Thanks Neil, we did recently try an upgrade to CRM 4.0 but we abandoned it because it went badly wrong, and cost us a load of money. We found out that it still didn't give us standard out of the box functionality that you get with Goldmine, ACT,
Salesforce.com. We spent a lot of time and money trying to get things to work by trying to do things ourselves (we didn't have an inexhaustable budget to spend on implementation).
The fact that you still have to opt for really expensive VAR customisations to get the system to work at the most basic level really goes to show that Microsoft Business Solutions really haven't got a clue about delivering useful out of the box business
packages. I've got several years experience being on the receiving end of installations and setup for Axapta, Dynamics AX, and MS CRM, and I can honestly say I haven't yet had a positive experience! If it were my decision I'd never willingly choose an MS Business
Solution, and I would never recommend one to another business partner or contact. Shame really!
In ACT for instance right out of the box, I can specify a few products, generate a quote and use a company template to print it out and send to a customer. In MS CRM 3.0, I can do the first two parts, but "holy cow" I can't print it out, nor create a simple
template. What good is that to a business trying to sell stuff and communicate with customers.
As a result of our companies frustrations with CRM 3.0, they have had to create a separate Access database to generate all our quotes, save them as PDF and then email to customers. This database even takes care of all the follow up communications,
converting to orders, sending out order acknowledgements and a whole lot more...I think they've just created their CRM application, BUT in MS Access! The embarrassing fact as far as MS should be concerned, is that it was a 17 year old student
that did it, and he'd had no previous experience of databases, CRM or anything else for that matter, after all, he's just a kid!
Neil, there's no malice aimed at you, and I appreciate your willingness to give advice, but we are ever so disappointed at the lack of support from MS with regards to a product that does not do what was expected from it. When the company took
the decision to invest in a CRM system, it was supposed to have been the big change that the company needed to drive in efficiencies, increased customer satisfaction and retention etc etc. You know all the marketing hype about using CRM effectively. But
instead has resulted in more internal resistance to change, as employees have only seen a system that doesn't do anything apart from create problems, and the creation of multiple ad-hoc systems to make up for the short comings.
So, I'm sorry but it would take a very strong argument to convince us to upgrade to any other version of MS CRM.
Best regards
Martin
