Today Microsoft publicly launched its online CRM offering, aptly named Dynamics CRM Online. I won’t go into the details here of this offering, except to point to it here and say it’s available for a small monthly fee starting at $59 a month.
There is a free, 30-day trial, but I was shocked to see that access to it is gated by a salesman. From the website:
Once you are contacted by a sales representative from Microsoft, and your information has been verified to be accurate, you will receive a token that will allow you access to the Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online free 30-day trial.
How 1998-like is this? I thought we all learned that this closed-trial approach was too costly to manage and lost too many growth opportunities?
Mary Jo Foley says that “more than 500 customers and 200 resellers have been testing the Professional version of the service for the past six months.”
This is so funny. If Microsoft had a “Web 2.0” model to this service, they could get 50,000 people to try it out in a day. Sure, maybe only a couple thousand would transition into it, but that’s when the fun really begins anyway.
I think I can see what’s going on here. They’re looking for an upsell opportunity. People just filling out forms–possibly with fake info–doesn’t lend itself to the upsell business. Thing is, this is what Salesforce.com does too and personally I hate it. It’s annoying. I signed up for one of their trials for awhile to see if I could integrate in ink and for several months after that I had a salesman calling me asking if I wanted to sign up for $99/month. What a waste on everyone’s part. Now it looks like Microsoft wants to take the same tact. It’s too inefficient for me.
I’m kind of surprised that Microsoft isn’t giving this a way and trying an upsell in the other direction: from web to server. They’re also forgoing the obvious advertising opportunities here. Can you tell I’m scratching my head?
Further, I see where some are saying how much Microsoft will be able to leverage Outlook. Well, here’s the thing. If you consider that the mail application is the core if you will in communication–and email has long proven itself as something that can be placed online and free for many–then why isn’t the CRM a “feature” to a web-based email service? And wouldn’t it be free too? Sure there’s an upsell, but for many it would be no cost.
There is also some talk about how in the enterprise Microsoft will have an advantage here. I’ve got to say, this whole enterprise vs non-enterprise arguement for products is actually a weak one. Yes, at the higher points in the organization where corporate wide policy decisions and directives are made, people have to be careful about whether this or that service or product is something that the company can leverage well with its resources and processes. However, show me any division or department in any major company and I’ll show you a group that considers itself financially constrained. They’re looking to reduce costs; to improve efficiencies–to do stuff for free. The attack of the web is going to begin at this level; it won’t just be from corporate wide decision makers. Yes, the top is where the sales people will focus, but the growth is going to come bottom up. Any web product plan that does not take this into account is going to be vulnerable from competitors–in a big way. If Google, for instance, steps into this market, Microsoft will be knocked down in a flash. This isn’t a good position to be in, particularly because it is so obvious and so easy to plan a blocking strategy for. I’m very disheartened. For all the talk of Microsoft putting things in the cloud, this is what I was concerned that they were going to do and it looks like it’s going to be the plan. Rats. There’s so much more market opportunity here.
Part of what’s going on here is what I call suite think. In any established business it’s the way you’re supposed to do things, but at times it’s oh so wrong. What’s suite think? It’s where a company adds a product or service to its established line of products–expanding its suite. The idea is reasonable. Sell to your existing customer base. Get another 10% here, 20% there. And if you’re lucky you’ll have a breakaway product down the road.
That’s all fine and dandy, however, when from all angles except the marketing and sales efforts, it is possible to build a breakaway product from the get-go, this suite-think can keep you down. That’s exactly what I think is going here with Dynamic CRM Online.
Now that Microsoft has made it clear about its strategy, I expect Google or Yahoo or whomever has been given a green light to step in and do a better job. Whether either of these companies decide to forgo the opportunity and not disrupt a fellow Bay Area company (Salesforce.com), I don’t know. Personalities being what they are, this is possible.
But seriously, how much effort would it really take for lets say Google or Yahoo to start from ground zero and build something that people would talk up and use? Let’s assume they can team together four or five motivated engineers. What might it take? Four months to get a baseline. Four months to build integration into FriendFeed, LinkedIn, GoogleReader, GTalk/Yahoo Messenger, Outlook, and so on? So in about a year, G or Y could have a running start competitor that’s highly connected and something the web influenctials would love to use. And on the small business side, isn’t the tie in to Quicken, et al, what it’s all about? Watch the dollar is all I’ve got to say about this.
All this being said, I appreciate the value of suite think. I realize that it’ll work, to some degree. But it’s not where Microsoft should be at this point. Instead, there should be a full force effort to try to give customers a 10x improvement in abilities and a 10x reduction in cost. You could argue that the online CRM offering does this against Microsoft’s established products, but I’d say you’re making comparisons to the wrong products. Those were yesterday’s gems. For those we’re talking at least two magnitudes of change now. Yes, the world has moved on. I can’t stop shaking my head in disappointment.
As I re-read this post, maybe I just woke up on the wrong side of the CRM bed. Could be. My challenge for later will be to find 5 nice things to say about Dynamics CRM Online. 🙂