Luke Adams

I recently got pointed to the following article on the web:
http://www.softwareadvice.com/articles/crm/salesforce-alternatives-5-systems-to-consider-1052011

Interesting stuff. In it, Lauren Carlson rightly states that salesforce.com is the market leader with the others chasing their tail. I do feel that she’s sat on the fence with some of the opinions on the functionality of the products and differences can be quite marked with some of them. Significantly, some of the products do not have the same R&D pumped into them and are therefore falling behind on the functionality stakes – Microsoft reportedly spent $9.5bn in 2010! I don’t think it would be right to go about naming names here but anyone who’s viewed the software will soon know what I mean.

As we promote Dynamics CRM, I think it would be appropriate to point out a few of its key benefits. I’m not going to waffle for pages and regurgitate the Microsoft marketing speak, just the following:
1. Value for money. You get loads with Dynamics CRM online. For just over £30 per user you have full functionality – no buying in at the base level, realising you need more functionality and having to fork out more
2. Super-tight integration with Outlook. If you want to, you can run Dynamics CRM online without even leaving Outlook
3. Broad offering. Dynamics CRM is on-premise too and employs the same codeset to deliver this. This means that if you decide that you want to own the software at a later date and move it in-house, you can do this with no change to your customisations

I have been very impressed with Microsoft’s latest incarnation of CRM. Dynamics CRM 2011 is a real leap forward in functionality terms from Version 4, and it now gives an air of established maturity and a product that will hold up very well against any of its competitors.

• Functionality. Only go for the functionality that you really need. Don’t insist that you must have the pretty front-screen graph just because it is pretty. Does it deliver valuable information without detraction from the software’s main use?

• Working with Users. Ensure that you bring the users along with you as you plan the database. In most cases, this just means keeping up a regular communication with them throughout the planning stages. This way, the users will feel involved and hopefully be keen and excited to get started when the CRM D-day arrives
• Simplify the screens. We help clients to turn off the screen menus if they don’t need to use them. CRM 2011 also gives you the ability to have different screens per user group allowing the removal and re-arranging of fields if they’re not needed. As an example marketing could see all the contact’s marketing opt-out information on the main contact screen but sales would have this tucked away at the bottom of the screen. This makes the user’s experience as compact and focussed as possible
• Training. With increased functionality, focussed training becomes even more important. Ensuring that the user can hit the ground running with CRM increases the likelihood of confident adoption.

2011 is here already and anticipation around CRM Version 5 is rising. Microsoft have again come up trumps in their Imagination Department and named this version “Dynamics CRM 2011” just to confuse everyone. Having said that, the new features certainly deserve some sort of major recognition.

Although not related specifically to this release of this software version (dhc have been offering an online CRM for some time now), Microsoft is now offering their own online version (which can be purchased through us). Customers can now get up and running with CRM quickly and cheaply without the headache of buying and maintaining costly hardware. These ‘cloud’ deployments can also be configured to the customer’s requirements even to the extent of interfacing with the customer’s on-premise systems including their Exchange Server. This delivers real bottom-line costs benefits with the online offering being priced aggressively against competitors such as salesforce.com.

There’s too much new functionality to discuss in full here but it’s safe to say that the advancement is dramatic. I’ll just highlight what I see as some of the main features of the new release.

• Enhanced Outlook Experience. The market’s best Outlook experience has got better. The designers have embedded CRM into Outlook even further to deliver an even better experience to the user. CRM now uses the 2007/2010 contextual ribbon interface and allows users to see much more CRM information against e-mails in Outlook. Custom CRM fields are also available directly from your Outlook E-mail form – I know that this alone will make some of our clients upgrade immediately
• Business Charting and Dashboards. Let’s face it, Dynamics CRM has never been the best at reports. With 2011, this has changed with the ability to have real-time business intelligence graphical dashboards on-screen which are configurable by the user. Goal management is also in which allows the business to set key performance and health indicators and track their progress real-time
• Personalisation. You can now have different views which are definable down to user level. Therefore, Sales can have one view and marketing can have another giving them access to fields and views which are not accessible to any other users
• Integration. Although dhc have always been pretty good at integrating CRM with other apps, the out-of-the-box integration has got better. The links with SharePoint 2010 provides instant document management and the embedding of contextual document repositories
• Continued interface improvements. Microsoft have done a good job this time in listening to our and our users’ suggestions and have included many additional enhancements:
  • Data auditing. The ability to ‘trend’ data without buying additional software
  • Field level security
  • Definable activities. We now have the option of setting up user-defined activities (e.g. Sales Meeting rather than a generic Appointment)
  • Mobile CRM. Custom entities can now sync with mobiles
  • Enhanced sales literature and knowledge base

All-in-all, this is a significant release from Microsoft and it’s one that I’d urge you to consider upgrading to if it fits in with your corporate plans. Give our sales line a call to book onto one of our demos.