We Blog CRM

New players join Oracle Siebel, Microsoft and Salesforce.com as the market seeks to empower agents and deliver next-generation service. There aren’t a lot of commonalities between the listed vendors in Magic Quadrant except that they have systems to help customers post-sale. To be fair, very few enterprises have cookie-cutter customer service requirements and these vendors try to cater to those unique needs.

The 2010 report includes 15 vendors which meet Gartner Research VP and Distinguished Analyst, Michael Maoz’s criteria for coverage. These vendors all have at least 15 customer references, have had at least five new customers for CSS in the past four quarters in at least two geographic regions and generate at least $7 million in software revenue for core CSS from new clients during the past four quarters. They are also evaluated on their cross-channel customer service efforts and whether the provider is creating or following industry leas as well as the vendor’s relationship with third-party consulting firms and systems integrators and own professional services. Lastly, Maoz’s report also took social integrations capabilities into account.

In his report, Maoz writes that four major initiatives will dominate overall customer service strategies through 2013: tying together service interaction channels; integrating social CRM capabilities, analyzing the customer experience; and apply business rules and knowledge in real time. The current leaders in the 2010 Magic Quadrant for CRM Customer Service Contact Centers rank as so: Microsoft Dynamics CRM, Oracle (Siebel), Pegasystems, RightNow Technologies and Salesforce.com.

Last year, Pegasystems was the sole resident of the Visionary segment because of their idea of matching business rules to specific customer service processes. Maoz lauds Pegasystems for its renewed emphasis on customer service contact centers, a long tail of customer success stories, and a jump in revenue.

RightNow Technologies has focused on the business-to-consumer customer service center where there’s not a need for deepened industry knowledge of expertise, noting that Microsoft and Salesforce.com are more general purpose solutions in this regard as well. However, Maoz points out that RightNow (with its acquisition of HiveLive) and Salesforce.com (for its development of Chatter) are making strong social plays even if they seem to be heavily weighted on the sales side.

The Challengers are Amdocs and SAP. Maoz writes that SAP has yet to tap into the large B2C contact center market but praises their community efforts. Amdocs, on the other hand, is well regarded as a telecommunications contact center provider but does not offer the same resources to other industries.

There are plenty of Niche Players who provide value but “just not to everyone”. They rank: Astute Solutions, Chordiant Software, eGlue, Jacada, Neocase Software, Oracle E-Business Suite, Portrait Software and Sword Ciboodle.

In larger trends, there seems to be more of an interest in improving the agent desktop rather than replacing it. There is a big desire to make things simpler for the service agent – how can they make agents feel smarter and less exposed to the customer? Understanding customer intent and applying the right rule in real time will boost agent confidence and losing the customer’s trust is probably the biggest problem companies are trying to work through.

Microsoft announced that the Mitsubishi Caterpillar Forklift Europe BV (MCFE) Company was awarded with the Gartner CRM Excellence Award for Efficiency for its customer relationship management (CRM) project.

MCFE, a Netherlands based company that manufactures, sells and distributes forklifts and corresponding parts, was able to streamline their order entry and processing, IT support requests, and vendor communications. By using xRM by Microsoft Dynamics CRM, the forklift distributor was able to develop a CRM framework that would result in a decrease in time for it to customize business applications from 35 to 10 days, and a reduction in development costs by 60%.

“Businesses need to deliver essential line-of-business applications more quickly and at a lower cost,” said Brad Wilson, general manager of Microsoft Dynamics CRM. “We are honored that MCFE is recognized by Gartner and to 1to1 Media for its project. This implementation is just one example of how our customers are unlocking new value from their existing Microsoft investments and delivering business solutions that are easy to design, easy to manage, and, for their users, easy to use.”

MCFE isn’t the only business to turn to Microsoft’s xRM program to solve their development framework and customer success needs.

A few xRM customer successes:

CAPTRUST Financial Advisors

Comag Marketing Group

Melbourne Business School

The North Carolina Department of Crime Control and Public Safety

ValMark Securities Inc.

Microsoft’s Dynamic Business Program is helping companies optimize their business development process and reach their full potential through flexible but relevant applications.

Meritide, a Minnesota-based IT consulting firm, announced last week that they expanded their full-service Microsoft Dynamics CRM solutions practice. Meritide provides strategy, integration, design, and implementation services to upper mid-market companies, and with their expanded Microsoft Dynamics CRM products, will provide clients with insight into sales, marketing, and service activities.

Microsoft Dynamics CRM is highly flexible and customizable, and is distributed entirely through a partner system (which allows for even greater personalization). It offers tight integration with Microsoft Office applications—which helps reduce training time—and one Meritide customer, Emprimus, was especially taken with the Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online tool.

Emprimus offers solutions protecting against intentional electromagnetic interference (IEMI), and does most of their marketing through trade shows, large presentations, and industry associations. Emprimus’s President and CEO, Gale Nording, said the Dynamics CRM Online application was extremely helpful for streamlining the sales cycle, but declined to give specific details.

Meritide also implements BMC solutions, but the company’s president, Patrick Irestone, noted that Microsoft Dynamics deployments have increased with customers’ demand for cost-effective solutions. Microsoft recently reduced the base prices of their CRM solutions (and are offering 6 months free to Salesforce.com and Oracle users), and given the satisfaction of Meritide’s customers, business will only get better for Dyanamics.

With the technical preview of Office 2010 several months ago, Microsoft announced a web-based companion to the suite, Office Web Applications, which some predict will be the “Google Apps Killer.” Last week, Microsoft released a partial preview of the online package to beta testers and invited guests. Web Apps features extensions of PowerPoint, Excel, and Word (and eventually OneNote), will be hosted in Windows Live SkyDrive and Microsoft SharePoint, and has received positive feedback thus far.

SkyDrive is a free, online storage space of 25GB available to any users of Windows Live (of which there are about 500 million), and will store Web Apps content created by Live users. SkyDrive is not intended for enterprise users, so businesses interested in Web Apps need SharePoint—storage that will soon be integrated with the MS Cloud, Azure—or Office volume licensing.

Like Google Apps, Web Apps doesn’t require any desktop applications—users without the desktop Office suite can still view content. However, as it stands, Web Apps seems best thought of as a supplement to the desktop platform. One of the biggest issues is that Web Apps’ Word only allows for document viewing, not editing. In addition, Web Apps doesn’t allow for web site building, and it only facilitates simple composition within PowerPoint and Excel. The official version of Web Apps will permit editing within Word, but some of the other editing inabilities will remain and only be available through the desktop version.

Since the preview’s release, reviews have been favorable. Given Microsoft’s aim to create seamless interaction between OS, browser, and mobile, it is notable that a preview of the SharePoint mobile integration was well received. Also, many testers were pleased to see Web Apps function capably outside of Internet Explorer. For users looking for light web-based CRM, perhaps the biggest boon is Web Apps’ similarity to its desktop counterpart. The bells and whistles aren’t all there, but there’s no learning curve for those already accustomed to Office Suite apps. We’ll have to wait for kinks in the test version to be fixed before judging whether Web Apps is indeed the Google Apps “killer,” but for now, it is a formidable opponent.

Not even two weeks into September and Microsoft Dynamics has announced specialty accelerators for its CRM platform—there will soon be Education, Insurance, and Non-Profit templates—as well as a social networking accelerator.

Using xRM, the new development platform for relationship-tracking applications, three new mission-centered Microsoft CRM templates were created: the Education and Insurance models are catered to those industries, as is a Non-Profit model that is also intended to increase the efficiency of membership workflow within member-driven coalitions.

Another feather in the Microsoft CRM cap is the Twitter Accelerator, which is a medium for business professionals to monitor and analyze their customers’ conversations on social networking sites. Integrating Twitter, the accelerator offers a dashboard for real-time status updates. Additional social networks are to be introduced in future releases, but for now Microsoft CRM aims to boost users’ sales databases by connecting with micro-bloggers, thereby getting a handle on both customer insights and the people driving conversation.

Dunbar Armored, an armored car company headquartered in Hunt Valley, Maryland, has selected Microsoft Dynamics CRM 3.0 for its sales teams. Dunbar will use the CRM technology to integrate data that is generated in its 80 branches across the US. Microsoft scored over competing CRM systems on the basis of its role-based CRM capabilities.

The Microsoft offering will work alongside Dunbar’s existing systems that store customer information. The deployment of Microsoft will enable Dunbar to eliminate manual processes and working with spread sheets for obtaining information on prospects and customers. Planning and reporting scenarios, such as consolidation and budgeting, are offered through integration with Microsoft Office PerformancePoint Server.

South African company i5 has been named the first global winner of the Microsoft Partner of the Year award in the category, Microsoft Dynamics CRM. The award is to be presented at the Worldwide Partner Conference in Houston, Texas, in July.

According to i5 CEO Glen Ansell , the award is the culmination of the company’s determination and sharp focus on the Microsoft technology stack, and specifically, Dynamics CRM. “Having recognised the viability and relevance of Microsoft’s CRM package soon after the inception of i5 in 2004, our company took a strategic decision to become the South African market leader in this aspect of Microsoft’s technology solutions,” he says.

Inetium, a Microsoft partners, has announced that it will be conducting an Accelerated Deployment Program for Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online customers. The program will help businesses to start quickly and effectively with the Dynamics online CRM.

Headquartered in Bloomington, Minnesota, Inetium provides technology consulting services to organizations of all size throughout the United States. Inetium officials say the their company is committed to increasing people and organizational productivity by providing IT planning services, customer relationship management, business productivity, IT infrastructure, Web strategies and real estate technology products.

Dovarri has announced today the signing of a three year contract with its newest client, the Houston Texans. The Texans, Houston’s National Football League (NFL) franchise, will retain Dovarri to provide Sales Force Automation and Customer Relationship Management (SFA/CRM) services through Orizon, Dovarri’s recently released software.

Orizon, Enterprise SFA/CRM software built entirely on the Microsoft Windows SharePoint platform, integrates with the Texans’ proprietary database, which is also built on the SharePoint platform. Orizon manages the sales process and aligns sales procedures within their sales team.

Frontpages Web Hosting Network has added Microsof Dynamics CRM 4.0 to its roster of hosted offerings. The company is a recent Microsoft Gold Partner and is latest offering will give customers an integrated on-demand CRM solution. The pricing is $99 for small business solutions, $495 per month for corporate and $4,595 per month for enterprise offerings.

Frontpage specializes in offering Microsoft-developed products such as SharePoint, Exchange, Project, PerformancePoint, Office Communications Server and SQL, along with dedicated server hosting.