Source: Flickr JSchementi
“Innovators create value by working on things that are not yet fully known. Periods of technological change have always involved numerous creative experiments followed by shakeouts and establishment of an industry standard.”
Professor Rosabeth Moss Kanter, Harvard Business School
Microsoft's announcement of new marketing, customer care and social listening features added to its Microsoft Dynamics CRM product reveals some true creativity and innovation. Not so much in terms of product features (although there are some). What the announcement really highlights is a creative business and go-to-market strategy.
First the announcement. Sometime next quarter Microsoft will release new marketing features based on its MarketingPilot acquisition, new service features to complement its recent acquisition of Parature, and new social listening features based on its Netbreeze acquistion. Innovating from typical industry practice, the release will bring social listening capabilities to every sales, service and marketing person in the organization and the new release is expected in the second quarter of 2014.
Now for the innovative part.
The original model for CRM was based on sales as an internal and predictable process like manufacturing and to be controlled by IT. Since then customers have embraced social media and revoluionized marketing. As much CRM now takes place a much outside the walls of organizations as inside. Soon marketing may soon be spending as much on technology as IT. At the same time we are experiencing a re-platforming as field workers become unteathered from their desktop and even laptop computers in favor of mobile devices. Data centers are also moving into the cloud.
Despite being almost 100% saturated, everything in CRM marketplace is up for grabs as organizations are going to have to spend big to stay current with new business processes, new customers, and new platforms.
How will vendors adapt to these turbulent market conditions? Each of the major vendors is experimenting with a different approach and here is where the true innovation in CRM rests, not in products but in business strategy. Traditionally Microsoft has been known as a fast follower preferring to be the second company to introduce features and not the first, but this is different. Microsoft is not following the market leader as much as it is dancing around it. Some of things we see Microsoft doing differently include:
- Embracing on-premise and well as cloud versions of its products,
- Looking for monopolies in local markets where it is the only vendor to offer native language support in say Danish or Turkish,
- Building applications to sell to end users as well as IT,
- Selling some products, such as Microsoft Dynamics Marketing standalone, but coupling with other products so the Microsoft footprint in an account can be extended if the opportunity arises,
- Leveraging its expertise in consumer markets to build apps with a mass market look and feel.
Will this strategy prove to be a winner? The market has not made up its mind, yet at the heart of every successful business are the people who make things happen. Clearly Microsoft Dynamics has some heart.
