Relationship In Business - Piaras MacDonnell

I've used a number of CRM solutions over the years and Dynamics CRM is the latest and probably the best.  CRM and Service Support applications seem to cause the marmite affect I think mainly because you are using them to track a problem or close some business.  So what do I love and hate about Dynamics?

What I love about Dynamics CRM

1. Usability: Clean, fast, and easy to understand  interface.

2. Integration with Windows: Works seamlessly with XP, IE, Active Directory and especially Outlook.

3. Off-the-self Richness: Out of the box it is packed full of features.  Important when you want to get up and running fast

4. Configurable: More options than a bag full of Swiss army knives.  Granular security, integrated designer tool and a good query tool.

5. Easy of data import: Unless you are converting unusual historical data the job is relatively easy.  Well structured data model and if the data is in outlook the job is trivial.

What I hate about Dynamics CRM 4.0

1. Cost: Unless you have already committed to Microsoft across the organisation this can be expensive.  Even the BPOS model quickly gets expensive after 20 users.
2. Desktop Performance: Even after applying all the patchs, archiving your mail and adding RAM expect a performance hit.  The background process will slow things down and if you have a salesman on an older laptop expect rebellion.
3. No unified search:  In the new Google/web 2.0 world we expect to be able to easily search for a phrase or string.  Any "advanced search" will require you to build a query or report.  This not only seriously slows adoption in an organisation but adds a technical overhead to even the simplest of searches.
4. Stuck in an MS World.  Dynamics misbehaves if you don't use IE and it is optimised for Outlook which is to say runs poorly with anything else.  The client for synchronisation only runs on Windows and you can only launch Microsoft documents in-browser.
5. Processes Assumed: Dynamics assumes you have a mature sales system. Try running any of the canned reports and you'll quickly see what I mean. The relationships, product definitions, pricing tables, invoice module and marketing manager require that all the tables are setup before everything works correctly.  Most SME don't have their services that well defined, this will seriously slow adoption

I could go on about XRM (pretty amazing), realtime integrity checking, Workflows, Screen designer, Report scheduling, etc but for business users it would not impress.  What I can say as a business user is that it helps me maintain better business relationships, track and close opportunities faster and helps my organisation share customer intelligence more easily.  The result is that we deliver a better,more professional service and we all gain the business benifits.