I'm not sure I agree with Brent: @learyb Social CRM: Twitter IS, Email Marketing ISN'T...But That's OK!.

I agree with Brent about the transition from Traditional CRM to Social CRM. Brent posits that the traditional Campaign to Lead process is replaced by the Content to Conversation process. The idea that you can attract a customer through interesting content and then pull that potential customer into your sales cycle with an authentic conversation (eg. Email/IM/Phone) is very compelling to me. Naturally MSCRM is well positioned to take advantage of this with it's Outlook Integration (that's why that integration was built - not to shore up a franchise).

I'm confused as to where Twitter sits in the Social CRM spectrum..... will people 'discover' your Twitter feed (ie. Content) and begin a Conversation? Is it for existing customers - to entice them to give you repeat business? Is Twitter 'opening the kimono' just a little too much (the Scoble's of the world would say that you can't be 'naked' enough).

Y Combinator puts CRM at #6 of it's list of 30 ideas it would like to fund. It's also good to see 'Outsourced IT' at #4. I think the industry is about to experience to major paradigm shifts:

The Cloud is one of these shifts. Over the next ten years companies of all sizes will seriously question the need to have servers and infrastructure in house. Do people want their own generators or do they want to buy off the grid?

The IT Rebellion will be another. The fact that most CIOs can never become the CEO is telling. I believe that many companies will begin to radically restructure their IT arrangements. These restructures will go beyond simple outsourcing arrangements and will be synergistically tied to cloud migrations. Today these IT Rebellions are limited to regional and departmental skirmishes. Expect these to become enterprise wide.

Microsoft is well positioned as neutral party in both these paradigm shifts. We are well positioned with respect to the cloud (I wouldn't have moved from my beloved CRM team to Cloud Services if I didn't believe that). On the IT Rebellion front we are always faithfully served both business user and IT department and I believe we will continue to do so.

With all this talk about 'Conversations' with customers and Social CRM (to build loyalty or achieve a sale). I thought some of you might find this article on the Consumerist interesting: http://consumerist.com/tag/murky-coffee/?i=5025306&t=coffee+shop-threatens-to-punch-customer-in-his-dick.

The old adage of the 'Customer is always right' is more true today than ever (even if the guy was a philistine for wanting an iced triple espresso).

I really liked this recent post on Brent Leary's blog.

Now.... wouldn't Outlook be used to conduct and record (eg. IM conversations) a decent proportion of these conversations.

Dennis Pombriant in his recent 'me-too' post regarding Vista vs Leopard decided to take a swipe at Microsoft CRM.

"In a vain effort to catch up and protect another franchise in the process, Microsoft is building Outlook into CRM or vice versa. Their contention is that people already spend the majority of their days in Outlook so it must be a perfect place for CRM users."

Let's be clear: Email, Appointments and Tasks are an incredibly important part of modern relationship processes. Outlook is Microsoft's client application which helps users manage Email, Appointments and Tasks. Wouldn't it then make sense for CRM to integrate with Outlook. Contrary to popular belief the Microsoft product teams don't sit around and say: "what features can we build to protect our sister teams?". We always ask ourselves: "What features can we build to deliver value to our customers". We also try and deliver on the promise of integrated innovation - the principle that Microsoft's products should work well together.

But - hey - maybe salespeople nowadays are just reading blogs, twittering and attending unconferences. Maybe Microsoft is totally wrong to think that Salespeople do lots of email, meet with customers and perform tasks.

Don't just listen to me. Listen to our competitors. Most of them also have Outlook Clients. Also listen to some of our partners. For example: LinkPoint360 with their awesome Lotus Notes clients for ACT!, MSCRM, Netsuite, Sage, SFDC, SalesLogix and Pivotal.

Awesome article in CRM Magazine with an in depth interview with SteveB.

http://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/crmmedia/crm0708/#/22

Worth the read...

Over the last few years I've watched the awareness of CRM at Microsoft conferences like WWPC and Convergence grow from 'almost zero' to now a 'headline act'.

I'm really impressed to see CRM as a 'headline act' here at WWPC.

BTW: I was out last night and drank 'very lightly' for about six hours. I'm definitely 'out of practice' when it comes to such things. I was able to keep myself together (good for me and good for my NDA) - but I needed a little more than usual recovery time this morning. Some others looked worse (last night and this morning).

It's not that I didn't care - it's just that I'm not a 'morning person' and the teleconference showcasing these was at 8:00am. However Ben Riga did attend and has a nice blog post: Interesting ISV Solutions and Sessions at WPC.

Stunnware's excellent Filtered Lookup product for CRM 4.0 now supports Internet Facing Deployment (IFD). I highly recommend this product to anyone requiring Filtered Lookup functionality in CRM 4.0.

Check out this post on Catherine Eibner's blog. If you are working on Microsoft CRM in Sydney you should seriously considering becoming involved with this group.

Yep - we just moved buildings. Nice new building with the latest Microsoft interior fit-out (with extra 'design' furniture and decorations). The building does lack the new 'standard atrium' of buildings like 99 and 37 - but will have a shared glass 'dome thing' once completed. Not sure how I feel about the slightly smaller office (mine is 104 square feet vs 120+ in the old building) - but the sliding door does take up less space. Time will tell.

My commute is now longer and I'll be aggressively expensing the mileage when going up to visit main-campus. Not being on main campus is more a problem than an opportunity. Plenty of awesome teams have taken their 'non-main-campus-location' and used that to help re-invent and differentiate themselves. The CRM team is now faced with that challenge: use our new found remoteness as an opportunity or allow it to weaken us. Time will tell.

JaaG has more detailed coverage.

Developers might be interested in CRM's PDC session this year. The PDC is infamous for selling out fast so it's worth registering early.

Link: http://microsoftpdc.com/Agenda/Sessions.aspx

CRM/Dynamics: Developing Business Applications

Developers will learn how to build business applications that integrate with Office applications, Windows Workflow Foundation, and SQL Server analytics through the Microsoft Dynamics CRM application foundation. This session will show developers how to develop business applications and package them to run as a service or on a customer's server.

I suppose the proverbial cat is out of the bag regarding my current 'side project'. I'm contributing to the new MS Press Title Programming Microsoft Dynamics® CRM 4.0. The official street date of the book is October 8th 2008. I'm only writing two chapters (Metadata and Solution Deployment) so the level of commitment is relatively low - which is good considering our current 'push' at work, the sunny weather and more importantly: the baby at home.

Once my chapters are complete and handed off I'll resume work on my other side projects. I've suspended them all for the time being so I can focus my 'non-work CRM thinking' 100% on the book. I'm even considering releasing some cool unsupported application hacks (I just need to find a way to do this and keep the Support Team and the Upgrade Feature Team happy).

If you'd like to pre-order the book here is the Amazon Link:

I've posted a quick Screencast showing the process of adding licenses to a CRM Online organization. The Org license which I'm using is a 12-month trial which can have up to 250 users.

Screencast: Adding Licenses to CRM Online.

As you can see the process is pretty painless. Another great example of the logistics and operational excellence which stands behind CRM Online.

Lemphers is leaving Australia. It's true - I caught up with him last week in Redmond. The good news is he's coming to work here on some kind of Cloud thing. Lemphers is/was probably the best field ISV guy CRM has/had: which means PTY (Microsoft slang for Microsoft Australia) will need to work twice as hard to replace him.

If you are interested in Lemphers' old job he can be contacted via his blog.