendaring and analytics, which are now deployed among 10 million business users, with 3,000 new customers per day and 5,000 shared salesforce.com customers. Google finally has improved their service level agreement and compliance with SAS 70 Type II certification, which is a first step to being an enterprise provider. It is amazing that they took this long to add this support, as information security and privacy is one of the largest concerns in engaging with Google.

Of course the core competition in CRM is Oracle and SAP, who are not making great inroads to delivering CRM or SFA in a software-as-a-service model or to participating successfully in the cloud computing efforts. Microsoft's recently announced Windows Azure and its Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online are not yet ready for primetime either, and Microsoft is not focused on working across the ecosystem of solution providers and Internet services. So for now, salesforce.com is seriously ahead with little competition in their platform and specific CRM applications that are available in an on-demand approach.

Michael Dell was the highlighted keynote at the conference and provided inspiration on a great American success story and significant technology innovations. Salesforce.com used Dell as the major customer reference to validate their efforts from sales operations to channel sales. It's a good thing they stopped there, as most small business know how difficult it is work with Dell after buying the technology. The company has a significant disconnect between its sales and billing systems. Hopefully, Dell will improve its systems to improve the customer experience and ensure that the company is not just another big technology supplier.

What does this all mean for you and what is needed to manage sales, customers and front office organizations? As I highlighted in my last post, advancements in areas like sales performance management and customer performance management are rapidly being adopted as blueprints to expand the needs of organizations. I did not see salesforce.com address this opportunity, but there is always next year. Salesforce.com is still innovating and bringing technology to improve productivity in many areas, but they have not yet addressed the business effectiveness and management needs across sales, call center, marketing and customer focused organizations. In this economic environment, the need for better business intelligence and supporting performance management will continue to be critical for organizations. Maybe the opinions of influential customers and closer examination of what organizations are doing internally will inspire salesforce.com to take its capabilities to the next level. Only time will tell.

Scripts Archive

Wednesday, November 12, 2008

I.B.I.S., Inc. Provides Microsoft Dynamics Clients with Business Intelligence Solutions from Strategy Companion

NORCROSS, Ga., Nov 12, 2008 (BUSINESS WIRE) -- I.B.I.S., Inc., the Southeast's premier Microsoft Gold Certified Partner, announced a new partnership with Strategy Companion Corporation to provide Microsoft Dynamics CRM and ERP clients with Business Intelligence solutions. Strategy Companion is a leading provider of intuitive Business Intelligence solutions with products focused on the Microsoft SQL Server platform.
BI Analytics is a Business Intelligence solution for Microsoft Dynamics CRM that tracks and manages business performance via dashboards and Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). With a seamless Microsoft Dynamics CRM integration, BI Analytics is part of the same CRM window and launched from the CRM navigation bar. BI Analytics for Dynamics CRM enables Sales, Marketing, and Customer Service personnel to make better decisions and efficiently manage business performance with capabilities such as dynamic analysis and quick report generation.
I.B.I.S. will offer Strategy Companion's Analyzer(TM) solution for the Dynamics ERP products as well. Analyzer(TM) will empower I.B.I.S.' clients with advanced visualizations, advanced analytics, reporting, dashboards, and collaboration capabilities. Decision makers can see and communicate to others the right information, leading to better decisions. Analyzer(TM) offers a variety of views, including dashboards, reports, and visually-compelling charts and graphs to help users monitor KPIs and business process metrics to quickly identify key business issues. Analyzer(TM) links operational metrics with management objectives and business strategies for superior performance management.
"These products are a great fit for our Microsoft Dynamics clients," said Andy Vabulas, Chief Executive Officer at I.B.I.S., Inc. He continued, "Business Intelligence solutions are ideal during this tense economic time. For a minimal investment, our clients can use these Business Intelligence tools that are focused on helping them stay profitable and growing during tough times."
"We're thrilled to partner with I.B.I.S.," said Robert Sterling, VP of Partner Alliance at Strategy Companion. "As a Strategy Companion partner, I.B.I.S. will bring more value to its clients. Business Intelligence solutions help clients know their businesses better, driving profit and enabling success."
About Strategy Companion
Strategy Companion Corporation ( www.StrategyCompanion.com) is a leading provider of intuitive Business Intelligence solutions with products focused on the Microsoft SQL Server platform. Founded in 2001, it is headquartered in Irvine, California with offices in India, China, and Taiwan. Strategy Companion Corporation products, which include Analyzer(TM) and BI Analytics for Dynamics CRM(TM), are sold worldwide.
About I.B.I.S., Inc.
Founded in 1989, I.B.I.S., Inc. ( www.ibisinc.com) is the Southeast's premier Microsoft Gold Certified Partner serving companies seeking to gain a competitive advantage through the use of Microsoft Dynamics CRM, Microsoft Dynamics ERP, and Microsoft Business Intelligence solutions.
I.B.I.S., Inc. is a two-time winner of Microsoft Dynamics' Outstanding US Partner of the Year Award, and the 2007 winner of the Worldwide Partner of the Year Award for Microsoft Dynamics GP. I.B.I.S. is one of a select group of companies worldwide with nine Gold Certified Microsoft Competencies.
SOURCE: I.B.I.S., Inc.

I.B.I.S., Inc.
Jennifer Alspach, 770-903-3192
jalspach@ibisinc.com

Sunday, November 2, 2008

PowerObjects Announces Four New CRM Projects for Microsoft Dynamics CRM

PowerObjects, a provider of Microsoft Dynamics CRM (Customer Relationship Management) solution, has announced the addition of four new CRM projects this month, growing its customer base and expanding the value of this CRM solution.

These new customers are within the not-for-profit, financial services, technology and education/training industries and include developing and implementing CRM solutions for Minnesota Workers’ Compensation Insurers Association Inc., BPS Capital Management Inc., Wand Corporation, and Winsor Learning.

Microsoft Dynamics provides the tools and capabilities necessary to create and easily maintain a clear picture of customers, from first contact through to purchase and post-sales. Gaining a clear understanding of the customer and his or her likes and habits are essential during this process and in creating new products and services.

The solution offers modules for sales, marketing and customer service in order to deliver a fast, flexible and affordable solution to drive consistent, measurable improvement in every business process. This approach enables closer relationships with customers and helps to achieve new levels of profitability.

PowerObjects is effectively increasing its customer base by providing a variety of Microsoft Dynamics CRM solutions for both enterprise level organizations in addition to new company start-ups. The information that can be captured and used within the Microsoft Dynamics CRM solution is essential to effective competition.

The company’s main focus is Microsoft Dynamics CRM. PowerObjects can handle everything from basic implementations, to creating a complex line of business applications. With the ease of integration into mainstream business applications, the implementation of the Microsoft Dynamics CRM solution is a smooth process.

"We are extremely excited about the continued growth and the opportunity to work with some great companies,” said Jim Sheehan, COO of PowerObjects, in a Wednesday statement.

“Our CRM expertise coupled with a best-in-class CRM software solution such as Microsoft Dynamics CRM, allows our clients to optimize business processes, build profitable relationships, and grow their businesses like never before."

PowerObjects is a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner specializing in customer relationship management solutions. The company is focused on extending the technology of Microsoft Dynamics CRM to fit the needs of the customer.

With its headquarters in Minneapolis, Minnesota, PowerObjects provides services to businesses and non-profit organizations in multiple industries including insurance, financial services, publishing, distribution, manufacturing and professional services.

Source:tmcnet.com