This week marks the end of my first Canadian based project. Its been a good thing for me and has worked very well with getting me started in Canada.
For the first time in my IT career spanning more that 10 years I have worked on a project that is totally unrelated to CRM as I have been working at developing a website that is being used by a major Canadian player in the service industry.
After my last CRM project in the UK over 6 months ago it feels like I should be getting back to CRM soon. I miss the structure and the warm fuzzy feelings that I get from working with a product that has a solid base that has been developed over a number of years. That said, when working on a website that is built from the ground up there are never limitations on what can be achieved that are limited by the platform.
So whats the best CRM system I have worked with ? Now thats an interesting question.
Pivotal CRM (now owned by CDC Software) is a stunning product. Pivotal 6, the newest version is an amazing achievement. This is a product that has been in development one way or the other for more than 10 years and it shows.
Microsoft CRM or Microsoft Dynamics CRM is also a great product. Its nice to work with and configuration is simple. Micrsoft have got a lot of things right in the product but its still growing and maturing. A very powerful peice of software indeed.
Whats the main difference between the two ?
In my humble opinion the core code shipped with the product is the difference. Pivotal CRM comes with a core set of code that they call the CMS. This offers a basic set of functionality that many busineses would be interested in. What does it do? well thats more complex but as an example there is a whole bunch of code around the lead object to enable you to Qualify and Process any Leads that come into the business. This code set is all customizable.
Microsoft CRM does not have this feature. There are certain area’s where Microsoft offer set functionality but this is achieved by closed ‘black box’ code that cannot be changed so simply.
So it would seem that I am saying that Pivotal CRM is the better product of the two. Err… not really. On the many Pivotal CRM projects that I have worked on a lot of time is spent taking out chunks of this code, so sometimes this is not a bonus. This of course depends on the client. I have even worked on one project where all of this code was removed.
Sometimes its nice to start with the blank canvas that is Microsoft CRM.
Anyway, this could be a much longer discussion. I will leave the rest of it to the sales guys who will argue the above on a daily basis one way or the other.
Suffice it to say that if your business chooses either of these two then you have made a good start down the road to CRM and managing your customers.
