CRM conquests
in recent weeks i have been loading various sandbox released code on a test CRM environment and where applicable in our production environment. I have to say, the possibilities are mind boggling!
First I loaded the Dynamics CRM SNAP. That is a quite powerful tool, and with some time and focus on it, could potentially end up the single greatest tool in the Arsenal. I've used it to create custome letters in word mostly. Still learning about it, but it seemingly opens up a whole world of interop for users. As for Lic. I believe it to be freeware, and only subject to CRM's user lisence, hence, no CRM user, no consumer of the CRM data. Seems to me there could be a 'light user, or data access user lic.' that would allow a non CRM user to access the data in the database through a tool like snap or a developed InfoPath Form, or through RSS...
Which brings me to the next thing, RSS feeds from CRM. recently I endevored to tackle this, in house. It worked after much troubleshooting and reading the code. It is quite cool! Again though it appears that only CRM users can access the feeds. which is ok for internal users, but say you wanna expose your feed to say a vendor, so they get a line into your business pipeline, does that require a user for each vendor you allow in? based ont he security model, it would appear so. This clearly limits the usefulness of the collection of all this data, certainly there may be other ways around such a thing, for example write a customer report that emails out at an interval, but then, that may not fit with business processes. Oh well...I'll not be exposing any of my CRM feeds to suppliers or partners until I can get a better handle on this.
Lastly using a Hand On Lab on JohnzBlog, I was able to create a webform in Visual Web Dev 2005 Express Edition and have it flow, through CRM web services into the leads, just as the HOL described. I know, big deal, right. Well actually it is, because there are several places where I had to locate his references to his crm system and correct to my CRM's URL. He forced me to read the code and figure it out. He does specifically state that there is no support for it, and good luck, but he did not even put in comments where there might be 'variables' like replace with your CRM server's URL here!!! It did force me to learn more asp.net than I did before, so that's a good thing. Here, though, is another place that the lisencing is a bit dicey. If I place this form out on the web on our public site, do I need a seperate licence to allow site visitors to fill out the form??? I think the Microsoft Answer is yes, and therefore it is only in a test internal environment. But as a very small shop, the cost for an Internet License of CRM seems to be a bit extreme, especially for my tiny weblead application. We currently have a form, that updates a DB and emails us when a person fills out a form online. Very simple, and does basically the same thing, but the data does not flow into CRM directly and does not use CRM's workflow to generate thank yous and alerts and assignments of tasks etc...
This brings me to my final thought on all of this...CRM 3.0 SBE is on the edge of affordable for most Micro and Small Businesses. Given the right fit and needs, it could probably go in at most shops. It promises a TON of features and provides a ton of opportunities for Small Businesses to really grab hold and use technology, mine data and business processes more efficiently. the problem I see, though, is that much of this functionality is not possible without additional lic. fees. Those fees drive the solution costs through the roof, and ultimately the customer has already invested into ACT! or Goldmine, or does not care enough to invest in the level of integration that they otherwise would want to do. So my question is basically this...Data is in a SQL CRM DB. If there is a Web based application that uses that SQL CRM DB, and it is using it's own security model, not CRM's, not AD, then, what are the licensing ramifications? I believe in paying the piper, but it seems that one of the core issues facing adoption of such a great product, set of products, is the extreme licensing measures/ambiguities in place.
The biggest driver of technology adoption is impact on the bottom line. And, one of the biggest variables in that equation is integration. If the cost to integrate is too high, why bother switching? Sure it CAN do all this stuff, but if it costs too much to use that functionality, then why bother? Microsoft offers up financing, ok, but that's just more headaches, more debt hanging over already skin tight operation. So what's the time to return on investment? 2 months, 3 months, 1 year? Sure we can do it, but with competition and the economy, can I pay for it, if things go south for us? These are things I hear prospects say all the time. It's not enough to be good at what you do, you have to have a business model that's preparred to take over the world, even if all you want is to sustain.