Published on the 06/06/2013 | Written by Newsdesk
Microsoft has outlined the roadmap for its Dynamics CRM system which will see it place greater focus on mobility and integration of social media content and analysis into the tool…
Microsoft is planning major revisions to its Dynamics CRM system intended to take account of the new relationship between suppliers and customers. Thomas Gudman, Dynamics group lead at Microsoft Australia, said that the “new customer” was much more informed and empowered than in previous generations. Where in the past marketers might have been able to push out sales messages to consumers – now companies were being approached by savvy consumers who had done their homework and knew pretty much what they wanted to buy from whom and at what price.
It’s prompted a rethink for the Dynamics CRM tool. Microsoft already claims to be doing very well in the CRM space and that its customer relationship management business is growing by 20 percent a year – much faster than the 4.2 percent growth attributed to the sector as a whole by IDC. The system has been continually updated – and the most recent release of the tool featured a link to Yammer which integrated the enterprise social network bought by Microsoft for US$1.2 billion with its Dynamics CRM.
Gudman said that two recent Microsoft purchases –of Marketing Pilot which developed a marketing automation suite and Net Breeze which has the capability to monitor social network sentiment in 28 languages – would be more tightly integrated with the Dynamics CRM in the latest version of the tool slated to ship in Australia in the second half of the year. The new CRM release will also feature a “suite of native mobile apps” according to Gudman.
Microsoft brought together three larger users of its Dynamic CRM system at an event in Sydney this week – home builder Metricon, serviced office business Servcorp, and real estate company Colliers International – to discuss their experiences with the system. All three have implemented Dynamics CRM as a foundation platform intended to inform all their interactions with clients, and in some cases also form the basis for an HR management system.
One key challenge identified by the companies was the need to actively encourage adoption of the tools by internal users. Metricon said that it took about 18 months to achieve widescale adoption of the tool, but now claims it has saved it over $500,000 by reducing administrative overheads and streamlining (and reducing the cost of) software licences.
