Google v Microsoft ..... GvM

Just when I thought Google was taking over the world (last post), I have now come across - via my new personal business computing advisor (PBA) - that it will actually be Microsoft!

"What," I hear you say, thought they'd given up with the dinosaurs, Word and that hacker-prone Excel package.

Note to advisor's: I am getting worried I'm turning into a bit of a product salesman for all these companies and feel that I have gone down some rabbit hole of computing from which I will never return, but, one more post as the addict would say ....

The new word in the house this week was 'CRM' - conversation initiated by the PBA - followed by comments like 'what the hell is CRM'. So there was a bit of a struggle to get heads around what this was. CRM of course (thanks to Google!) was defined for the team as Customer Relationship Management. Wonderful. That's not computing that's management baloney, (actually we don't use the word baloney but we do use another 'b' word), which then resulted in diverting the conversation into discussing the difference between leadership and management, but that's another story? However, this did started me on a trail of finding out what Microsoft was up to!

And, low and behold, they are trying to take over by stealth. Hoovering up the bit of the market between social networking and business building - brilliant positioning! This is an extract from their CRM site;

"The surging popularity of social networking sites is indisputable. Yet many organizations still struggle to translate it into real business benefits. By acquiring tools that let them manage their social networking initiatives alongside traditional marketing, sales, and service activities, organizations can take advantage of social networking without losing focus on their core business. Ultimately, success will lie with those businesses that can integrate social networking’s wealth of customer data, unfiltered feedback, and informal conversations into existing customer management initiatives and processes. Microsoft helps our customers achieve this goal through the Social Networking Accelerator for Microsoft Dynamics CRM. This solution equips organizations with the capabilities to better listen, respond, and analyze social network activities. By applying that insight, Microsoft Dynamics CRM allows organizations to better integrate this emerging channel into existing business processes for a more holistic and effective customer management approach— something that will continue to be paramount for success."

ref. http://crm.dynamics.com/en-gb/marketing

Couldn't have said it better myself. I will obviously need to have a deeper dive into this the site basically says but this and all your problems are solved social to money connected in er. 10 easy steps. I've been there before though! With a little bit of digging it looks like the tools needs some 'configuration' for use in your business - oh yes - past experience has told me this usually means you will need to undertake a PhD in Process Mapping to get it engineered to your business properly - I am thinking SAP here though (Google it)!

Anyway, I remain intrigued and await further enlightenment in the coming weeks.

For the record; I do like the new Microsoft Windows 8 panes!