JimT's Weblog

I recently wrote a white paper on using Microsoft Dynamics CRM as an application development platform.  We have found that many business applications can be built quickly with Microsoft CRM rather than a custom development approach.

 

Microsoft Dynamics CRM offers much more than simply Customer Relationship Management, it provides a powerful application development platform for  building solutions for virtually any organizational need while  significantly reducing technical risk, cost, and implementation time  compared to traditional custom application development.

This white paper, written for business decision makers, addresses  the challenges of application development and the role that Microsoft CRM can play in creating customized line of business (LOB) applications. 

 

Here is the CRM white paper.

 

Jim

The more I work with Microsoft CRM 3.0, the more intriguing it becomes as an application platform.  It includes several key elements that make apps quicker to build:

 

1.  A rich data model.  If your database concerns people and business transactions, chances are the data elements already defined in Microsoft CRM will get you a long way toward where you want to go.  You will need to add new attributes for your particular industry or your application, but you do not have to spend time figuring out how to store multiple addresses or phone numbers, for instance.

 

2. Human workflow.  Until SharePoint 2007, human workflow was conspicuously absent in the Microsoft Office platform.  Now we suddenly have two choices.  Microsoft CRM provides some common workflow scenarios right out of the box and can be customized further.

 

3.  Rich structure of roles and permissions.  Microsoft CRM comes with a significant number of security roles as well as support for the concept of a hierarchy such as a sales manager and sales executives.  These are quite expensive and time consuming to develop from scratch.

 

4.  Offline capability.  Microsoft CRM allows you to take records offline so you can work in places where you do not have Internet connectivity. This functionality is integrated into Outlook and works to the end user in a similar fashion as Outlook offline use.

 

5.  Office integration.  As you might expect, the integration of Microsoft CRM with the rest of Microsoft Office is a huge victory for usability.  Many CRM users also happen to be heavy Outlook users, so the barriers to adoption are lower than with other applications.

 

All these factors argue that Microsoft CRM is worth a look as the platform to develop a wide range of business applications.  The cost of the product, already low compared to its CRM competition, can be spread across more than a single application and reduce the total cost of ownership.

Everyone at my company is excited to learn that Microsoft has released SharePoint 2007 to manufacturing.  We have been working with the beta versions for months and have been showing many customers what they have been waiting for in the latest version

 

Now we can start rolling out sites in earnest.  While the beta has been helpful to provide demonstrations and check out the look and feel, the shipping product is what we have really needed.

 

For me, the most important new features for our customers involve the workflow and document management capabilities of SharePoint.  This version truly provides all the document management needed by 90 percent of business users.  If you are in the other ten percent you have probably already invested in a document management solution, but most organizations have stood on the sidelines and continued to use the file system and email in place of document management. 

 

Cheers,

 

Jim