I was really dissapointed with the 1.1 version of MS CRM but now I am curious
how happy you all are with the new MS CRM?

Thanks and regards,
René Theil

I am very impressed with what microsoft has released in V3.0. We have been
re-selling much more expensive CRM solutions for the last 8 years and are
pleasantly surprised by what MS has included with this product. There are
still some shortcomings but I am sure that these will be addresssed in future
releases.

Simonc

"René Theil" wrote:

Hi Simon,

Many thanks for your reply; much appreciated.
Do you think CRM3.0 is worthwhile for a company of 3 (presently) growing to
5 before end of year?

Cheers,
René

"Simon" wrote:

I do we are only a small business with 3 users and up to 5 soon and it is
worth it. We moved from SFDC PE as we wanted to own our database and at $100
per user per month (in NZ dollars) is just too expensive for us so the
features of crm 3.0 and pricing was VERY competitive.

"René Theil" wrote:

Hi seand

Tell me what is SFDC? How much did it cost you guys to implement the CRM?
What industry are you guys in?

Simon

"seand" wrote:

MSCRM is ideal for small companies, you can implement the SBS version
virtually "out of the box" and start using it immediatly. Once you have used
it for a while you can iether make modifications yourself or get a partner to
assist you.
For 3 users you would only be looking at less than $ 5 000 New Zealand

"seand" wrote:

OK I am being dumb SFDC is Sales Force dot com

"Simon" wrote:

I would be very interested to hear how MSCRM compares to SFDC

"Simon" wrote:

While CRM may be a useful tool for those in businesses with enough money to
spend on getting an expert in for customisation, we have found that without
such help CRM 3 cannot fit a specific business's needs. For example, there
are many ways in which the customisation process can go wrong, or things that
strangely the progam does not allow (when using the UI as opposed to
manipulating manually on SQL server). For example, our Director wished for
all entities to be de-Americanised (i.e. replace state/province with county,
zip wih post code etc.) and while this is possible for some entities such as
company, the entity site is non-customisable, meaning that all our service
engineers are left with different looking forms.

We have had an employee (with no previous experience of CRM) working on this
for 2 weeks solid, along with aid from a database expert and our IT
professional, and they have become baffled by the number of limitations that
CRM3 have. While it may be the best CRM solution around, it may not be worth
the outlay, because to get it full customised how you would like it would
require the help of a CRM expert (which coincidentally cost a fortune to
hire!).

We have considered pulling the plug on the project because it will cost too
much to hire in those with the know how, and every avenue we explore in CRM
presents us with further problems!

"Simon" wrote:

Hi Simon, very sorry for the late reply, yes you have figured it out. SFDC is
Salesforce.com and our pricing in NZ dollars for three users was $1800 and
for three users for SFDC was $3600 per annum!. I guess it comes down to what
you want crm to do. We want to track cases, relationships, run campaigns and
marketing lists all of which crm can do but sfdc also needed another $40 per
user per month for the campaigns module....mmm...sfdc is getting pretty
expensive. Plus the intergration for outlook with crm is awesome to say the
least but intergration with sfdc was slow at best! In short crm wins hands
down and some basic customisation with crm can be done by a novice user with
permissions so can sfdc but the hype about sfdc and appexchange you will
notice that most apps from the app exchange were for the enterprise version
of sfdc which is $225 per user per month...now sfdc is way out of the
ballpark, and any advanced programming you would have to pay for with either
application, well that's my opinion good luck!

Simon" wrote:

There is a post in today's CRM Team blog titled "How to get CRM Server up and
running in 15 minutes?"
http://blogs.msdn.com/crm/archive/20...20/672975.aspx

Kate
Microsoft Dynamics CRM UX Manager

"seand" wrote:

i guess it's true that mCRM has a competitive price. but this guy "Robert
Turnbull" talks about how expensive it is to customize and hire an experts in
mCRM. i wonder if it's because that the mCRM is relatively new so the
resource quite scarce. if i may know, how much does the cost to customize the
mCRM to Works the way you do, Works the way your business does, and Works the
way technology should? (^_^)v

"seand" wrote:

I think this topic has taken an interesting line.

We replaced Greentree CRM (which does not work offline) with CRM3 and made
the decision to no have customization done until we had been using it and
found what we wanted specifically to customize. Out of the box it works well
and we have done some inhouse customization ourself. We have no training in
this and found with time personalizing CRM became easy. Yes there are items
which cannot be changed such as STATE and Zip but the easy answer is to just
work with it.
However customizations we cannot do have proved difficult to get done.
There is not enough knowledge about this software with the resellers.

Gav


"Wiewie" wrote:

Has anyone worked with the many MScrm 3 partners out there? Are they
expensive? Are they good?

"Gavin Kennedy" wrote: