CRM Scenario
Competing for CRM (General)
Note: This document is an overview designed for salespeople to support initial customer prospecting discussions and to help assess
the potential for Microsoft® Business Solutions sales opportunities by understanding the customer’s business situation and needs.
Overview
What Is Customer Relationship Management (CRM)?
CRM is the well-established software category devoted to
improving customer relations. Good CRM products shorten
sales cycles and improve customer loyalty by automating day-
to-day tasks for sales, customer service, field service, call
center, and marketing professionals.
How does Microsoft® CRM make a difference?
Microsoft® Business Solutions CRM helps businesses,
including divisions and subsidiaries of large organizations,
increase sales success, deliver superior customer service, and
make informed business decisions.
What does Microsoft® CRM do?
Sales Force Capability
Microsoft® CRM Sales helps sales people manage leads
and opportunities, measure and forecast sales activity,
efficiently track customer communications, and automate
stages in the sales process–helping ensure a shorter
cycle, higher close rates, and improved customer retention.
Key Selling Points
Offers a decentralized database that works across existing
business systems
Allows for robust, comprehensive reporting and analysis
capabilities
Enables a step-by-step sales process
Customer and product information can be viewed, shared,
and updated across organizations
Supports short implementations with single-upload
customizations, and straightforward upgrades
Is tailor-able to meet industry-specific needs, processes,
and environment
May be deployed and managed internally or on a hosted
basis
Provides logical user interface and intuitive work tools that
employees will find easy to use
Centralized information storage and viewing let users
easily share, manage and update information
Has both rich client (via Microsoft® Outlook) and a thin
client (via a Web browser) capabilities
Can easily integrate with Microsoft® Office, financial
applications, third-party applications, and Web services
Contains fully integrated modules
Enterprise
Customer Service Capability
Microsoft® CRM Customer Service helps businesses
increase capacity to handle requests without increasing
employee count. Microsoft® CRM Customer Service helps
service representatives provide customers with the
consistent, efficient service that ensures satisfaction.
Mobility Features
Microsoft® CRM Mobile allows users to quickly manage
account information, add and organize business contacts,
schedule important meetings, and track existing sales
opportunities—all while working from a Pocket PC or Pocket
PC Phone Edition with Windows Mobile 2003 software.
Integration Capability
Microsoft® CRM integrates with Microsoft® Office,
Microsoft® Business Solutions for Financial Management,
and other business systems to give employees a complete
view of customer information. The ease of integration with
Microsoft Office is of particular value—enabling staff to
access Microsoft® CRM information from Microsoft® Office
Outlook and work online or offline with access to sales
functionality.
Win Opportunities
Microsoft® CRM fits best with divisions and subsidiaries
of large organizations that:
Are implementing for a department or division that has
500 or fewer users
Implementing a ‘federated model’ with multiple
implementations, each with 500 or fewer users
The best Microsoft® CRM win opportunities are with
companies that are seeking to accomplish the following
with their CRM solution:
Make informed business decisions
Improve sales success
Offer superior customer service
Easily set up, configure, customize, and use their
solution
Integrate their solution with Microsoft® Office and
other Microsoft® Office applications
* All market sectors CRM worldwide as of 12/31/04
** Enterprise CRM worldwide as of 12/31/04. IT Software Spend in US$
Customer Evidence
Selling Situation
AFLAC is a Fortune 500 company whose leading
sales office sought an affordable and easy to use
CRM solution that could help the region improve
processes, increase customer satisfaction, and drive
Case Study sales results.
Choice Hotels International is one of the world’s
largest hotel franchising companies, with more than
5,000 properties. They needed an affordable
solution to integrate front-office and back-office
systems that was easy to install and manage, while
Case Study helping reduce costs, improve decision making, and
expand services.
Based in Denmark, Imacon is a leading supplier of
reproduction-quality scanners and digital cameras.
They sought a powerful, easy-to-use CRM solution
that could help store and share critical information
Case Study about customers and prospects.
McKinstry is an engineering, mechanical
construction, and facilities management firm
employing approximately 1,000 people in six
separate divisions. They needed a CRM solution to
address fragmented sales databases that were
Case Study hindering productivity and leading to lost sales.
Relational is a $500M company provides technology
and financing solutions throughout North America.
Rapid growth created the need for a flexible,
integrated CRM solution that would automate sales
processes and seamlessly exchange data with
Case Study financial and proprietary business systems.
A division of Veriphone, GO Software, develops and
sells payment processing software. The 110
employee division sought a CRM solution that could
provide centralized access to information, help
enhance customer service efforts, and maintain its
Case Study industry leadership position.
Request a reference from Microsoft at referenc@micosoft.com
Case studies can be found at http://www.microsoft.com/BusinessSolutions/casestudies_mbs.mspx
Customer videos are located at https://mbs.microsoft.com/partnersource/sales/salestools/videos/mbsvideolibrary/
Competitive case studies can be found at https://mbs.microsoft.com/partnersource/sales/marketing/competitiveinformation/MBSCICaseStudies.htm
By the Numbers
CRM CUSTOMERS* ENTERPRISE OPPORTUNITY**
Entities Enterprise
Entities
Manufacturing 7,614,381 APAC 3,408
Services 6,419,005 EMEA 9,273
Wholesale & Distrib. 2,532,137 LATAM 1,992
Public Sector (Gov’t) 930,236 N Amer 9,336
Sources: Microsoft® Business Solutions Market Model FY05 and IDC Vertical IT Forecast
Why We Won
Microsoft® Business Solutions CRM enabled
AFLAC’s Salem, Oregon region to increase
accountability for agent success, improve sales
tracking, more effectively prospect, and improve
customer service.
Epicor Software tailored its hospitality solution to
include Microsoft® Business Solutions CRM. The
benefits included minimal deployment costs, better
business intelligence and a potential revenue
increase of 25%
Microsoft® Business Solutions CRM improved the
company’s marketing efforts, reduced costs by
reducing the number of databases from eight to one
and improved the quality of sales insights.
McKinstry integrated Microsoft® Business Solutions
CRM with the company’s Microsoft® Business
Solutions-Great Plains® ERP system. This solution
centralized sales data, improved operating efficiency
by 25%, increased sales opportunities, reduced
administrative costs by 15%, and generated
significant savings in the cost of sales.
Relational’s solution integrated Microsoft® Business
Solutions CRM, Microsoft® Business Solutions—
Great Plains®, and industry-specific leasing
applications. The benefits included improved
business insight, tighter financial controls, increased
revenue and expanded opportunities.
VeriFone selected Microsoft® Business Solutions
CRM. The benefits included a 592% annual ROI,
two months payback, $2.5 million per year in
business benefits, a 75% reduction in order-entry
and account-setup times and decreased hold times.
IT Spend FY05 (000s) CAGR
$2,526,000 6.4%
$7,200,000 4.9%
$469,000 10.2%
$16,493,000 5.2%
CRM Scenario
Competing for CRM (General)
Enterprise
Prospecting Winning vs. Competitive Products
The following questions are for technical and business decision makers. Any “No” indicates an issue MBS products
can address. If discovered, you may highlight the MBS selling points that appear most relevant to the exposed need. Competitor Positioning How to Position Against / Why We Win
Seibel Enterprise Edition claims 3,500 customers Microsoft® corporate viability and market presence; Microsoft technology

/ Engr.
Design
Chain
Supply
and a global presence. It is the No. 1 CRM architecture, integration with Office suite and .NET; Sell as temporary solution

Sales

Ops.
CFO
CIO
analytics vendor. Its relationship with Microsoft®
Questions includes some integration with Outlook and Office.
Dual platform strategy: .NET and Java.
Business Intelligence: Can you easily view and analyze business information? Do
your sales and service teams have access to the right information at the right time? SalesForce.com claims 12,500 customers in 110
countries, and supports 11 languages. It is the No.
Total Cost of Ownership: Are installations and upgrades quick and easy-to-deploy? 1 hosted CRM vendor. It targets broad range of
Can you easily customize your CRM solution? Do you have the flexibility to migrate to a companies across multiple verticals, and offers only
hosted CRM solution? Are your sales and service training costs low? Have you hosted solutions. Its mantra is “No Software.”
eliminated all complex, time-consuming data entry? Onyx has 1,150 customers and a global presence.
They use direct sales to divisions of Fortune 1000
Application Integration: Can you access your CRM systems via Microsoft® Outlook
companies. Their Enterprise CRM product has
and the Web? Can you easily integrate your solution with current applications? Do you many horizontal components. They are formerly a
want your sales and customer service applications to work together? Microsoft® partner with a .NET architecture.
Focused in financial services and public sector
Salesforce Effectiveness: Can you track your sales and service success rate? Can
markets.
your sales reps effectively track and manage leads from multiple sources? Can your
managers evaluate lead quality? Would more consistent sales processes help initiate SAP - Business One CRM has 4,200 customers,
and close deals? Do your sales people have access to the information they need to and offices in 50 countries. Their client/server-
build accurate quotes and manage customer orders? based solution is not fully web-enabled nor able to
work with mobile devices. They leverage
relationships with parent (“hub”) companies into
Positioning subsidiary (“spoke”) sales. CRM functionality is
relatively new.
during Siebel implementation; .NET architecture to maximize business value of
application portfolio; Siebel is hard to configure; Microsoft® CRM is also available
as a hosted solution.
Long-term low TCO and higher ROI; Microsoft® viability and business model;
Familiar, consistent and integrated user interface; Security of on-premises data
storage and local operation; Offline mode superiority; Superior workflow and
business process integration; Option for hosting or on-premises deployment;
Ease of integration.
Microsoft® corporate viability and market presence; Familiar easy-to-use intuitive
interface; Outlook integration; Microsoft technology architecture, integration with
Office suite and .NET; Broader partner channel; Stealth and competitive
confusion.
Established first-rate sales and support reseller/channel organization; SAP hasn’t
been successful to date in divisions of large companies;Outlook integration;
Familiar, consistent and integrated user interface; Cost effective CRM for a lower
TCO; Integration capabilities and extensibility; Technology leadership (SAP uses
Microsoft® technologies in BusinessOne); More sales functionality; B1 and
mySAP integration is mainly marketing; B1 is principally a small business product.

SAP - mySAP All-in-One has 5,600 customers. Established first-rate sales and support reseller/channel organization; SAP hasn’t
Microsoft® Business Solutions CRM helps businesses, including divisions and subsidiaries of large corporations, build more
They are a packaged industry-specific solution with been successful to date in divisions of large companies; Full solution; Outlook
profitable customer relationships. Designed for low total cost of ownership, it’s easy to set up, customize, and use. Microsoft CRM key verticals in auto, chemicals, consumer integration; Familiar, easy-to-use and intuitive user interface; Cost effective CRM
is accessible from Microsoft® Outlook and the Web and integrates with other business systems. products, and high-tech. They have been investing for a lower TCO; Integration capabilities and extensibility; Technology leadership.
heavily in partner channel and focusing on rolling
Integrated Sales and Customer Service modules allow employees to access and share complete customer information across out products to the subsidiaries and branches of
teams and departments. Automated processes free employees from time-consuming tasks and equip them with the tools and existing SAP customers.
information they need to sell effectively and deliver consistent, efficient service. Because Microsoft CRM is .NET-connected,
Pivotal claims 1,700 customers, 110 countries, 11 Microsoft® viability and business model; Confusion over Pivotal’s future; Familiar,
businesses can easily integrate Microsoft CRM with financial applications, third-party applications, and Web services, as well as languages. They target a broad range of companies consistent and integrated user interface; Established first –rate sales and support;
create customized solutions. across multiple verticals. They were recently Outlook integration; Microsoft technology; Lower TCO and higher ROI; Ease of
acquired by China.com; their future is uncertain. integration.
Additional Resources Visit https://mbs.microsoft.com/partnersource/sales/marketing/competitiveinformation/

General information: https://mbs.microsoft.com/partnersource/, provides resources for partners, including product specific information
http://www.microsoft.com/businesssolutions, provides more information about Microsoft Business Solutions
Fast Facts
Editions Microsoft® CRM is available in two editions, Standard and Professional, and in three modules—Sales, Customer
Service, and Suite. Compare editions.
Languages Microsoft® CRM is available in U.S. and International English, German, French, Spanish, Italian, Danish, Dutch,
Brazilian Portuguese, Hebrew, Swedish, Russian, Hungarian, Polish and Czech.
Integration Microsoft® CRM integrates with Microsoft® Office, Microsoft® Business Solutions for Financial Management, and
third-party applications. Integration Information