by Andrew Karasev

Siebel is traditional CRM market leader, however and mostly due to recession 200-2003, Siebel lost sizable portion of CRM market to new tiger, such as Microsoft CRM.  Microsoft CRM s recent (2001) CRM answer from Microsoft and attempt top get market share from traditional vendors: Siebel, Oracle, Onyx.  Now it is targeted to the whole spectrum of horizontal and vertical market clientele.  It is tightly integrated with other Microsoft Business Solutions products such as Microsoft Great Plains, Solomon, Navision (the last two in progress).

We would like to give you Microsoft CRM selection advise, based on our MS CRM consulting practice, going back to its inception in 1999.  This article is written in FAQ style for beginner level

1. What is your industry – how strange it may look – close to 40% of our clients or so-called orphan clients – who needs help with Microsoft CRM customization are freight forwarding, transportation companies, who needs either improvement in Exchange-CRM connector or MS CRM integration with their freight forwarding system, where they would like to see on the fly resent shipment info.   And also to mention freight forwarding companies are usually large (more than 50 CRM users)
2. How comfortable you are with Microsoft technology in-house support – The old-days idea of Apple computer was to make computer absolutely intuitive and working for housewife.  Now we know that this is not realized so far.  If you compare MS CRM with Siebel – you will see that MS CRM requires y0u to have Microsoft Certified people in staff.  Everyone knows that Microsoft is “so innovative” that each product requires daily service packs and patches
3. Do you have Great Plains, Solomon or Navision – CRM is usually integrated with ERP system and if you are looking at MS CRM – you should benefit if you have ERP from Microsoft Business Solutions (Great Plains, Solomon, Navision, Axapta or Small Business Manager - SBM)
4. Operating System Philosophy -  Microsoft likes clients who have no UNIX/LINUX/IBM/Apple etc inclination and staked on Microsoft Windows 2003/2000/XP/Longhorn, preferably staying on Intel platform (No AMD Athlon 64)

Have fun in selection and decision.  We are here to help you: 1-866-528-0577

Andrew Karasev is Chief Technology Officer in Alba Spectrum Technologies – USA nationwide Microsoft CRM, Microsoft Great Plains customization company, with offices in Chicago, Phoenix, Los Angeles. San Francisco, San Diego, New York, Atlanta, Denver, Miami, Toronto, Montreal, Madrid, Moscow (www.albaspectrum.com ), he is Dexterity, SQL, C#.Net, Crystal Reports and Microsoft CRM SDK developer.