Liz Herbert
senior analyst
Forrester Research (US)
Michael Warrilow
managing director
Hydrasight (Australia)
HERBERT
How does Microsoft’s Dynamics CRM product compare to enterprise customer relationship management (CRM) suite offerings such as those put out by Oracle and SAP?
WARRILOW
At the core, a key differentiator for Microsoft is the simplicity of its offering. On-premise deployments of Dynamics CRM, for mid-sized organisations, can be completed in weeks when done by a suitably skilled team. For smaller organisations it can often be done in days.
In contrast, Siebel and SAP deployments have traditionally taken much longer due to custom process integration requirements (a large part of the reason many larger organisations have moved to salesforce.com). It’s not uncommon for larger organisations in Australia to take many hundreds of person days to deploy an on-premise product from the CRM and/or ERP (enterprise resource planning) “heavyweights”. (Hydrasight research indicates Siebel generally continues to remain this way but that SAP is improving in this regard.)
WARRILOW
In an industry rife with consolidation, competition and “co-opetition” (cooperation between companies to boost competition), what is your opinion on Microsoft’s alliance with SAP (called Duet, which allows SAP to be viewed using the Office interface)? What does this mean for Oracle and its customers?
HERBERT
The Duet initiative is further evidence that buyers are seeking tight Office integration and an easy-to-use familiar user interface. Since MS Office is the most widely adopted productivity solution in the business world Oracle must also demonstrate strong Office integration if it wants to satisfy customer demand, regardless of whether it formally partners with Microsoft or not.
HERBERT
Firms are increasingly looking to enable end-to-end business processes that span beyond CRM. How is Microsoft addressing this need beyond Duet?
WARRILOW
In terms of CRM, Microsoft is (wisely) choosing not to address this need in a direct way. Rather, it relies on partners and customers, working together, to push the envelope and address specific needs of particular industries. More broadly, in the run-up to Vista and Office12 (due in 2007), Microsoft is trying to convince enterprise customers of its value and differentiation against key competitors.
The current marketing buzz term for this is “People Ready” (empowering people with the right tools) but Hydrasight believes it could just as easily have been “enterprise ready” except for fear of backlash. In other words, competing against the likes of IBM (Lotus, WebSphere) and Oracle has not come without cost.
Microsoft’s enterprise products are increasingly considered by many organisations as cluttered and complex. Hydrasight does not expect Microsoft’s software stack to become easier to manage at the enterprise level before at least 2010. As a result, we believe enterprises will continue to be challenged with issues related to change management, integration and sustainable/scalable information management practices. Ironically, this holds equally true for those that commit to the Microsoft platform.
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