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TELECOMS AND SOFTWARE NEWS
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"X" marks many spots in xRM
Warren Wilson
"X" marks many spots in xRM
In the high-tech industry, one of the most fertile fields of innovation is TLAs - three-letter acronyms that describe some hot new category of software. Most are so obscure that they are meaningless unless presented in context. One that may prove to have staying power, at least if Microsoft has its way, is xRM - a category of “relationship management” applications in which “x” isn't fixed but a variable that stands for “anything.”
xRM is a natural extension of CRM
The term xRM first surfaced a couple of years ago, but at the time it was less a category of software than a concept in search of a launch pad. The launch pad arrived last year when Microsoft launched new CRM offerings based on the much-anticipated Titan software.Titan is a versatile platform with a multi-tenant, shared-server architecture well suited to software as a service (SaaS). Years in development, it created a lot of buzz because it would allow Microsoft to compete head-to-head with Salesforce.com, the poster child for SaaS in general and SaaS CRM in particular.Less appreciated at the time were several other new capabilities in Titan, including support for plug-ins and many-to-many relationships; improved workflow; support for user-defined “entities” that can represent things like tasks and documents as well as people; and the ability to support three deployment models on one code base - traditional on-premise, hosted by a partner or hosted directly by Microsoft.The latter capability was important because it allowed Microsoft not just to compete directly against Salesforce.com in SaaS CRM but to address the entire CRM market, on-premise as well as hosted, without having to support multiple products and code bases. And the market appears to be responding. As of March, Microsoft counted more than 18,000 customers and 900,000 individual users for Dynamics CRM (all versions, not just the latest). Just as important, the product seems recession-resistant, if not countercyclical: Sales grew faster in the last six months of calendar-year 2008 than in the year before, and faster in the fourth quarter than the third, even as the world economy hit a steep downslope.Customers and partners take CRM in new directions
However, its other new capabilities - workflow, plug-in support and others - make Dynamics CRM a highly flexible, configurable platform, enough so to support a variety of business applications that go far beyond the CRM functions of contact, lead and opportunity management. Customers and partners are beginning to develop such applications.In some cases, the extension is straightforward: the “X” might stand for equipment dealers, contractors, or citizens (in some public-sector applications). But sometimes the “X” stands for things that have little to do with people.In one case, the Microsoft partner Ascentium built an application for the US Air Force that helps manage tasks as small as restocking a copy machine with paper to as large as coordinating troop deployments to Afghanistan.For another customer, Embrace Pet Insurance, Ascentium combined Dynamics CRM with a custom web front end for a business that provides just what its name implies - health coverage for cats and dogs. Entities in the application represent not just policy holders (traditional customers) but quotes, policies and the pets themselves.In yet another case, property management firm Jones Lang LaSalle deployed Dynamics CRM for traditional purposes, then added capabilities specific to property management.The goal: create yet another platform
With Dynamics CRM up and running, Microsoft can now turn its attention to xRM and systematically develop the market. The goal is to follow the Windows/Office blueprint and turn its Dynamics CRM technology into a platform that supports its own ecosystem of channel partners.Salesforce.com is attempting the same feat, of course, with its AppExchange program, Apex language and Force.com platform. As with xRM, Salesforce.com partners have built applications that go beyond traditional CRM and manage things like orders, contracts, proposals and assets. Other innovations on Salesforce.com's platform include an application that tracks investment funds and one that generates “business intensity” maps.A key difference is that AppExchange, Force.com and Apex are all sub-brands under the Salesforce.com umbrella, while xRM is a generic term that Microsoft hopes to establish as a software category in which it is the leader. Given the creativity coming from both camps, it may be that the market can support both approaches. In that case, Apex et al will become enduring brands, and xRM will become the rare TLA that deserves a long and happy life.
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