CHOICE is an interesting word to build a marketing campaign and go to market strategy around. I think it is especially ironic given that MSFT has spent more money in anti-trust defense than probably any other company. I like to joke around that “You have Choice as long as you pick Microsoft CRM.” LOL. ;-) Luckily you have some pretty dang good choices. I won’t make any bones about that I am a MS CRM Zealot, just ask anyone that knows me or works with me. My wife would tell you that I am an obsessive and that is a gift and a curse.
“I have been with the rest and now I’m with the best.” MS CRM is a great solution. I have used almost all the others so I can tell you some stories. From ACT! to Seibel to SFDC. They all have their pros and cons. MS CRM has its pros and cons, BUT for the money it is hands down THE BEST value there is and ever has been in the CRM marketplace. I can argue that with anyone. MS CRM costs approximately $2-$3/day per user. That is roughly the cost of a Starbucks Venti Coffee. Don’t tell Phil Richardson I mixed coffee and CRM on my blog. You can run the numbers and see.
For that price you get a Business-class, server-based, SQL-driven, business platform application that is embedded in the Outlook interface with mobile, IE and Thin client interfaces to the same data real time, off-line client too. That has been the holy grail of CRM forever. Not to mention all the controls, reporting, workflow, Excel and Word Integrations, API, Customizations, Data Migration, etc. This all combines to be one heck of a business platform for Marketing, Sales, Service, and extensions. We use it for much more than it is marketed as.
MS CRM is basically an Entity relationship management platform. XRM – X being a variable. It is this XRM platform that comes pre configured with the Marketing, Sales and Service modules and associated sub modules. We also extend it to use for any relationship tracking we want that is optimal for the platform to include: Recruiting/Talent, Asset Mgmt, Projects, and even IDEA management and whole lot more. Example: Why not treat your recruiting and talent acquisition of new people for your organization with a proper system to better manage the process. Talent is what will win the business battles in America in the coming decades. Why not treat recruits better than you treat prospects??
Back to CHOICE. MS CRM is going to continue to grow at the fastest rates ever in business applications (Roughly 5,000 company adds a year averaging 40 users per company) because now you can choose either on-premise or hosted, SAAS, ASP, on-demand deployment model and you can easily move back and forth from on-premise to hosted and hosted to on-premise. This is a HUGE. HUGE I tell you. Clients can start on hosted and move to on premise when it is optimal. Or the reverse. That is the best thing for the client. I have posted before that SAAS and multi tenancy as a business model primarily benefits the publisher like SFDC. It allows them economies of scale and leverage to cram more businesses on one shared piece of hardware. That does not really help the client. Working MS CRM and having the CHOICE of deployment models will give real value and benefit to the CLIENT which is good business practices, so they say ;-).
Here is a link to the recent announcements - http://blogs.msdn.com/crm/archive/2008/01/09/choice-begins-today.aspx
I hope this helps explain my random thoughts on why Microsoft is a leader in providing CHOICE to the world. ;-) - Jon Petrucelli, Zealot and Sales Guy.
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