Review of the April 2010 CRM Statement of Direction

It is that time again when Microsoft throw out the latest statement of direction for CRM for us to glean morsels from. For those interested in reading it, this is where you can download it from.

http://cid-4d66c5ae1389f5d8.skydrive.live.com/self.aspx/Public/Dynamics%20CRM%204.0%20information/CRM%5e_StatementOfDirection%5e_April2010.pdf

Here is my take on the big-ticket news from the document.

Accelerators

The already released Social Networking (Twitter) accelerator and the Partner Relationship Management accelerator also got a plug but there was mention of future accelerators:

• Portal Accelerators: Basically creating a web site, linking CRM and using CRM as a store for the content. Those that went to Convergence this year will have seen the foundation product of this, namely the ADXStudio Portal generation tool for CRM. Microsoft will make a 'lite' version of this available as an accelerator. Imagine you want a web site linked to CRM and don't want to use SharePoint as the CMS, you now have an alternative.


• Customer Care Accelerator: This used to be a standalone set of tools called the Customer Care Framework (CCF). It's now been added to the CRM mix as an accelerator. The good news is this is already out in the wild:

http://blogs.msdn.com/crm/archive/2010/05/07/http-blogs-msdn-com-crm-pages-bio-karen-smith-aspx.aspx

If you have a bunch of old apps that need to talk to each other and don't want to re-create them on a modern platform, then the Customer Care Accelerator is your best friend. The evangelists will tell you it is much more than that i.e. it provides tools for CTI integration single sign-on etc. so feel free to check it out. Understand though this is a framework for development and not a solution as such.

Solutions

Microsoft is starting to play to verticals, leveraging the flexibility of the underlying platform of Dynamics CRM (often marketed as xRM). The first 'toe in the water' in terms of a commercial offering is the Non-Profit solution. This is an Online offering seeking to address common needs of Non-Profits (Donation/Pledge management, Member management etc.).

The downer is this is only available Online which means if you're not in the USA or Canada you're out of luck. However, if you're a partner or customer that think you could really get value from this, talk to Microsoft (if you're a customer, through your partner, if you're a partner through your PAM) as you may be able to get hold of the xml customizations which form the basis for the solution, no promises though.

Integration Tools

The CRM Adapter for GP got another plug. I've written about this before and I have big hopes for it (http://leontribe.blogspot.com/2009/10/dynamics-crm-gp-adapter-is-looking-to.html). Again, this was demonstrated at Convergence and as they are opening the API to it, potentially it could become a Scribe-killer, maybe not now though. For now, its lofty ambitions will have to settle for putting a serious dent in eOne's SmartConnect market.

The tool allows for connection between CRM, GP 10 and GP 2010 in any combination (it will also support CRM 5 when that comes out). Just as an aside, let's say you need a workflow engine to do x to Purchase Orders in GP when y happens in Sales Orders, or you need to replicate your vendors across multiple companies in GP. From what I can tell, this tool will allow you to do it, having source and target as GP, regardless of CRM.

In 2011, Microsoft will also update the adapter to work with AX6 and in 2010-2011 with NAV2009. We then have a workflow engine for those tools as well.

Developer Tools

The SDK has been updated to make life easier for developers. If this is something of interest, crack open the Statement of Direction because, as a non-developer, all I know is you can now use LINQ, there are a bunch of portal integration tools and the line count for setting up a connection to CRM via the web services has been reduced by about 1/10.

International Availability of CRM Online

Rumours abound on this one but Microsoft are getting more and more official on this every day. The Statement of Direction promises it will happen in the second half of 2010, in line with what Kiril said at Convergence. The promise at Convergence was 32 markets. This document commits to 29, of which New Zealand is included but Australia IS NOT! Remember Microsoft, Australians spell most words like Americans, we know who the first President of the USA is but few could name our own first Prime Minister and our dollar is practically 1-1 to the greenback, we are an obvious choice. Make us one of the missing 3 markets.

May's Online Service Pack

• Better integration tools
• Multi-lingual capabilities (I think it is French, Spanish and Portuguese for now, which makes sense for USA and Canada)

Finally a timeframe for CRM '5'

Again, rumours abound on this one and if you were at Convergence you may have heard dates mentioned. However, the Statement of Direction get us close to an official answer. CRM "5" will be released in the second half of 2010. So there you have it, no CRM "5" before July and given the historical release months, I'd say closer to December. Reuben Krippner has also been quoted as saying that Online will come out first followed by On-Premise a little later (see http://www.twitter.com/leontribe for details).

CRM "5" tidbits

An official screenshot of the CRM "5" ribbon! However, it doesn't give away too much. The only things which caught my interest are in the top right corner. 'Global Search' (could this be the holy grail of using a keyword across multiple entities?) and 'Sign Out' (Could this allow us to log in as different users or to different organizations easily and seamlessly?)

Other morsels include:

• A reduction in the number of open screens and clicks
• Allow users to select the views most relevant to their role (custom views at a user level?)
• Configurable SharePoint integration (as opposed to linking them through code) as well as leveraging team management across both products
• More complex territory management
• Graphical visualisation and personalised dashboards
• Better goal-setting and performance management of staff
• Allowing for 'team selling' on opportunities (This could mean team ownership or a 1:N relationship between Opportunities and Users
• They've 'fixed' emailing so you can now attach documents
• Support for recurring activities
• Custom solution management. Likened to the Windows Add/Remove Programs, this will allow solutions to be 'fenced' and added to CRM. Other solutions can build on top of them but now edit them
• Plugins in "5" will be able to be run on the server i.e. we can now run plugins on a hosted solution (and maybe on Online?)

The Tyranny of Best Practice

I'm at Convergence this week. This is Microsoft's Dynamics conference for all things CRM, SL, AX, NAV and GP. To get news and info released, check out my twitter feed (http://www.twitter.com/leontribe ).

I am writing this blog because of a comment made at least a couple of times during the opening keynote. Specifically, that Dynamics CRM is designed to allow for flexible business processes. This is great and, as it should be. The last thing we need Dynamics CRM to do is help us achieve best practice.

I understand this is a curious statement for me to make as surely we want to run our companies as well as possible; If someone has analysed an industry, say, engine manufacture, and has determined the best way to do it, why would we not adopt the process?

The answer is in the assumptions behind 'best practice'. If we review a specific process within an industry, the concept of ‘best practice’ assumes that all companies are trying to achieve exactly the same result. The thing is one of the key differentiators for a business is their processes and the products and services that result from those processes.

If all companies adopted precisely the same technique to make an engine, all engines would look the same and the manufacturers would need to find another source of competitive advantage. The obvious alternative is competing on price.

There is nothing more dangerous than players in an industry competing on price. Margins shrink, internal spending is reduced and ultimately everyone, including the consumer loses.

I will reiterate a statement I made earlier as it key to my thinking on this issue. One of the best places to derive a sustainable, competitive advantage for a company is its processes and the products and services that result from them. This is true whether you are making engines, selling encyclopaedias or implementing software.

Therefore, if you have a software package that forces your business to follow its way of doing things (best practice), you will be doing things in exactly the same way as anyone else with that software package and you have removed any competitive advantage from the business process that software controls.

CRM systems, as evidenced by Microsoft’s xRM marketing campaign, are becoming the key system for managing many of a business’ processes. Therefore, while it is virtuous that your CRM system assist you in managing the quality of the processes your business follows, it is a mortal sin for that CRM system to dictate to the business what that process should be.

If you are considering implementing a CRM system to manage areas of your business, ensure it is one that allows you to determine how the process works and allows for flexibility in your business processes (as nothing is set in stone in business) and not one that forces you to adopt the tyranny of best practice.

Automatic Lead Assignment Using Workflows

The problem with using workflows for lead assignment is you don't know who you sent the last lead to. However, you can get around this in a couple of ways.

Method 1: Code

I'm not much of a coder so I figured I'd try to achieve it without using plugins or jscript

Method 2: The cheeky use of entities to store values

To keep track of who we last sent a lead to, we're going to create a new entity and create a record for the variable storage. Let's call the entity 'RoundRobin'. We have a few options here.

• We could use the ownership relationship to store the next user to receive a lead
• We could set up a new N:1 relationship to the user entity
• We could add an attribute and store a value there

In my case I've set up an attribute.

I've also set up a 1:N relationship to Leads (they're called Enquiries here but they are just renamed Leads, I promise).

Now the tricky bit, the workflow. The steps of the workflow are:

• Link the lead to your one RoundRobin record
• If the attribute is 'a', assign the Lead to User1 and update the attribute to 'b' (in the case of using a relationship to the users, simply reassign it)
• If the attribute is 'b', assign the Lead to User2 and update the attribute to 'a'

Here is one I prepared earlier:

In this case I have it as On Demand but with workflows being asynchronous, this tends to act a little weird (basically a bunch of Leads get assigned before the attribute has a chance to change). However, if you run it on the creation of the lead, it works fine assuming there is a reasonable time between lead creations.

Auto-assigning workflow-created records to the current user

One of the 'features' of Dynamics CRM is that if you use a workflow to generate records, the owners of those records will be the author of the workflow, NOT the current user. Generally this is undesirable.

So how do we get around this? Without too much difficulty actually.

The trick is we can use the event trigger to tell us who the current user is. For example, let's say we have a workflow that creates a set of task records when a new account is created. While easy to set up, all the tasks will be owned by the workflow creator and not the user. However, as we know the user created the parent account (the event trigger), we can populate the task owners with the 'created by' of the parent account.

If the status of a record changes or the attributes are modified, use the 'modified by'. If the record is assigned, check the owner.

There you have it. A really easy way to assign workflow records to the current user and not the workflow administrator.

Dynamics CRM-GP Adapter is looking to be a Scribe-killer

In my last blog (http://leontribe.blogspot.com/2009/09/review-of-latest-dynamics-crm-statement.html) I suggested that the CRM-GP integration tool could be a Scribe-killer as it appears to be a generic web service connector which just happens to be locked down to Dynamics CRM and Dynamics GP for now.

Literally days later, the tool was released into the wild (http://msdnrss.thecoderblogs.com/2009/10/05/released-microsoft-dynamics-crm-40-adapter-for-microsoft-dynamics-gp-100-integration-tool/) and the information confirms my suspicions.

The FAQ states:

"The integration is a web service to web service integration. The integration is comprised of an NT Service which binds together web services for both Microsoft Dynamics CRM and Microsoft Dynamics GP to read and write data. The integration service also leverages a transform engine to convert the data between the interfaces to ensure that the data moving between the two systems is compatible and in correct form."

So it's a generic tool for taking data from one web service and feeding it to another, with the ability to manipulate it in between.

The FAQ also tells us:

"Version 1 of the Adapter has been built to integrate Microsoft Dynamics CRM and Microsoft Dynamics ERP applications only."

That's it; confirmation it's going to be used beyond Dynamics GP.

What is really cool is if they allow you to use the tool to connect both ends to GP, you suddenly get a basic workflow engine e.g. when a product is created in one company, push it across the other companies in GP etc.

So is this the end of Scribe? Despite the title, not likely. While there is the opportunity to go beyond Dynamics CRM and the ERP camp I would think this is quite a way off. I think this will significantly damage Scribe in the Dynamics space but outside of this I don't think Microsoft have much incentive to develop the tool at this stage.

Review of the latest Dynamics CRM Statement of Direction

Microsoft have released their latest Statement of Direction

http://blogs.msdn.com/crm/archive/2009/09/21/updated-microsoft-dynamics-crm-statement-of-direction-is-now-available.aspx

While this is hardly 'hot off the press', I haven't seen much in the way of review of the content and what it tells us about what is likely to happen in version 4.0 and the elusive version 5.0.

Timeframes for release of version 5.0 ("V.Next")

Back in the August 2008, the proposed release time was "late 2009, early 2010" (https://partner.microsoft.com/US/productssolutions/dynamics/40086846), this has now moved to 2010. The rumour is towards the end of 2010 and, if history is anything to go by, December 2010 (v3 was released in December 2005 and v4 was released in December 2007). I'm guessing Christmas break is an excellent motivator for getting software out of the door.

Mobility

The document makes mention of the free Mobile Express add-on for Dynamics CRM, which is now a standard part of the product and will be part of the rollups from six onwards. For those that want to do things like create new activities in CRM from a mobile device, the document also refers to the TenDigits alliance and the MobileAccess product which now supports Blackberry and Windows Mobile devices (http://www.tendigits.com/mobileaccess.html). This is great, I knew about the alliance but not that they had finally changed the product to support Blackberry and Windows Mobile, nice work!

Accelerators

The big news here are the additional sales methodology accelerators that are coming out (Miller Heiman, SPI and TAS). SPI is already out and, as many have discovered is not open source like the other accelerators. It is free to try though.

The document also mentions the second wave of accelerators (Social, Portal and Partner management). All are slated for released Q3 2009. While there is plenty of information in the wild about the Social accelerator, there is very little on the others. SOD comes through with screenshots of the partner management tool, which is essentially for channel partner management.



You can assign opportunities to partners and even have them bid for jobs, if we believe the screenshots.

eService is being improved to allow customers to download documents from CRM, a nice touch. Event Management is being improved to support custom attributes.

Outlook Client
The Outlook client is being upgraded to support Outlook 2010. Synchronization of contacts and activities is apparently being improved (I wonder if they'll fix the address book http://leontribe.blogspot.com/2008/12/dynamic-crms-address-book-is-broken.html)

This should be out by the end of the year.

GP integration
Back in the days of version 3, there was a connector which allowed invoices and the like to be automatically sent to Dynamics GP. When CRM version 4 came out, a new version of the connector didn't...until now...almost. A connector between Dynamics CRM 4.0 RU5 and Dynamics GP 10 SP4 is slated for release by the end of the year. Two years is one big wait for this so let's hope its worth it.

No word on the other ERP products in the Dynamics stable (NAV, AX, SL) other than this esoteric sentence:

"The system is based on a transformation engine and uses specific adapters to identify source and destination systems".

For a connector specifically built for CRM and GP, an architecture supporting adaptors and automatic system identification seems a bit of an overkill. Could this be Microsoft's Scribe-killer?

Dynamics CRM Online
A question that used to be frequently asked at CRM meetings was "When is CRM Online coming to insert country outside of the USA and Canada here". Few people bother asking over here in Australia any more as local hosting providers have filled the gap. However, Microsoft are extending the reach of CRM Online beyond the borders of the North American continent and apparently going to be 'available in all major international markets mid-2010'. Let the price wars begin...

The SLA for CRM Online has been changed with an uptime guarantee of '3 nines', that is, 99.9% of the time. For the mathematicians, that's 8-9 hours downtime a year.

There is also the lead capture facility for CRM Online which basically sets up a web page for you and feeds the leads directly into Dynamics CRM.

Finally, the next service update of CRM Online (due in November) will give mobile access to CRM Online.

Features of Version 5 ("V.Next")
No big surprises that Microsoft are still holding their cards close to their chest on this one. A few morsels thrown out include:

• Increased use of 'the ribbon'
• Reduction in mouse-clicks and form opening to achieve common tasks
• Users get to define their default views
• Improvements in the KnowledgeBase Article editor and the ability to attach documents
• Specifics were vague but the team concept in CRM seems to be getting a bit of a working over in the new version. There are already whispers of team-ownership of records in version 5 so this should be an interesting area to watch
• 'Fixing' of email communications i.e. allowing attachments to outbound emails in areas other than workflow
• Recurring activity support
• Creation of a decent package management system for bundling customisations of the product which they describe as working like the Add/Remove programs feature of Windows
• Restructuring to allow for plugins/custom workflows to run on the host server securely. Something very useful for hosting environments where, currently, a plugin has the potential to reach across all hosted organisations
• Authentication through Windows Identity Foundation (WIF)
• Auditing 'out of the box'
• Improvements to the use of WWF (workflow)
• Global and hierarchical picklists
• Improved Visual Studio integration (could it be we get something more than a notepad clone for creating jscript?)

Interesting times ahead and it seems enough 'new shiny things' to keep us going until we see something more substantial on version 5.

Why Loyalty Programs Might be a Necessary Evil

At the start of this year I wrote a blog post on why loyalty programs offer little benefit to businesses (http://leontribe.blogspot.com/2009/01/why-loyalty-programs-suck.html).

This is still true, however, last night I saw a presentation by Don Peppers. Don is something of a known figure in the CRM arena. In this case I mean CRM in a marketing sense i.e. getting to know your customer better and interacting with them appropriately as opposed to CRM software. He doesn't have a wiki page to point to but you can see what he is about at his Twitter page (http://twitter.com/DonPeppers)

Anyhow, his talk was primarily talking about loyalty programs and while he agreed they do not offer sustainable competitive advantage in themselves, he did provide a reason to have a loyalty program I had not previously considered.

If I'm in retail I have one big problem in getting to know my customer. While I know what goods leave the store and I know what money I receive for them, I have no idea who bought a specific item and why. This is a problem if I'm going to better understand the kinds of customers I have and how I can better anticipate their needs.

In comes the loyalty program. By handing over my personal details and swiping it when I buy my goods, the retailer now bridges the missing link. They know who I am and what I've bought. They can now build up a historical profile of purchases, repeat purchases, link it to my demographic data etc. etc.

Here is the thing, if the only purpose of a loyalty program is to link a customer to their purchases and to review their behaviour to better understand them, is there an alternative which may not be as costly but could also deliver sustainable competitive advantage within itself?

In my 'What is CRM?' post, I talk of the ultimate grocery store (http://leontribe.blogspot.com/2009/01/what-is-crm.html) that knows your shopping list and puts the shopping in your car before you've even entered the store. Let's take it a step further. Here in Australia, the two major supermarkets offer home delivery. Unfortunately, they charge for the service, the range of goods is not as wide as in-store, the quality of the fresh produce is not as good as in store and in some cases they charge a premium of 10-20% on top of the in-store price. There is not much incentive to use home shopping.

However, if I register for home delivery, I provide all the details I provide for a loyalty card and the store can link it to my purchasing habits. They also have my physical address, not my postal address. No need for another card in my wallet, no need for the retailer to keep track of points and keeping money on their books to cover their value and no need to reinvent the wheel.

Delivery could be set up so that every week/fortnight/month the same goods are delivered to your house and the money automatically deducted from your bank account. It works for newspapers and public utilities, why not for groceries? Why can't groceries become another utility?

I raised this question in the talk and the response was essentially "not everyone wants home delivery". Really? People prefer to leave the house to crawl around a supermarket for 1-2 hours suffering screaming children (theirs or someone else's) and to haul a stack of shopping in and out of their car?

I asked my wife, who is in marketing. Her response was "not everyone is online, nannas wouldn't use it". Really? The elderly would prefer to haul a shopping trolley and shopping around rather than have it come to their house like the milkman used to? Sure, not everyone is online but the store could provide terminals where people could set up their shopping lists and deliveries. They could even have friendly staff to help those unfamiliar or unable to operate a computer.

What about the cost? Well the first response is how does the cost compare to a loyalty program? Even if a loyalty program is cheaper, there are considerations of improved inventory management from knowing the monthly purchasing requirements of your customers and knowing precisely which goods they want (if someone walks into your store and make a purchase, you do not know what they wanted, only what they bought from what was available). Arguably stores would not need to be as large or hold as much stock as they would only be catering to 'incidental shoppers' with the bulk shoppers taking the easy option. This provides savings in wages, rental and general store running costs.

A delivery service may not be the answer, but it should not be assumed that a loyalty program is the best fit for all businesses. Ultimately, the answer should be as close as possible to a system that captures the information a business needs, provides perceived benefit to the customer and is sustainable.