An old work colleague from more than 10 years ago pinged me a random email last week asking which CRM (Customer Relationship Management) software I use for my sales teams.
She actually described it as follows: "What system does your sales team use for filing their contacts and details etc...?", which is probably how most non geek-speak people would describe a CRM system.
It happened that I've been spending some serious time thinking about this, reading web sites, listening to and watching podcasts and online demos, so I felt pretty damn qualified to offer a quick summary of my thoughts.
That email has now become this post which I hope many will find useful.
Although I normally sign the praises of our outsourced IT service providers for their day to day service, they sadly managed to sell me into migrating our internal CRM from Salesforce.com to Microsoft Dynamics CRM.
The main reason I decided to do this, was because of the apparent smooth integration with Outlook, which I felt Salesforce lacked.
This was OK in theory, but with hindsight a devastating and costly mistake. The first few weeks we used Microsoft Dynamics were littered with problems, most of the issues we raised had to be escalated to Microsoft and many came back with workarounds, not simple solutions or replies like "Sorry it's not possible yet" or "it doesn't work like that", which to me were unacceptable.
How on earth can Microsoft develop a CRM system that does not properly integrate with its own flagship product Outlook!? Does the hand not talk to the brain?
In fairness, like Salesforce, Microsoft Dynamics CRM has many great features that with time and effort you can configure to create a very clever and personalised customer relationship tool.
She actually described it as follows: "What system does your sales team use for filing their contacts and details etc...?", which is probably how most non geek-speak people would describe a CRM system.
It happened that I've been spending some serious time thinking about this, reading web sites, listening to and watching podcasts and online demos, so I felt pretty damn qualified to offer a quick summary of my thoughts.
That email has now become this post which I hope many will find useful.
Although I normally sign the praises of our outsourced IT service providers for their day to day service, they sadly managed to sell me into migrating our internal CRM from Salesforce.com to Microsoft Dynamics CRM.
The main reason I decided to do this, was because of the apparent smooth integration with Outlook, which I felt Salesforce lacked.
How on earth can Microsoft develop a CRM system that does not properly integrate with its own flagship product Outlook!? Does the hand not talk to the brain?
In fairness, like Salesforce, Microsoft Dynamics CRM has many great features that with time and effort you can configure to create a very clever and personalised customer relationship tool.
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