Plans Solidify for CRM Product

A July 2005 announcement reiterated previously disclosed plans to support marketing campaigns and service management in a new version of Microsoft Customer Relationship Management (Microsoft CRM), the company’s CRM application for small and mid-size businesses. Scheduled for general availability in the first quarter of 2006, Microsoft CRM 3.0 will also streamline product setup, expand language coverage, and add a new edition for smaller companies running Windows Small Business Server. The combination of a more complete feature set, quicker setup and integration, and broader market coverage could accelerate adoption, which has been modest since the product’s introduction in early 2003.

However, although Microsoft CRM is overseen by the Microsoft Business Solutions (MBS) business unit, integration with MBS’s enterprise resource planning (ERP) product lines is still a question. Microsoft partners are working to integrate Microsoft CRM with Axapta and Navision, but as of May 2005, the product integrates out of the box only with Great Plains. This lack of native integration could represent a missed opportunity for Microsoft and its partners to cross-sell Microsoft CRM to customers using its existing ERP products, which combined have nearly 100,000 customers.