Sunday, March 18, 2007, 11:51:11 PM
I was just reading the new Forrester report on mid-market CRM solutions. Microsoft Dynamics CRM is just being considered and is already being included in the leader group. It rated very high on strategy and vision. Brad Wilson at Convergence remarked that Gartner had just done a report and ranked Microsoft Dynamics CRM very high (#2) the first time it even included Microsoft Dynamics CRM in its rankings. THis is an amazing jump. It is attributed to a great product that is extremely easy to use but also amazingly powerful. Nice to finally get its due from unbiased critics. Here is a quote from the Forrester Report addressing Dynamics CRM's rapid Rise to the top:
"Microsoft Dynamics CRM is one of the newer products included in our evaluation, but the vendor has made impressive progress building out its solution, which emerged as a Leader for the first time in a Forrester Wave. Microsoft has won more than 7,500 customers since its introduction in late 2003, surpassing much of its competition on this metric. The vendor provides all-around core CRM capabilities in an intuitive, Outlook-style UI and leverages other Microsoft technologies like SharePoint and SQL Server Analysis Services to deliver more advanced capabilities. With many midmarket firms taking a Microsoft-first, .NET-centric approach to applications, Microsoft finds itself on a high percentage of CRM shortlists based on brand alone."
"Microsoft has shotgunned from a middle-of-the-pack offering in Forrester’s 2005 midmarket SFA evaluation to a market leader in the 2007 CRM suites evaluation. In addition to leveraging the strong Microsoft brand name, Dynamics CRM also excels at leveraging a range of Microsoft products to enhance CRM capabilities. Dynamics CRM’s UI is modeled after Microsoft’s popular Outlook email client, meaning a familiar user experience, shorter training time, and higher adoption rates. Dynamics CRM also leverages Microsoft tools like SharePoint and SQL Server Analysis Services to deliver additional value."
The Forrester Wave™: Midmarket CRM Suites, Q1 2007 by Liz Herbert
Sunday, March 18, 2007
Thursday, March 8, 2007
CRM one of the top inititiatives of CIOs in 2007
3 topics of conversation we got from this article:
“Payback usually comes in 2-3 years.” - This is not always the case. It all depends on the client situation. What are the people, products and processes that are in place now and how are they functioning. We have seen clients that are so inneficient that they are saving 3 hours a day in real time per person when they go live with the system. For 100 person team that is 300 hours a day time that comes back to the team for more productive actitivies.
“1 in 3 CRM projects fail.” Why? What are the main reasons? - User Adoption is the main reason. There are many reasons that contribute to this. Poor design, bad product, no management buy in, not enough traiining, difficult to use system to name a few. We recognize each of these and attack them early and often in our implementation methodology. We have a specific user adoption strategy plan for each engagement.
“At the end of the day, you have to drive profitability." How is the CRM solution going to help your team drive profitability? - This all revolves around enabling and amplifying your people with the right software and services. If you amplify your sales and maketing teams and they are more productive accross the board by each person then you are going to produce more with the same resources. That is the definitiion of increased profitability. Give your people the tools they need to go to the next level!
Jon Petrucelli - www.productivegap.com
Friday, March 09, 2007, 9:24:31 AM
March 8, 2007 Business process improvements, customer relationship management and business analytics are high on CIOs' to-do lists this year.
If there is any question that technology initiatives must respond to business needs, it is put to rest by what readers of this magazine say they're focusing on in 2007.
More than a third of those who took our top-projects survey say they are looking to do business process improvement. The next hottest areas, customer relationship management and business analytics, also require collaboration between information technologists and business people. Nowadays, businesses aren't funding anything whose return on investment they can't see.
"The projects we have scheduled for 2007 all answer a particular business need," says Gabrielle Wolfson, chief information officer of Spring Valley, N.Y.-based Par Pharmaceutical. "You're not going to implement technology for the sake of technology."
The unrelenting focus on ROI is leading companies to do more pilot projects and cut the number of risky big-bang initiatives they take on.
The ROI focus is also prompting companies to make better use of the systems they have in place. That's what the new push toward service-oriented architectures is all about. Indeed, while SOA itself doesn't appear on our list of the top 10 projects (it was the 12th-most-common project, cited by 12% of our readers), its principles of making better use of existing infrastructure and leveraging applications already in place are behind several of those that do, including Web services (No. 5 on our list) and enterprise systems planning (No. 9).
A total of 363 readers in I.T. and business management responded to Baseline's survey, which was conducted in January.
Read the full story on Baselinemag.com: Top 10 Technology Projects in '07
“Payback usually comes in 2-3 years.” - This is not always the case. It all depends on the client situation. What are the people, products and processes that are in place now and how are they functioning. We have seen clients that are so inneficient that they are saving 3 hours a day in real time per person when they go live with the system. For 100 person team that is 300 hours a day time that comes back to the team for more productive actitivies.
“1 in 3 CRM projects fail.” Why? What are the main reasons? - User Adoption is the main reason. There are many reasons that contribute to this. Poor design, bad product, no management buy in, not enough traiining, difficult to use system to name a few. We recognize each of these and attack them early and often in our implementation methodology. We have a specific user adoption strategy plan for each engagement.
“At the end of the day, you have to drive profitability." How is the CRM solution going to help your team drive profitability? - This all revolves around enabling and amplifying your people with the right software and services. If you amplify your sales and maketing teams and they are more productive accross the board by each person then you are going to produce more with the same resources. That is the definitiion of increased profitability. Give your people the tools they need to go to the next level!
Jon Petrucelli - www.productivegap.com
Friday, March 09, 2007, 9:24:31 AM
March 8, 2007 Business process improvements, customer relationship management and business analytics are high on CIOs' to-do lists this year.
If there is any question that technology initiatives must respond to business needs, it is put to rest by what readers of this magazine say they're focusing on in 2007.
More than a third of those who took our top-projects survey say they are looking to do business process improvement. The next hottest areas, customer relationship management and business analytics, also require collaboration between information technologists and business people. Nowadays, businesses aren't funding anything whose return on investment they can't see.
"The projects we have scheduled for 2007 all answer a particular business need," says Gabrielle Wolfson, chief information officer of Spring Valley, N.Y.-based Par Pharmaceutical. "You're not going to implement technology for the sake of technology."
The unrelenting focus on ROI is leading companies to do more pilot projects and cut the number of risky big-bang initiatives they take on.
The ROI focus is also prompting companies to make better use of the systems they have in place. That's what the new push toward service-oriented architectures is all about. Indeed, while SOA itself doesn't appear on our list of the top 10 projects (it was the 12th-most-common project, cited by 12% of our readers), its principles of making better use of existing infrastructure and leveraging applications already in place are behind several of those that do, including Web services (No. 5 on our list) and enterprise systems planning (No. 9).
A total of 363 readers in I.T. and business management responded to Baseline's survey, which was conducted in January.
Read the full story on Baselinemag.com: Top 10 Technology Projects in '07
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