The Dynamics CRM Professional Edition for Service Providers is now available to partners worldwide.
“They’ll be able to offer up vanilla-flavoured hosting solutions,” said Frank Falcone, CRM product manager with Microsoft Canada, adding this will make it easy for SMBs to adopt CRM.
It’s still a single-tenancy offering, though Microsoft is planning to offer a multi-tenancy version with the next major upgrade of the suite, dubbed Titan.
Peter Bolger, vice-president of sales and marketing with VOX Wireless in Oakville, Ont. and a Microsoft partner, sees this as an option for smaller businesses or large enterprises that don’t have the full Microsoft suite — or in situations where customers plan to upgrade to Microsoft products and, in the interim, can take advantage of those through a hosted model.
“It gives you a chance to pilot it first,” said Mansell Nelson, vice-president of business development with Rogers Business Solutions in Toronto and one of VOX’s customers. “With traditional middleware, you’re either in or you’re out.”
Bill Kinahan, CRM practice lead with Tectura in Burlington, Ont., also a Microsoft partner, hasn’t seen demand for hosted solutions in the enterprise space (which is its main focus) because most large customers want to have CRM onsite.
One of the challenges in the CRM space is that, while customers understand sales force automation, they don’t always understand CRM — though they’re asking more about how it can help them.
“The challenge is that Microsoft isn’t seen as a business solution vendor,” he said, adding the branding change to Dynamics should help with that.
For Bolger, the number-one challenge in implementing CRM — any type of CRM — is user adoption. However, Dynamics CRM works in Outlook, he said, so it’s something users already know how to use.
There’s a critical end-user training requirement, said Levy, and the gateway is often through a company’s salespeople. “Pull them into it rather than push them into it,” he said. “Adapt technology to the way you work.”
Killer application
CRM is the next killer app for business process management, he said, but right now 20 per cent of companies are not successful in implementing CRM. This number will eventually whittle down, he added, as maturity grows.
In the enterprise resource planning (ERP) market, Microsoft is relying on its partners to provide vertical solutions.
“Customers are asking us to better address vertical industries,” said Lisa Lloyd, marketing manager for the Dynamics product suite with Microsoft Canada. “We can’t do that alone.”
Last year, the ERP market grew six per cent in Canada, with more than $1 billion in spending, said Joel Martin, vice-president of enterprise software with IDC Canada, adding this is being led by the mid-market.