CRM rebranding Dynamics CRM as xRM

I was interested to see Neal Houston’s article on the different products in the Dynamics family.

Through Microsoft’s method of acquiring companies there is some obvious overlap in all of these products across the Dynamics suite.

For example Dynamics CRM states that it has a full sales order process from Lead, Opportunities, Quotes, Invoices, Orders, Products. In reality the latter Invoices and Orders is usually accomplished by dedicated financial systems such as Nav, Agresso, JD Edwards etc. which CRM can be customised to integrate with.

Where CRM 4.0 shines is using all the different modules such as Sales, Marketing, Service to get the most from a central shared Contact database not at financial accounting.

What was interesting about Neals article was his comparison matrix which gives recommendations on the best scenarios to use each product for. Microsoft has a cheesy CRM to xRM video on youtube that essentially tries to assert that the CRM product could be used for all of these industries. Of course, Microsoft is just trying to sell “the platform” that the CRM product is built on to spark peoples imaginations that it can be used for Line of Business (LOB) applications as well as just the core Sales/Service/Marketing functionality.

To me, this is a “how-long-is-a-piece-of-string” type of proposition. Of course you could use CRM to create any system you like because custom entities, relationships and the power of the windows workflow foundation (WWF) can create any business case. The question is how much customisation work by your favorite CRM partner is involved ? (with the associated cost)

I have been involved in over 10 large Dynamics CRM implementations that have all been “xRM”. We have always taken the out of the box functionality and created solutions specific to the customers (line of) business.

My hope is that Microsoft will back up this xRM marketing campaign with a series of new free accelerator add-on feature packs for each industry sector in addition to the existing ones