March 26, 2002
Microsoft Enters the Game
Rich Bohn of SellMoreNow.com
Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ: MSFT) recently announced that it would deliver Microsoft Customer Relationship Management (MS CRM), the first Microsoft business solution built on its .NET platform later this year. Accessible from Microsoft Outlook and the Web, MS CRM is devised to enable small and medium enterprises (SMEs) to build more profitable customer relationships through increased sales effectiveness and consistent customer service. Microsoft touts that the product is designed for rapid deployment, ease of use, and integration with Microsoft Office and Microsoft Great Plains' back-office solutions.
Microsoft Customer Relationship Management will be available as a standalone product as well as an integrated solution to Microsoft Great Plains Dynamics, Solomon and eEnterprise. Its expected availability in North America is in the fourth quarter of 2002, while the availability outside of North America will be phased and is expected to begin in the first quarter of 2003.
It will be sold and implemented through Microsoft Great Plains' reselling partner channel, and partners and Microsoft Great Plains' award-winning customer support team will provide support. The solution will be available on-premise or as a hosted solution through select partners.
The product's functionality includes basic contact management as part of Sales Force Automation (SFA), simple e-mail based marketing tools, and call management with a customer service knowledge base. These features are what the targeted customers need at this stage. An affordable, no-frills out-of-the-box application with minimal implementation risk and innate integration to MS Outlook and MS Exchange will likely strike a chord with this market segment. Also important to note is that this is the first Microsoft .NET-based product. It gives legitimacy to the platform and to the concept of Web services, which many still consider to be hype and a strategy in flux.
So, what impact will this have on the CRM world? First of all it is important to emphasize that this is a product pre-announcement. I will put them through the same review process I do everyone else whenever they are ready. But today, all we have is three screen shots and some fairly general product specifications.
The flip side of this is that Microsoft has shown countless times that once they decide to go after a new product category, they can be very patient. They will doggedly pursue a product vision until they get it right. In fact, the rest of the industry likes to joke that it usually takes Microsoft three tries to get a product right. So, it almost doesn't matter what the capabilities of this initial release are. This is Microsoft's way of saying, "Ready or Not, Here we come!" If they are serious about CRM (and I believe they are), sooner or later they'll get the product right.
In their announcement, Microsoft says this product is targeted at small and medium sized businesses. They clearly state that they do not plan to target the enterprise segment of the CRM business at this time. It is interesting to note that they define the "enterprise" segment as those firms with more than 5,000 employees. On another point, they did not announce any plans to integrate this new CRM solution with their own Small Business Manager accounting solution, which is normally targeted at firms with 1-25 employees. So, my interpretation of these statements is that Microsoft considers any firm with 25 - 5,000 employees fair game. That covers a lot of ground and puts them in at least partial competition with lots of other CRM players - some of them, "partners."
So, keep things in perspective. This is a pre-announcement product introduction. We really have very limited product information at this time. However, I welcome this announcement and believe it will help bring some needed discipline to this still overcrowded CRM market. I will go live with any important product news as Microsoft works their way through my review process. Watch the MS CRM page for updates.
http://www.sellmorenow.com/MSCRM.htm
For answers and more tips on customer nurturing, contact jim@nurturemarketing.com