Microsoft CRM can be applied to many different uses. xRM is the underlying platform that allows Microsoft CRM to be applied to any type of organisation and any type of relationship use.
Many customers have adopted Microsoft Dynamics CRM as a generic business application development platform. Organisations can rapidly configure a tailored business application not associated with the traditional customer relationship management pillars of sales, service and marketing. Examples of these applications include human resource management, vendor management, IT helpdesk, public sector citizen management, and grant management. Microsoft refers to these types of solutions as "xRM".
xRM (Anything Relationship Management) is the natural evolution of CRM (Customer Relationship Management). In today’s dynamic business environment companies demand the ability to manage anything (X=anything), not simply relationships with customers. Microsoft CRM sits on the .NET platform and because of that, it is much more than a traditional CRM product. Instead, a better way to think of Microsoft CRM is as a rapid development application with out of the box CRM functionality, capable of instantly leveraging the .NET platform, and a vast array of Microsoft applications.
Every day countless business requests go unmet because line-of-business (LOB) applications do not get funded. Most organisations meet their business process automation needs through the development of custom applications or the acquisition of packaged applications. Often times these solutions do not fulfill every business requirement. Custom applications can be extremely expensive to develop and maintain. Research has identified that it will cost a company from seven to ten times more to develop a particular functionality than to purchase comparable functionality. The costs and risks associated with developing highly specialized LOB applications are truly prohibitive. Packaged applications, while easy to deploy, do not fit the business and can be very difficult to change once they are deployed. xRM offers an alternative and the best of both worlds. It accelerates the creation of LOB applications, and it makes it easy to modify existing applications in response to ever-changing business needs.
Customers today have a wealth of capabilities at their disposal with the Microsoft Dynamics CRM platform including multi-tenancy, multi-currency, multi-lingual, role-based security, Windows Workflow Foundation, configurable data schema and UI, extensive BI and Office integration. These platform features alone would take many months or years to develop. This is even before tackling the application functionality development effort.
xRM is more than a CRM product or service — it’s a strategic approach to understanding what makes a business thrive, what information needs to be tracked, by whom, and how it needs to be displayed and leveraged to facilitate better decisions. The formula for a successful xRM deployment always includes scaleable and robust platforms that automate many of the manual processes involved in daily operations.
Pythagoras has recently used xRM to develop unique solutions for CRM in Education, CRM Legal, CRM Insurance and CRM Not-for-Profit.
About Pythagoras
Pythagoras is a company that is experienced in providing xRM (Anything Relationship Management) and also CRM (Customer Relationship Management), Accounts and integrated business solutions for businesses across a broad range of industries and products including Microsoft Dynamics CRM, Sage 200 and Sage CRM. http://www.pythagoras.co.uk/microsoft_crm.aspx
