Microsoft Tackles CRM - ' Page Two ' (
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Most of our testing of Microsoft CRM was on the same physical server (a two-CPU Toshiba America Information Systems Inc. server with 1GB of RAM). Microsoft recommends the single-box approach for up to 40 users, and Microsoft officials said the majority of implementations will be able to use the single-box configuration. We found that the one-box approach provided good performance with our test installation base, which consisted of 50 Active Directory users and six licensed Microsoft CRM users.
With Microsoft CRM, Microsoft has decided to peg the license keys to an organizational unit, an approach similar to how Great Plains provides license keys. This method is somewhat inflexible—we found it impossible to change our organization properties without requesting new keys from Microsoft, for example.
The power of MS CRM
Once running, the power of Microsoft CRM becomes apparent. Because it leverages Exchange 2000 as its mail server and Active Directory as its directory server, it is extremely easy to manage users and rights. Other CRM systems, including hosted services such as Salesforce.com Inc.s Salesforce.com, require the management of separate directories and user properties. The disadvantage to the Microsoft CRM approach is that customers must use the entire Microsoft stack for Microsoft CRM to work at all.
Once the Microsoft CRM server is installed, users can immediately access and begin using the system via Microsofts Internet Explorer browser. The user interface is clean and easy to use. In fact, its power is in its simplicity. The browser interface should give hosted CRM solutions—including Salesforce.com, UpShot Corp.s UpShot and Salesnet—a run for their money.
We tested basic CRM and SFA functionality with MS CRM mainly because thats all thats there. Our first test was importing a list of contacts, some of which we designated as leads (people who are prospects). We then created a series of products that were variations of bicycles that are part of the Adventure Works Cycle, the organization that Microsoft licensed to us for evaluation purposes.
We then accessed the package as if we were salespeople and started on working on our leads. We e-mailed the leads, created a simple marketing campaign and started tracking the interactions with the customers. This part of Microsoft CRM works extremely well.
We couldnt figure out, however, how to automatically generate lead campaigns in the first place. For example, we expected MS CRM to spit out a Web page or HTML block that we could put on a Web site and track interest in our products. This feature is available in most of Microsoft CRMs competitors.
On the other hand, Microsoft CRM includes better than average office automation features. For example, it was extremely easy to have MS CRM automatically spit out an e-mail message to hot prospects.
Surprisingly, we found that it was impossible to customize the user interface, something that is a fairly routine task with other browser-based solutions. For customization, Microsoft depends on the fat-client approach, which is based on either Microsoft Outlook or custom Windows forms. Although this customization is extremely flexible and powerful, it requires a knowledge of Microsofts .Net Framework, including the C# programming language.
We found using Microsoft CRM with Outlook to be a good experience, especially since many Microsoft shops use Outlook anyway. The use of Outlook includes the installation of XML Parser 4.0 and Indexing Service on the client as well as the installation of SQL Server Desktop Engine. Its with this configuration that Microsoft allows Microsoft CRM to be used offline.
In contrast, Salesforce.com uses the same browser accessing data via Extensible Stylesheet Language Transformations. The advantage to Salesforce.coms implementation is that offline and online versions look nearly identical. The disadvantages are that the offline version of Salesforce.com lacks a security model (it depends on Windows security instead) and that there may be instances in which there are data synchronization errors.
We used Outlook and Internet Explorer interchangeably on Microsoft CRM without problems.
Reporting and analysis is one of the most critical capabilities that business and sales users gain with a CRM solution, and Microsoft CRM shows some potential here. Microsoft CRM uses Crystal Decisions Inc.s Crystal Server 8.5 to spin out usable reports. The current version of Microsoft CRM offers reporting functionality equivalent to most hosted solutions, although UpShot.coms UpShot reporting features are a step above the competitive heap.
Whats missing, however, is a way to run reports across financial data. Running reports against the financial data and the CRM data together is the only way to get a full customer view, and none of the solutions in this space provides the functionality out of the box. Microsoft does not yet even integrate with Great Plains and Navision systems, both of which are owned by Microsoft. However, Microsoft officials have said these connectors are in beta and will be available in the future.
eWEEK Labs Director John Taschek can be reached at john_taschek@ziffdavis.com.
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