Mehmet Nuri Can

CRM

Microsoft plans to announce a new social networking accelerator for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 very soon. This add-on will be free for current CRM 4.0 users. A video has been posted on Microsoft web site.

First impressions are very positive for me. I really liked the flexibility of creating a lead or a service case from a twitter message. This idea can be a good starting point to integrate popular social networking sites with the CRM system of a company.

I will write a more detailed article after downloading and examining the accelerator.

Microsoft Dynamics CRM

In 2007, Microsoft released Dynamics CRM 4.0. This version was including many improvements compared to the former one, 3.0. During this time, some add-on products called “accelerators” became available to the customers without any fee. In addition to current 8 accelerators, Microsoft will publish 3 new accelerators in a very short time. The one about social networks integration really attracts me. Especially people who use Microsoft Dynamics CRM in English take the benefit of the continuous improvement of this CRM solution. Actually as a consultant, whose customers mostly use Microsoft Dynamics CRM in Turkish, I experienced some technical difficulties to adopt them into a Turkish environment.

This week Microsoft organized a worldwide partner conference in New Orleans. There are some news about the future of Microsoft Dynamics CRM. Microsoft announced that the new version, 5.0, will be available in the second half of 2010.

For a few years, Microsoft started to focus on SharePoint a solution which ease the document management and includes many other benefits. I guess that CRM-SharePoint integration will be a key part in the next version of Microsoft Dynamics CRM. I also expect some improvements about reporting and analysis services, especially user friendly and usable ones. Moreover, I hope that some of the accelerators Microsoft released for CRM 4.0, will be default in the new version. If the accelerators related to social media and analytical measurements of the data become available at the first release of Microsoft Dynamics CRM 5.0, Microsoft can have a competitive advantage over its rivals.

One of the another major subjects of the conference was XRM. R and M mean relationship management as you guess. However X totally depends on your prefence. Microsoft provides a platform which includes integration with Dynamics CRM, and you can make development on any area you want. Actually a fun video which I saw its link in Menno te Koppele’s blog explains this concept better.

The level of the competition in CRM market increases day by day, and Microsoft hardly focuses on its CRM solution for a while. They aims at taking the biggest share in the market by integrating Microsoft Dynamics CRM into widely used Microsoft Office based products. The rivals also working hard to increase their share, and following these improvements is sometimes exhaustive, but it is clearly pleased to be in the middle of this competition.

If you visit the links below, you can find detailed information about these news.

Links: 1, 2

Microsoft Dynamics CRM

Gartner announced the results of CRM market in 2008 research. The headlines of the summary given;

• Companies had spent $8.13 billion for CRM investments in 2007. This amount increased to $9.15 billion in 2008 which means 12.5 % increase.
• CRM market continued its two digits-growth. This is the fifth consecutive year.
• 20% of CRM investments is for SaaS (Software as a Service). It was 15% in 2007.  Although this concept is quite popular nowadays, most of the companies are still shy to buy a SaaS solution.
• SAP is still the leader of the sector with 22.5 %. It was 25.5% in 2007. However, I need to remind that SAP is not a CRM focused solution. It is mainly an ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) prdıct, and it includes a CRM module inside. I’ve never hear a firm invested SAP just for CRM.
• Oracle and Salesforce.com comes after SAP. Microsoft Dynamics CRM is fourth on the list. Nevertheless Microsoft increased its revenue 75% in 2008. It has the biggest revenue growth between its rivals.
• The distribution of the overall investment between sub segments of CRM did not change to much. Sales is still  the leader with 42.8%. Service and support comes after it with 36.6% and marketing has 20.6%.

Despite the global financial crisis, CRM market continues to grow rapidly. Many companies focused on the methods of increasing efficiency in that problematic environment, and a true CRM investment with an effective business process management is still one of the most attractive way to do this. Gartner analysts think that worldwide CRM market will continue to grow in 2009 too.

For a summary of the report please click here. If you want to read the complete report, you need to be a Gartner client.

CRM