Microsoft Announces UK Availability of Dynamics CRM 4.0
Customer-centric approach provides real choice for businesses, through on-premise or partner-hosted options. Full Microsoft Outlook integration provides familiarity and ease-of-use
Reading – UK – 30 January 2008 - Microsoft today announced the general availability in the UK of Dynamics CRM 4.0, its new CRM platform. The solution will provide genuine enterprise scalability, full Microsoft Outlook integration and a choice of delivery models. The offering forms a central part of Microsoft’s approach to software delivery by giving customers the flexibility to change deployment models over time if their needs or preferences change, by providing both on-premise or partner-hosted delivery options.
Paul White, UK Director Dynamics Product Group, Microsoft said: “Customer relationships are the cornerstone of any successful business. In an increasingly competitive UK environment managing these relationships correctly is crucial. With CRM 4.0, Microsoft is providing a tool that enables end users to track and record customer interaction, in a way that they are familiar with (the Outlook interface) and delivered in a way that matches their business requirements – be this on-premise or hosted remotely by one of our partners.”
The new version builds on the success to date of Dynamics CRM in the midmarket and delivers increased scalability, multi-currency and multi-language support to make it a solid choice for enterprise companies as well as SMEs. CRM 4.0 also has a multi-tenant architecture allowing partners to more effectively offer it as a hosted service, thus reducing implementation time for their customers. It also reduces the total cost of ownership for enterprises, by simplifying ongoing management and security requirements.
An AMR Research report in September 2007 claimed that user adoption remains a challenge for CRM implementations with 33% to 47% of customer management applications facing serious adoption issues. Through integration with Outlook, Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 aims to increase this user adoption rate and address one of the key criticisms raised against CRM systems in the past.
Chris Merrick, Chief Marketing Officer for Operax and an early adopter of CRM 4 hosted by Increase CRM said: “Operax markets solutions for telecommunications operators to enhance their quality of service, so for us, providing responsive sales and service support to our customers is critical to our business processes and culture. Microsoft CRM is key to meeting these needs - robust, highly customisable, easy to use and familiar interface through Office. With our highly mobile global sales and marketing team it was imperative to be able to access the system via the web and this is where the hosted approach really paid dividends.”
Partner support
32 Microsoft partners are already in place to offer CRM 4.0 as a hosted offering to customers, including the Institute of Directors which will offer a tailored Microsoft CRM hosted service to both members and non-members.
Neil Benson, Chief Addict at Increase CRM said: "Our business is dedicated to providing hosted Microsoft Dynamics CRM. The new version allows us to offer an even more affordable subscription price because of a combination of the multi-tenanted architecture and the reduced license fees. There is enormous demand for hosted Microsoft Dynamics CRM from growing companies who want the combination of a hosted CRM service with a rich desktop Outlook client."
About Microsoft Dynamics
Microsoft Dynamics is a line of financial, customer relationship and supply chain management solutions that help businesses work more effectively. Delivered through a network of channel partners providing specialised services, these integrated, adaptable business management solutions work like and with familiar Microsoft software to streamline processes across an entire business.
About Microsoft
Founded in 1975, Microsoft (Nasdaq “MSFT”) is the worldwide leader in software, services and solutions that help people and businesses realise their full potential.
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