Dynamics CRM and Skype

The Microsoft's purchase of Skype at outrageous purchase price of 8.5$ billion is already the old news. There were many speculations at what is the Microsoft's plan with his new acquisition, is it ingenious move not recognized at the moment, like Microsoft's investment in the Facebook, or is it yet another blunder by the software giant. But, by now the dust has settled down, and as always the time will tell was it the good idea or not.

But, of course, Microsoft for sure has in plan to integrate Skype with his other products. He already has software for conferencing, phone calls and collaboration - Microsoft Lync, but through Skype they will be able to reach much larger customer base and to strengthen their position in the mobile market. After all, telephone and data networks are already integrated, and why not to have the same communication software on your mobile phone, fixed phone and personal computer?

One interesting integration is integration with the Microsoft Dynamics CRM. There have already been comments on that issue, and I think that such integration will give addition strength to the CRM offering, but not much. It would be cool for Skype and CRM users to automatically call a contact from their CRM windows, or to automatically record a time and duration of the skype call, but such integration already do exist, although through third-party tools, and is not expensive. Call centers are important users of phone integration, but such establishments use IP telephony and specialized software for the calling, and usually it can also be well integrated to the CRM. Therefore, out of the box integration with Skype would be nice feature, but not crucial.

Comparing Apples and Oranges

Our marketing professor at MBA studies used to say: "You can always find a market where you are a leader, if you define market accordingly". A similar wit could be applied to comparing one product to another: "You can always find that your product is better than competitor's if you define criteria accordingly".

The idea for this post came after encountering some sort of "comparison war" between two global players in the CRM market: Salesforce and Microsoft. Microsoft has made a strong entry in the hosted CRM market by launching the online CRM 2011, which has obviously provoked the salesforce.com, by now the global leader in that segment, to respond with typical chart aimed to present to general public the advantages of Salesforce vs Microsoft. This chart was published at the beginning of the year, and since then it was changed, so firstly I will post the original chart:

This chart has of-coruse caused a response from Microsoft, primarily from Microsoft parners and bloggers. They have presented evidence that this chart is misleading and plain wrong. The most erudite was a blog from Sonoma partners, one of the leading Microsoft CRM's partners, in which they have analyzed and refuted each of the seven claims that Salesforce has presented.

Now comes the interesting part. Salesforce has since then changed it's original chart and now, at the time of writing it looks like this one:

You can also look at the link where the graph was published, but I'm posting the graphic, so not to lose the original chart if the Salesforce choose to tweak it once more.

Now, not knowing anything about Salesforce or Microsoft, you can notice that Salesforce has changed a criteria a little bit, and most interestingly, they are now more generous, as before they were better on all 7 points, and now they are better on 6 points, with Outlook integration being listed as a feature which both products support.

Curiously enough, the criteria they have chosen to eliminate in the first chart, "any email app", to be acknowledged as equally supported on the second chart, "Outlook integration", is the one on which they had the best chance of claiming their advantage. It is truth that Microsoft's CRM works great with their most popular mail client - Outlook, but it is also truth that it doesn't have out-of -the-box integration with other mail clients, like Lotus Notes or Gmail, where Salesforce supports all three clients. The customer who doesn't use Outlook as their mail client has to pay for the third party add-on like LinkPoint360 to have the integration. Now, I'm using all three mail clients and in my opinion the Outlook is clearly the best, and globally it's the most popular client. But, of course, not everyone will share my opinion, and in many situations the change of mail client is not feasible.

But, of course, such comparisons are almost never intended to be as accurate as possible. Their main aim is to persuade the potential buyer to choose our solution. And one can well imagine the reasoning of a Salesforce's employee who was responsible for re-crafting the chart: "what is more convincing, seeing a chart on which we are better from competitor in every single aspect, or seeing a chart in which we are better in every single aspect except in one in which we generously give the credit to the competitor? No one is going to believe that we are better in everything, so, to make things more realistic let us concede that just somewhere Microsoft is on equal terms with us."

I don't want to say that Salesforce is deceitful company, Microsoft also has his own fair shares of marketing bluffs and such misleading comparisons are typical in Software industry. Both products have there own strengths and weaknesses, and the buyer has to go much deeper into each product to rightly decide which one is better for him. But, Salesforce's marketing department could have certainly done a better job of promoting advantages of their product to the competitor's.