Brent's CRM Blog

5 CRM Pitfalls to Avoid - The Webinar

While I'm out west visiting a few of my favorite companies and people, I'll take about an hour or so tomorrow (Wednesday April 30th) to participate in a webinar for the great folks at InsideCRM. It's part of a series sponsored by Microsoft CRM Online. I'll be going over 5 CRM Pitfalls you'll want to avoid when you jump into implementing customer relationship management.

The webinar starts at 1pm ET/ 10am PT . Click on the image below to check it out:

I'll have more on my trip later.

Technorati : crm, inside crm, webinar
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Microsoft Convergence: The Good, The Bad and The Missing

Last week I attended my first Microsoft Convergence, the annual conference for users and partners involved with the business application side of Microsoft's business. Many small businesses still think of Microsoft has just providers of operating systems and office productivity software, but they go way beyond that with Dynamics line of apps that handle things like ERP, retail management and a few other things.....oh yeah, and CRM. I was attending as an analyst/press kind of person to check out what Microsoft has in store. So here are a few of my impressions from the three days I was in Orlando hanging out at the event.

The Good

• Personal Stuff
• • The best part of any event always deals with people and this event was no different. It was great being a member of "The Gang of Four" for the time I was there. The Four being comprised of CRM gurus Paul Greenberg, Denis Pombriant and Marshall Lager...and me. It's always great seeing my buddy Paul, but it was also a pleasure to finally meet his lovely wife Yvonne. It had been about four years since I met Denis, so it was good catching up with him. And although I've enjoyed reading Marshall's stuff for a while, as well as having him on my radio show, I hadn't met him until last week. I'm glad that he's just as funny in person as he is in print.
  • Speaking of people who have been on my show that I had never met, here are a few more people I had a chance to finally meet:
  • • Laurie McCabe of AMI Partners - Laurie was our first guest and has been a regular. She's about the only other University of Delaware grad I run across in the industry.
    • Sheryl Kingstone of Yankee Group - Sheryl was our second guest and member of CRM magazine's Hall of Fame
    • Rob Bois of AMR Research - Rob was a part of one of our most popular shows where we held a CRM round-table conversation with him, Marshall and 1to1 magazine's Ginger Conlon. Come to think of it, where were you Ginger???
    • Brad Wilson, Microsoft's GM of Dynamics CRM - Although I didn't get a chance to speak with Brad, I did check out one of his sessions, which I think was the best session I attended during the week
  • Denis Pombriant, who was responsible for naming Paul G. "the dean" of CRM, came up with a new nickname for Mr. Greenberg - the Walt Whitman of CRM. I'm told I'll have to read Leaves of Grass to really appreciate this one though.
• Strong Commitment to CRM

It was easily apparent to anyone who attended the event that CRM is, and will be, a big focus of Microsoft. From Steve Ballmer's opening keynote right on through the rest of the conference, CRM was front and center. It appears to me that it's possibly the number one focus on the Dynamics side. That's not to say that other areas are being short changed, as ERP, business intelligence and other segments are also areas of focus. But I definitely got the sense that CRM is the center piece of what's going on. Which is pretty cool to see from my perspective.

It's also pretty apparent that Microsoft has spent a great deal of time making sure Dynamics CRM 4.0 looks a great deal like Outlook, which they hope will help smooth transitions and increase user adoption rates. I wrote about this before after getting a briefing I had a few months back with Bill Patterson, Sr. Product Director for Dynamics CRM. In fact there is some really nice integration with Word and Excel which should help the millions of Office users who live in those apps.

• CRM the Way You Need It

As many of you know the 4.0 version of Dynamics CRM is being offered in three formats - on premise, hosted by Microsoft as "Software + Services" and hosted by Microsoft partners. Now at first I was kind of skeptical, as were many of the partners, as to why any customers would choose a third party vendor over Microsoft if they were looking for a hosted solution. But after thinking about it a bit this could be a good thing for both customers and partners. This could be the beginning of the long tail approach to CRM. The opportunities for third parties service providers to go beyond creating the traditional vertical offerings and create highly specialized niche offerings built off the Microsoft code-base could attract businesses with unique crm needs that do not want to manage, maintain and customize in house. This kind of plays up something Microsoft refers to as xRM - where other "relationship based" applications are being created from the Dynamics CRM app. So if partners can get past the fact that they may lose some of their traditional revenue streams, maybe they'll find they can create even more streams, which could possibly create deeper, longer lasting relationships. So it's all up to the partners to really make this a decidedly positive development.

• Integrated Experiences

In the session on how Microsoft is (and will use) Dynamics CRM internally, they shared a few of the top needs identified by their own people with respect to using CRM software. Integrated experiences was among the top three needs, along with returning more time to users and... I know it will sound like a cliche, but... a need to have a 360 degree view of accounts. Maybe it was these internal needs that led to a focus on making it easier for CRM to play nice with their ERP apps, SharePoint portal software to share CRM data, access to data on Windows Mobile devices and use high end business intelligence tools to analyze performance. Ballmer also mentioned a new server product - Windows Essential Server - that will help make it easier for mid-size businesses to install and run Dynamics apps. It sounds like Small Business Server for the "M" in the smb crowd.

• CRM and Football: Win-Win

The break out sessions I checked out were actually pretty good. Brad Wilson's session on customer choice had some nice demos showing the three flavors of CRM delivery, giving folks a look at how the on premise, partner hosted and Microsoft hosted solutions look and feel. He also had the Dallas Cowboy's head of technology, Pete Walsh, talk about how they are using CRM to manage customer experiences across all of their business units, which includes tickets, merchandising, luxury services and more. It was probably the most interesting case study of how someone was using Dynamics CRM I heard all week. I really hate saying that because I've hated the Cowboys ever since they knocked my beloved Los Angeles Rams out of the playoffs in the mid 70's when I was a little kid.

All in all the key here is that Microsoft knows how to make software, and now that they seem serious about CRM you can expect they will create compelling CRM offerings that can be delivered in formats customers can use to increase their opportunities of success.

The Bad

It's time for all technology companies to stop incorporating Star Wars themes into every trade show and conference they put together. I mean it's 2008 already, it's time to let it go. Give me some LOTR (Lord of the Rings), X-Men, or even Harry Potter, of which I've never read the books or rented the movies. At this point I'll take anything else, even rip-offs of Ishtar, Howard the Duck, or even (gasp) Soulplane. Anything but Star Wars...I'm begging you.

With that aside, on a more serious note I have to say what was really bad about the event has to do with what was missing.....

The Missing

Over the last few weeks I've been involved in Oracle's first ever CRM blogger's call , Sage's analyst call outlining their CRM strategy for the next two years, and Infusion Software's user conference. And without exception the main themes coming out of all three of these events is the growing importance of social CRM - how social media and web 2.0 tools are being incorporated into traditional crm strategies to reach their customers and prospects in a more meaningful way. In fact social CRM has very little to do with software, and everything to do with acknowledging that customers have the power to engage with whomever they want, whenever they want, wherever they want, however they want and how dramatically they wish to do so. So the masses can more easily amass without the boundaries of the past, and drive how they'll consume information as well as how they will do business. Which means that old maxim of business not being personal is no longer the case, if it ever was. Business IS very personal, so CRM has to be way more than great software, productivity gains and integration. These things are important, but so is understanding why people blog, leave comments, digg or stumble, create videos, etc.

So I was really surprised that I only heard the term web 2.0 mentioned once in the sessions and keynotes I sat in on during the three days I attended Microsoft Convergence. I was hoping to hear Steve Ballmer explain how Microsoft's investment in Facebook would play into their strategy for helping their customers build effective social marketing strategies. But I can't recall Facebook being mentioned at all, or LinkedIn, which I couldn't help think about as both Oracle and Sage are building links to these unbelievably popular sites AND business platforms into their CRM offerings.

And while there was an interesting demo of how you can manage Microsoft adCenter campaigns from within Dynamics CRM - what is being dubbed as keyword marketing services - I kept on thinking what about the ability to manage Google AdWords, which the vast majority of search engine marketers may be interested in. And why wouldn't they be interested as Google is still the tool of choice for finding things on the web. And that goes for those people who want easy Dynamics CRM access on iPhones and BlackBerrys. This last point I do believe there's something in the works, if I'm not mistaken.

Now I know Microsoft is in the process of trying to buy Yahoo!, but even if that goes through you can't ignore the hold Google has on the market, or expect folks to conform to what works best with your software, even if the software is good. It comes back to the philosophy of social CRM - participating in the conversation where the people are. They will value you more if you contribute to the conversation, and not try to take it over or force it where you want it to go. And that understanding of the social aspects of CRM is what seems to be missing here. The Dynamics CRM application looks to be solid, the choices for consuming it will work (I think), and enlisting local partners to lend expertise and support should really serve Microsoft well. Focusing on productivity, ease of integration and user adoption is also critical and looks to be well thought out and implemented. But it's just as critical to understand successful CRM initiatives need to go beyond the traditional areas of centralized databases and operational efficiencies. You have to understand how the web is transforming how customers and prospects want to communicate with your business. And that's more social than operational. Companies like Salesforce.com, Oracle and others are demonstrating their understanding of this. And it would have been great to see this on display at Convergence because Microsoft definitely has the capacity to compete in this area as well. I'm sure Microsoft understands all this, but it would have been great to hear it from them at this event.

All in all I was impressed with what went on at Convergence as it was a top notch, well run event. The exhibitor's area was great with a number of opportunities to check out all the different Dynamics apps. And a personal thanks to all the folks that made it easy for guys like me to concentrate on the event without having to worry about much of anything. However I can't help but think about how much better it might have been if Microsoft's business application side displayed their understanding of the social path we all seem to be on. Maybe that's coming at the next Convergence. I look forward to finding out.

Technorati : crm, crm live, microsoft, microsoft convergence
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Conspiracy Theory Redux - I Like Mike...Arrington

As a short follow-up to the post on how Marc Benioff and Larry Ellison, with the rumor of Oracle interested in buying Salesforce.com, are trying to ruin my predictions of 2008 being the year small businesses fully embrace CRM, and that Google will buy Salesforce.com. No need to go over old ground, but I did first post that GoogleForce prediction back at the end of 2006.

Anyway just when I was thinking these predictions were totally off base, Michael Arrington over at TechCrunch wrote a post on Microsoft's Innovator's Dilemma which included these two sentences:

"In the middle of this sits Salesforce, the king of software on demand. At some point Google or Microsoft will make a serious move to acquire them, and at that point the other will respond with a counter. "

Now it goes without saying that I agree with Arrington's take on this, as it would make sense for either Microsoft or Google to be interested in Salesforce.com. But with Microsoft engaging in what appears to be a hostile takeover attempt of Yahoo!, and getting ready to roll out it's long awaited Live CRM service, I still have to go with GoogleForce. Mainly because I'd still be able to call 2008 the year of small business CRM. So I like that one more than the Oracle-Salesforce combo. If for no other reason than the name....OraForce....that's just too close to orifice for my liking.

Technorati : crm, google, microsoft, salesforce.com

Marc Benioff Speaks...Again

Chris Bucholtz over at InsideCRM recently played 10 questions with Salesforce.com's Marc Benioff. You should check out the Q&A when you get a chance. Benioff is often quoted and is not shy about offering his take on his company and the industry. And truth be told he's absolutely earned the right to talk as much "yang" as he wants. But he usually saves his best barbs for his competitors. Like when Chris asked him about the impending release of Microsoft Live CRM and how it will impact the industry. Benioff said:

"Microsoft will do for SaaS what the Zune has done for MP3 players."

Now, as we used to say back in the day, that's cold, dog. But enough said on that one.

There's some other eye-catchers mixed into the interview but the biggest thing standing out for me was the question Chris asked about how does SFDC still go about serving the SMB community, while swimming upstream going after enterprise deals. Benioff's answer to that was pretty much a boiler plate response about having to stay aligned with customer goals. Nobody can deny the importance of that statement, but when you have customers like Japan Post with 45,000 licenses, and more and more thousand seat deals in the works, which customer goals are you really going to be focused on? The 45,000 seat Ultimate Edition customer or the little guys using Group Edition. And that's not a slap at Group Edition as I think it's a solid product. But SmBs (emphasis on the S on purpose) need more than a product, they need a relationship with vendors. And because I work with "real" small businesses (not the thousand employee definitions of small businesses by some vendors) I have heard more grumblings from small SFDC customers about service not meeting expectations. That's why companies like Microsoft, Intuit and Sage have built strong followings with small businesses, because they've built strong partner channels who work face to face with small business folks. And these local vendors are who small businesses typically turn to when they are in need of help.

It will be interesting to see how connected SFDC will be able (and willing) to be to real small businesses as more and more competition is coming at the low end. Especially since they're going big game hunting, and creating platforms. So check the interview out and don't miss the backhanded slap Benioff gives his old buddy Tom Siebel (just let it go Cuz, let it GO!). And why you're at it check out the article on the 50 Social Sites Every Business Needs a Presence On. That's a great read as well.

Technorati : crm, insidecrm.com, live crm, marc benioff, microsoft, salesforce.com

Microsoft Live CRM - A Brief First Look

I've been getting asked a ton of questions about Microsoft Live CRM over the past few months.  And today I had a chance to spend an hour talking with Bill Patterson, Microsoft's Director of Product Management for Dynamics CRM.  He spent the hour filling me in on what's going on with the heavily anticipated Live CRM. I had interviewed Microsoft's GM of Dynamics CRM, Brad Wilson, back in September for our radio show and was pretty curious to find out where things stood.

Bill was very good about answering my questions and filling me in on where things are.  Now I haven't been hands-on with it, But Bill did walk me through a some of the interface. I hope to get my hands on it soon to really dig in and try some things out. In the meantime I have to say I was impressed with what I did see and hear.

Here's what stood out to me:

• Currently in Early Access Program phase with about 500 North American based companies
• Expecting to be available in April 2008
• Early Access Program gives you access to Live CRM for free until the product goes live.  You can apply for the program at http://crm.dynamics.com/default.aspx
• Two flavors - Professional and Professional Plus 
• Offline functionality available with Professional Plus
• The product is aimed squarely at REAL small businesses, with the "perfect fit" being described as 5-25 users.
• Deep integration with Microsoft Outlook.  Most CRM services/apps are integrated with Outlook at this point, but what I saw today was the deepest level of Outlook integration (2003 and 2007) that will be available.  But are you really surprised by this? 
• The user interface will make those Outlook users feel right at home
• Deep Office 2007 integration that will be very helpful to those who spend a lot of time in Word and Excel
• Pretty robust list management capabilities
• Integration with third party services from Exact Target and Eloqua for heavy duty email blast/ sales acceleration needs. 
• Integration with Office Live (didn't see this but Bill touched on it)
• Website integration
• Customizable without coding
• What looks to be a pretty robust workflow engine
• CRM Mobile Express - a service that will launch sometime after Live CRM goes live that will enable various mobile devices (including non Windows Mobile devices like BlackBerrys) to access Live CRM
• A community portal with content aimed at assisting companies with CRM best practices at http://community.dynamics.com/. 

Since I only got a peek at things it's hard to really go into detail, but Live CRM did look promising.  Now we didn't touch on things like back office integration and what it will take to pull it off, reporting/dashboards, e commerce and some other things I'm on the lookout for.  Plus needing an email marketing partner to carry out big campaigns is an added layer of complexity that small business folks could really live without.  And I really have to see for myself how easy integrating a website to Live CRM will be.  But the Outlook integration will be a big hit with those small businesses looking for an smooth transition and quicker adoptions.  And the interface is pretty easy to deal with. 

All in all I think Live CRM will be a major player in the small business CRM space.  Especially for those small businesses that are heavy Outlook users and are new to CRM.  In fact Microsoft will help the entire sector out as I think they will spark a whole bunch of new CRM buyers into the market.  Good for Microsoft, good for other vendors serving small businesses, and most importantly good for small businesses.  Now more than ever they have great choices to select from.  With inexpensive, easier to use, highly functional options all over the place, 2008 should be the year small businesses finally GET CRM.

Passing the "Live Search" Test???

This one is for all my Microsoft buddies who always cringe when I mention how important it is for people to pass the Google Test when those needing help turn to their favorite search engine to find assistance. About six months ago I was interviewed for a Wells Fargo small business publication. It was for the cover story on Web 2.0 and small business. The reporter said they would send me a link to the article when it was available. So for the first few weeks I kept an eye out for it. I never heard from the reporter, and quite honestly can't even remember his (or her) name.

Anyway I figured I'd catch it when it showed up on one of the Google alerts I have set up on my name, company name, radio show, etc. But it didn't. Plus it never showed up when I Googled my name. So I just forgot about it. But for some strange reason recently I decided to do a search on my name in "the other" search engines. And guess what popped up when I "Live Searched" my name? Yup, the Wells Fargo magazine issue with my short interview.

So it just goes to show you that it's important to regularly put your name through all the search engines, because different stuff comes up in them. Although passing the "Live Search" Test is no where near as catch as passing the Google Test.

Technorati : ask, google, live search, microsoft, yahoo

International Solopreneurs...Get A Professional Email Address!!! Please???

This will be short and sweet. Please, all you international solopreneurs out there, do yourselves a HUGE favor and get yourself a email address that doesn't end with @aol.com, @hotmail.com, @yahoo.com, @gmail.com, etc, etc, etc. Except for the aol email address, of which I used to have years ago, I still have all of the above active. And I am a heavy user of my gmail account. But when it comes to my business card, I use my @crm-essentials email address.

It just looks so much more professional to have an email account that isn't free, because it makes it appear like your business isn't really all that serious. And it costs next to nothing to get a professional domain these days. In fact, you can get a free domain when you sign up for something like Microsoft Office Live.

Our most recent guest on the radio show was Microsoft's marketing director for Office Live, Michael Schultz. Please, please, PLEASE listen to this if you're even remotely interested in understanding the importance of getting a professional web presence for yourself. I think you'll be pleasantly surprised at how easy and inexpensive it is now to upgrade your image with a nice website and professional email address. Also check out the first segment discussing this year's Small Business Summit taking place in New York next month. Enjoy!

Technorati : michael schultz, microsoft office live, soloproneurs

Google vs. Microsoft: Battling In The Clouds and On Demand, But Will CRM Be The Deciding Factor?

I just got my copy of this week's Businessweek and had to read the cover story on Google's Next Big Dream. It's about how a 27 yr. old software engineer is leading their charge into cloud computing, where computing is done by a "cloud" of computers rather than by individual PCs or servers. Google is not alone in investing in this, as companies like Yahoo!, Amazon and IBM are all have their heads in the clouds. In fact Google and IBM are working together on this one, probably because of the other company investing heavily in cloud computing....Microsoft. You should check this article out when you have a minute as it looks like all of our futures are going to be a bit cloudy at some point.

Another article you should check out is in today's New York Times - Google Gets Ready to Rumble with Microsoft. I became aware of this one after reading Anita Campbell's post over at Small Business Trends. The cloud theme is carried over into this article, as Google's CEO Eric Schmidt believes that as high speed internet access proliferates and gets increasingly faster, and internet software gets better, more and more people will welcome using software over the web, instead of installing it on personal computers many people still feel are too complex to maintain. That's why Google is cranking out new apps all over the place, like GMail, Docs and Spreadsheets, Google Talk, and many, many others. And of course Google Apps for Domains which is Google's stripped down answer to Microsoft Office. Now in all actuality the feature-rich Office has way more functionality than any of the Google counterparts, and a better comparison at this time would be with Microsoft's Office Live. But you gotta believe that the goal here is to build feature-rich internet software that competes with installed stuff, so the end game has to be to deliver as much functionality as possible, which means installed Office. And I'd be willing to bet Microsoft will be adding more Office functionality to Office Live, which does present some issues as Office Live is a lot cheaper than regular Office.

So Google is going after Microsoft with frontal attack of SaaS. But one thing Microsoft has is the one thing Google doesn't as of yet. And when you think of SaaS or On Demand or whatever you want to call it, you think of CRM, because CRM has literally been the poster child for this movement, particularly when it comes to "the business web". In fact Salesforce.com, the poster child of on-demand CRM, proves this out. In a recent article, Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff noted that it took them seven years to reach 500,000 paid subscribers, but only 16 months to get the next 500,000. And Microsoft is rolling out Dynamics Live CRM, the SaaS version of its CRM application. Now I haven't seen it as of yet (I will be getting a briefing and demo shortly and will report on it) but folks I trust have told me it really looks good, and should get serious consideration by companies looking to implement CRM.

Now Google does have a great deal of momentum going for them, but I think this could be a big omission by Google, not having a CRM answer in their duel with Microsoft. More and more, businesses are turning to CRM to help automate lead generation and qualification, as well as streamline the sales process to turn qualified leads into cash money as quickly as possible. And with CRM vendors beginning to integrate Web 2.0 components into their services, CRM is really about to hit the mainstream. Just think the business network Salesforce.com is beginning to unleash with Salesforce-to-Salesforce. Concursive (formerly CentricCRM) is also doing this. And to be sure this is just the beginning as Web/CRM service integration is a perfect match which businesses of all sizes need as soon as possible.

This is shaping up to be an awesome battle. So I think it only makes sense for Google to fully arm themselves in this fight for the ages. It's not too late to for them to change this. Last year about this time I predicted that Google would by a CRM company. They didn't but they did cozy up with Salesforce.com to allow folks to manage AdWords campaigns from within the CRM app, as they did with NetSuite. But it makes even more sense to pull the trigger this year, especially with Microsoft getting their act together with Live CRM. So maybe I was just a bit early with my prediction. Maybe they were just waiting for Salesforce.com to nail down that one-millionth paid customer to prove that SaaS is here to stay in the business world. If this were to go down, the fight would REALLY be on!

Technorati : cloud computing, crm, google, microsoft, saas