CRM - July 2008 - (Page 29)

MICROSOFT & CRM Wilson’s Words As general manager of Microsoft Dynamics CRM, Brad Wilson is seen by many as the operational force behind the company’s CRM efforts. Here are some excerpts from Senior Editor Marshall Lager’s exclusive conversation with the three-time winner of CRM magazine’s Influential Leader award. CRM MAGAZINE: What can you tell us about the growth of Microsoft CRM? BRAD WILSON: We have 14,000 user companies globally…with more than 625,000 users. That’s not bad for a relatively young business—we only launched in this space about five years ago. [See “The History of Microsoft’s CRM,” page 22.] In the first two years it was very much [a small-and-midsize business] product, but we’ve ended up with a strong enterprise presence as well. Today, our business is roughly balanced, almost half and half between large businesses and SMBs. CRM: Enterprise customers—are many of them showing interest in [Online]? BW: We’ve been primarily targeting our [software-as-a-service] efforts at smaller deals initially—say five to 50 seats…. At that end, we have more demand than we have partners, so the on-demand model is a way to scale up faster at the low end…. We’re pointing our [SaaS] business at [SMBs], but there’s no question it’s going to [range] from small business to tens of thousands of users…. A CRM project is 30 percent technology and 70 percent fitting technology to business problems…. The reality is that SaaS is great to solve the technology problem…but it still requires either you—or some smart guys who have done it for 10 other organizations—to figure out how to use it. SaaS isn’t magic pixie dust, it’s a different way to get the CRM platform, and from there it’s up to you to realize the benefit of the platform. CRM: Oracle announced the latest version of its On Demand product would be single-tenant. Why do you think so? BW: Nobody in the world wants multitenancy. The benefit is to the host, to do it economically. Certain businesses and government agencies will say, “You will never pool my data in a table with somebody else’s data.”… It’s about regulations more than about technical needs. I think Oracle did it so they could go after entities with very strict data-regulation requirements. CRM: What about the user experience? BW: CRM shouldn’t be some big spooky thing, where you leave what you’re doing and do CRM someplace else—what I call “alt-tab CRM.”… If the office manager of a small company has some leads to get out to the sales reps, you don’t want a big, heavyweight application with 37 [navigation] buttons on the left, and six tabs across the top—you’ll never use it. You want to give out the leads and go back to your day job. CRM: How much do you invest in CRM? BW: We’re leveraging things like [Office Communications Server] and the millions upon millions of dollars in that, the billions in SQL Server and Windows, and virtualization. [See the sidebar, “Now ‘UC’ It,” page 22, for more on OCS.] We’ve got billions of dollars in data centers around the world—if I want to drop CRM into [Asia-Pacific] or [Europe, Middle East, and Africa], I’ve got rackspace as far as the eye can see. All of these things pyramid up into CRM. If you want to use a browser, or Outlook, or Word integrated with CRM, it’s there. Almost everything we do—except for Xbox—is CRM. That’s the kind of investment we’re making, and I don’t think any other vendor can match that. moves into the cloud and migrates to mobile, no one—not even Steve Ballmer—really knows where (and against whom) the battle goes next. But Microsoft at least has an eye on CRM 2.0, with online communities (community.dynamics.com), a blog (blogs.msdn.com/crm), integration with Facebook (community.dynamics.com/ content/networking.aspx) and other networks, and a measure of transparency that www.destinationCRM.com includes witty marketing (www.microsoft .com/dynamics/game/default.mspx). Everyone seems to agree on one thing, though—this town is big enough for the two big guns, and perhaps many more. “With maybe 7 million true SMBs out there, [Salesforce.com’s] 41,000 customers doesn’t even make a dent,” McCabe says. Will the final score for Microsoft’s CRM align with Ballmer’s vision, or with that of the naysayers? It’s still too soon to call, of course, but McCabe best sums up the truth of the matter: “Success will be framed more by other things: If Microsoft can maintain desktop dominance, Microsoft will be a winner. Ultimately, the customers will decide if this product has legs.” Contact Senior Editor Marshall Lager at mlager@destinationCRM.com. 29 CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIP MANAGEMENT | JULY 2008 http://www.microsoft.com/dynamics/game/default.mspx http://www.microsoft.com/dynamics/game/default.mspx http://community.dynamics.com http://blogs.msdn.com/crm http://Salesforce.com?s http://community.dynamics.com/content/networking.aspx http://community.dynamics.com/content/networking.aspx http://www.destinationCRM.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of CRM - July 2008

CRM - July 2008 Contents Front Office Reality Check Customer Centricity The Tipping Point CRM’s a Social Animal SAP Looks to ‘Change the Game' CRM on Twitter CRM to the Max A Prescription for Satisfaction Required Reading Cover Story: Is Microsoft Winning the CRM Race? Jumping into the SaaS Pool Say What? Another Bright Idea Out of Edison A Small Biz Blossoms Biting Off the Right Amount Something for a Rainy Day Connect Re:Tooling Pint of View

CRM - July 2008

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