As the bowtie-wearing presenter bid farewell to the crowd here in Barcelona at the end of today’s global launch event for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013, a grizzled analyst in the row behind me muttered, “What, nothing about the product?”
Departing from the traditions of technology launch events, there had been no slidedecks of product features throughout the hour-long event (preceded by a 30-minute warm-up for those of us attending in person at the Convergence EMEA 2013 show here in Barcelona).
Instead, there were videos and live interviews with customers, brief appearances by Microsoft executives, and a few short, grainy Skype video calls to partners and product teams in Europe and the US. It was simply, as corporate VP of marketing Wayne Morris called it during the pre-show warm-up, “a coming out party” for the new release, the first major update of the platform in two years.
So instead of specifications and feature lists, we heard about business outcomes from Dynamics CRM customers that are disrupting traditional industries. And we heard corporate vice president of Dynamics CRM Bob Stutz talking about the goal of designing “a customer experience that was — if I can use that word — sexy.”
Sexed-up it was: there wasn’t a lot of substance to the event. Anyone wanting to dig deep found themselves disappointed. Yet it was still highly meaningful as an illustration of several big shifts at Microsoft.
Devices and services
First up, Dynamics CRM exemplifies Microsoft’s devices and services strategy as outlined by retiring CEO Steve Ballmer. In a brief but bullish appearance on stage, Kirill Tatarinov, executive vice president of Microsoft Business Solutions (MBS) laid claim to leadership in the strategy:
“We already blazed the path for Microsoft into the cloud … Dynamics CRM is blazing the path for the devices and services strategy.”
That path is most visible in the new release’s touch-centric user interface, providing a consistent user experience across multiple devices, and especially on mobile devices. “Dynamics CRM 2013 is built for the mobile world,” said Tatarinov.
This was a point highlighted by Bob Stutz, too:
“People need to have the same experience across multiple devices — you need to be able to have the same experience and you need to be able to see the same data.”
Customers also lined up to praise the cross-platform consistency. For Paul Marriott-Clarke, commercial director at UK banking startup Metro Bank, it clinched the decision over Salesforce.com for the bank’s CRM platform:
“When we saw the new Dynamics 2013 version and the new Windows 8 interface running across all devices, it meant I could get what I wanted from a business perspective … while satisfying the needs of the IT team.”
That interface
Left unmentioned were all the customers who may find the upgrade to the new interface more challenging. It was perhaps no coincidence that the three customers chosen to showcase reactions to the new release were fast-growing companies who are relatively recent adopters.
Earlier in the day, Stefan Truthaen, CEO of fire safety engineering firm hhpberlin, a five-year user of Dynamics CRM, had addressed a user group session at Convergence. While welcoming the new user interface, he hinted at the disruption it had caused for those accustomed to the old look-and-feel:
“”You cannot have the new features and the new possibilities in the old world … The standard user interface for Microsoft didn’t support our organization. But between the new and the old there’s a lot of discussion.”
I felt that Scott Millwood, CEO of Customer Effective, a Dynamics CRM focused consulting company based in Greenville, South Carolina, was putting a brace face on the situation when he said over Skype in the warm-up, “We look forward to upgrading everybody.”
Pace of innovation
There are big changes under the covers, too. Today’s launch was the culmination of a month-long roll-out of general availability across the variety of different incarnations the vendor has to support. In part, that’s why product demonstrations and feature lists would have been superfluous today — everyone already has their hands on the product.
The cloud version went live in Microsoft’s data centers at the beginning of October — first in APAC, then EMEA and finally the US. On October 21 Microsoft officially declared it available in 42 global markets. Then on October 31, the on-premises and partner-hosted versions became available.
Even more significantly, after a gap of almost two years since the last major release, new releases will now come at a much faster pace. As Paul Greenberg explained last week in his reflections on Microsoft’s recent analyst summit:
The next release Leo is designed to focus on customer service and should strengthen the capabilities …
Mira, the release after Leo is focused on … a fairly well advanced version of a marketing campaign management tool …
The Subra release which will follow Mira, is a Netbreeze release with the full Twitter firehose and geo-analysis.
Keep in mind, we aren’t talking about old school release cycles here. This isn’t something that will take us to 2015. In fact, Subra, which follows Mira, and prior to that Leo, is slated for the 1st quarter of 2014. Agile.
Mobile
The switch to a touch-centric, mobile-first design philosophy is a continuation of the big shift in the Microsoft user experience initiated with Windows 8. This new release of Dynamics CRM also adds new companion apps for functions such as expense management, time tracking and approvals. The iPad and Windows 8 versions became available for download from their respective stores on October 8; later this month versions for iPhones, Android phones and Windows Phones will become available.
For serviced office provider Servcorp, one of the early release customers featured at the event, mobile is rapidly becoming crucial: ”Over the last 12 months mobility has emerged as a key ingredient,” said global CIO Matthew Baumgartner.
At Pandora Jewellery, another early release customer, VP sales Lori McDonald said, “For me personally it’s the mobility features that get me excited.”
In her interview, she explained that the jewellery retailer finds the new release most useful for sharing information, automating workflows and providing more consistent sales information. The latter is point is especially pertinent given that Pandora’s franchisees use a hotchpotch of different systems of record to track inventory and sales.
Social
Bob Stutz in his comments highlighted the use of acquired social capabilities such as NetBreeze social analytics, Yammer social messaging and Skype calls. This is key to sales in today’s world, he said:
“It’s about making that product personal and you only get that by being social.”
There was not much mention today of the InsideView capabilities announced last month, but that’s also an important enhancement.
Business lifestyle
One thing that wasn’t mentioned was pricing, despite an effective price increase with the introduction of a new three-tier subscription model that increases the top tier price to $65 per month. No worries, it’s still a lot less than a Salesforce licence.
What today was about was not features or pricing but a far loftier lifestyle message, about what sort of business Dynamics CRM customers want to be. Just as automobile marketing in the 1960s started to move away from technical specifications to lifestyle messaging, so today, Microsoft started selling its software on business outcomes instead of technology features.
Perhaps software is becoming sexy after all.
Disclosure: Salesforce.com is a diginomica premium partner. Microsoft funded most of the author’s T&E to attend Convergence EMEA 2013 in Barcelona.
Photo credit: @philww
