Microsoft Interview with Sanjay Parthasarathy: How .NET Technologies Can Deliver Customers a Consistent, Personalized Experience

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Microsoft Corporation

We know that MSCRM will not meet the needs of all customers. That was never our intention. No single CRM solution can fit every organization’s needs. Companies use too many different customer interaction tools for any solution to provide a universal answer. What we need is a tightly integrated CRM ecosystem that uses XML Web services, so all tools and applications can work together seamlessly.

Barry Jacobs: What advice do you have for senior decision-makers who are trying to make their enterprises more customer-centric?

Sanjay Parthasarathy: Making your enterprise more customer-centric is really a matter of answering one fundamental question: How can we connect more deeply with our customers?

It's not a simple question, because there are many ways for a company to achieve deeper connection with its customers. Using technology is one way, but it is not the only way, and for some enterprises it may not be the best way. If you do use technology, a good CRM solution is essential. Which one you choose will depend on what problems you’re trying to solve, whom you’re trying to reach, and why you want to connect with them. A CRM solution that is well designed and effectively implemented will help you achieve two critical business goals: It will free your employees to spend more time on customer service, instead of wasting time trying to understand cumbersome tools that should be intuitive and easy to use. Secondly, it will help customers serve themselves by providing more opportunities for them to interact with your organization.

For enterprises that succeed in putting their customers first, the end results are often a larger base of loyal, satisfied customers and a more profitable business.

Cost is a factor in every technology decision, and CRM is no exception. That's especially true in the kind of economic climate businesses are facing today, but the central question is whether the investment of those dollars will return good value in terms of better customer service that leads to increased revenue. Repeatedly, the Microsoft Platform has demonstrated the best total cost of ownership (TCO) in benchmarks, development efforts, and server capabilities. Our CRM partners have leveraged our low TCO to deliver a broad range of cost-effective solutions.

But technology is only a tool. It can't solve every business problem, but neither does it create many of the problems for which it is blamed. Most of those problems are due to poor planning, as when an enterprise tries to automate an existing process without a thorough assessment of how that change will improve its customers’ experience. Companies can reduce such challenges by taking advantage of Microsoft's CRM partner ecosystem — a network of system integrators (SI’s) and independent software vendors (ISV's), which have developed and deployed hundreds of end-to-end solutions on the .NET Platform. Microsoft's CRM partners support businesses of every size and all aspects of business operations — from call centers to sales force automation and everything in between. They leverage the .NET Platform to connect customers, partners, and employees in a seamless network that can be accessed any time, any place, and from any device.

BJ: How can .NET help in the goal for CRM optimization?

SP: Customers interact with a company in many different ways, and often in a variety of locations. As a result, customer data — from preferences to billing information — may be stored in multiple databases. The challenge is to make sure customers have many different touch points, many ways to interact with a company, while enabling companies to connect all of that information and enhance the services they offer customers.

Web services allow companies to do that, no matter how and where the information is stored. They can use Web services to collect data across different platforms and applications, and connect the data in different places and among different devices, to make sure information can be acted upon to provide customers with valuable services. The next step is for companies to use smart clients to translate that customer information into "knowledge," so that knowledge workers can view the data and make good decisions based on that information.

The .NET Framework and the .NET Enterprise Servers support end-to-end computing across each of the CRM functional areas — from traditional CRM elements like sales and support to niche functions like personalization, analytics, and marketing automation. Microsoft has strong partnerships with ISV's that have developed leading-edge solutions on the .NET Platform, a robust platform for delivering and deploying CRM solutions. The broad set of options within the .NET Platform allows ISV's to optimize for their areas of expertise and deliver solutions tailored to their customers’ needs.

For example, as mobility becomes a standard feature of modern business, many customers are starting to expect support for wireless devices. Microsoft offers exceptionally strong wireless support with the recently announced Tablet PC, Smart Phone, and Pocket PC Phone Edition, which are all connected by the .NET Framework. Also, using the .NET Compact Framework, ISV's have developed solutions that enable smart devices to synchronize with servers anywhere in the world. Web services make it extremely easy to connect smart devices.

BJ: Many new CRM-related applications are coming out of Microsoft. Can you talk about them and what types of enterprise they are targeting?

SJ: Actually, Microsoft has only one new CRM offering. It's called MSCRM, and it is focused on a couple of specific areas. It is being developed by and for the Microsoft Business Solutions (MBS) team, formerly known as the Great Plains Business Unit, and the target audience is the underserved small and medium business (SMB) market — companies with 1 to 500 employees. We believe this product will allow many companies that have no CRM solution today to begin realizing the benefits of CRM.

At the same time, we know that MSCRM will not meet the needs of all customers. That was never our intention. No single CRM solution can fit every organization's needs. Companies use too many different customer interaction tools for any solution to provide a universal answer. What we need is a tightly integrated CRM ecosystem that uses XML Web services, so all tools and applications can work together seamlessly. Microsoft will be part of that larger ecosystem. As such, we will continue to expand our partnerships with the many ISV's that build CRM solutions on the Microsoft platform.

BJ: With so many established solutions in the CRM market space, how will .NET work with these legacy systems?

SP: One of the greatest benefits of the .NET Framework and XML Web services is that they don't require companies to rip and replace legacy systems. Using the .NET Platform, a company can continue to extend its investment, training, and skills in legacy systems.

The Common Language Runtime (CLR) within the Visual Studio.NET development environment supports many legacy programming languages. That allows enterprises to evolve at their own pace. Many companies may begin their entry into Web services with things like these CRM solutions, but their later development efforts will include native XML. Companies don't have to scrap their legacy systems to get the value of Web services and XML.

Interoperability with legacy systems should be considered one of the most critical features of a CRM system. It will be difficult for any CRM system that does not support SOAP, Web Services, and XML to achieve a realistic return on investment (ROI). In today's economy, access to legacy system information can be the driving factor in keeping the TCO (total cost of ownership) at a reasonable level. If the TCO cannot be justified, or if the time to get the CRM system up and running is too long, most of the benefits will be lost. Time to market is a large factor in determining the overall success of a CRM system. Using the Microsoft .NET Framework, organizations know that interoperability is built into the Platform. ISV's can rapidly create and deliver cost-effective, world-class solutions, and help organizations of all sizes put customers at the center of their business.

BJ: What is your vision for the customer of the future, including value chain partners and how they will work together to deliver the best customer experience?

SP: The value chain is becoming much more closely aligned because of the power, popularity, and global reach of the Internet. It's being aligned even more because companies now demand that their solutions be tightly integrated.

Our vision for the future is one in which customers are in charge of their data, and a federation of servers are linked together via Web services. Once connected, businesses will be transformed by the knowledge they have released through the CRM ecosystem. They will suddenly have information that they can use in all sorts of creative new ways. It will allow them to rethink how their company operates, how they interact with customers, how they perform business processes. Partners will be very important in helping companies achieve this.