Part 1 of this series discussed the current upbeat state of affairs of Microsoft Dynamics CRM, as one of the three best-performing products within the entire Microsoft Corporation of late. In a nutshell, during 2009, the product grew notably and surpassed one million licensed users. Microsoft’s customer relationship management (CRM) offering has become attractive to companies of all sizes, in part due to its multiple deployment options (with bidirectional migration options due to the same code base).
Certainly, much more has to happen before there is truly a common feature set, a common look and feel, and a feasible option to move any company from one mode of deployment to another. The market will thus be keenly looking for referenceable customers from Microsoft who have done this migration even in one direction, let alone as a “round trip.”
The underlying technology developments mentioned in Part 1 have enabled rapid innovation of Microsoft Dynamics CRM in many ways. Part 2 analyzed the following embodiments of rapid innovation: the Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online offering, CRM Product Accelerators, and the so-called xRM (extended relationship management) framework. The xRM approach takes CRM one step further by targeting the management of all imaginable relationships, not just those with customers.
CRM Platform Wars
As analyzed in TEC’s article “War Looms in the On-demand CRM Market (and Beyond)—But Will You Profit from It?” and in my recent blog post on NetSuite, Salesforce.com and NetSuite have been attempting similar xRM feats with their respective AppExchange and SuiteApp application directories, Apex and SuiteScript languages, and Force.com and SuiteCloud platforms. Similar to Microsoft Dynamics CRM or xRM, many Salesforce.com partners have built applications that go beyond the traditional CRM realm, whereby these custom applications built on Force.com manage orders, contracts, proposals, assets, and whatnot.
I must acknowledge here that Force.com applications were being built for order a year before Microsoft shipped its Dynamics CRM 4.0 release. Microsoft was neither first to attempt nor leader in fulfillment of the xRM platform vision.
Some notable innovations on Salesforce.com’s Force.com platform include the FinancialForce.com accounting offering in the cloud (co-owned by UNIT4 and Salesforce.com), then an application that tracks investment funds from StraightThrough.com, and the one that generates “business intensity maps” in the US from ACF Solutions. At the Dreamforce 2009 conference, I saw a demo of a neat Force.com-based application for golf course tee-time reservation via Facebook and the Chester French indie rock band that has its Facebook VIP fan page (with e-commerce capabilities to sell upcoming concert tickets and band merchandize), also built on Force.com.
Certainly, much more has to happen before there is truly a common feature set, a common look and feel, and a feasible option to move any company from one mode of deployment to another. The market will thus be keenly looking for referenceable customers from Microsoft who have done this migration even in one direction, let alone as a “round trip.”
The underlying technology developments mentioned in Part 1 have enabled rapid innovation of Microsoft Dynamics CRM in many ways. Part 2 analyzed the following embodiments of rapid innovation: the Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online offering, CRM Product Accelerators, and the so-called xRM (extended relationship management) framework. The xRM approach takes CRM one step further by targeting the management of all imaginable relationships, not just those with customers.
CRM Platform Wars
As analyzed in TEC’s article “War Looms in the On-demand CRM Market (and Beyond)—But Will You Profit from It?” and in my recent blog post on NetSuite, Salesforce.com and NetSuite have been attempting similar xRM feats with their respective AppExchange and SuiteApp application directories, Apex and SuiteScript languages, and Force.com and SuiteCloud platforms. Similar to Microsoft Dynamics CRM or xRM, many Salesforce.com partners have built applications that go beyond the traditional CRM realm, whereby these custom applications built on Force.com manage orders, contracts, proposals, assets, and whatnot.
I must acknowledge here that Force.com applications were being built for order a year before Microsoft shipped its Dynamics CRM 4.0 release. Microsoft was neither first to attempt nor leader in fulfillment of the xRM platform vision.
Some notable innovations on Salesforce.com’s Force.com platform include the FinancialForce.com accounting offering in the cloud (co-owned by UNIT4 and Salesforce.com), then an application that tracks investment funds from StraightThrough.com, and the one that generates “business intensity maps” in the US from ACF Solutions. At the Dreamforce 2009 conference, I saw a demo of a neat Force.com-based application for golf course tee-time reservation via Facebook and the Chester French indie rock band that has its Facebook VIP fan page (with e-commerce capabilities to sell upcoming concert tickets and band merchandize), also built on Force.com.
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