[December 10, 2005]

CRM Weekly Review

By DAVID SIMS

TMCnet CRM Alert Columnist

What's been happening in CRM this past week:

Tracey Schelmetic reminds us that "customer relationship management software was conceived with the call center in mind," and notes that lately colleges and universities have availed themselves of this nifty stuff, citing the recent CRM purchase from Parature by Florida State University, the university with the most dogbone-lucky football team in the Western Hemisphere.

Uh, Tracey didn't exactly put it that way. At least not about the football team.

FSU’s Enterprise Resource Planning Department was the first to deploy Parature’s product in June 2004 when they replaced BMC Remedy due to what Parature officials said were difficulties in use and costly maintenance. Today, FSU’s Human Resources, Payroll Services and seven other departments are using Parature’s products, and the Seminoles have a prime bowl game against Penn State they deserve about as much as Larry "Bud" Melman deserves to marry Julia Roberts. Here's to a 65-0 blowout -- by the third quarter -- to reclaim a little justice in the world… okay, I'll shut up now.

…

A firm called CRM Mastery, billing themselves as a "provider of independent, unbiased CRM technology research and CRM software evaluation and selection assistance for small and mid-sized enterprises," announced what they're advertising as "the most comprehensive and up-to-date directory of CRM-related technology products available anywhere on the Internet."

CRM Mastery claims that its CRM Solution Directory content is "totally maintained by its CRM research analysts." The directory's "goals" are to "include all appropriate CRM-related products, to place each product in only the most appropriate directory categories and to update the content of our directory weekly, at a minimum."

…

Let's see, anything else… uh, something nagging at the mind, some piece of news that zipped past… what was it, some company from the Northwest announcing some… oh yes, Microsoft released its opening salvo in the hosted wars, Dynamics CRM 3.0. In typical Microsoft style they're shooting for the sky:

"Microsoft Dynamics as a product line is not limiting itself to small and mid-sized businesses," Brad Wilson, general manager for Microsoft Dynamics told Reuters. "Clearly CRM is an example of where we are going after large business in a very broad manner."

Of course they have to keep their mulitfarous channel partners happy, so they aren't offering 3.0 directly to business customers, which other hosted vendors are free to do and which makes the most sense, but are offering it through their channel partner network which, not Microsoft, will host the programs and offer them to end customers, along with whatever markups they feel like adding along the way.

Established hosted vendors aren't shaking in their Gucci boots yet. Greg Gianforte, CEO of RightNow, has in the past expressed his doubt that Microsoft can really succeed in the on-demand space, contending they would have to basically cannibalize their existing business model, and "Wall Street won't let them do that."

He sees "several major hurdles to overcome with Microsoft Dynamics CRM 3.0," starting with the single tenant hosting: "One of the breakthroughs in hosting is multi-tenancy, multiple applications on a shared set of hardware, which is the standard for successful software-as-a-service companies," Gianforte said. "There are no economies of scale or margin in single tenant hosting. This model was introduced in the 90’s and failed."

The ever-quotable Marc Benioff, CEO of salesforce.com pointed out that just a month ago, Microsoft had announced Live, their "exciting new vision" for on demand computing.

"And here we are a month later," Benioff notes, "with Microsoft announcing more antiquated CRM software. Microsoft CRM 3.0 Dynamics is not part of the Live technology at all. Neither is Vista. They are just more software.

"So, customers have to choose, wait for the new Microsoft Live, or choose Microsoft Dead, the software offering. Its Microsoft Dead CRM 3.0. We will wait until Microsoft Live CRM 4.0 comes in three more years."

David Sims is contributing editor for TMCnet. For more articles please visit David Sims' columnist page.

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