Beta Testing for the next BCM?

[Tim P via OfficeKB.com]

Boe,

I don't recall if I have recommended this to you already but you may want to
check out the following alternatives that are designed to work nicely within
an exchange environment WITHOUT (as you have put it) all the needless hoops
to jump through. Go to www.avidian.com or www.teamscope.com

-THP

Boe,

I am participating in the BCM v3 beta and you can bet your life that they
will hear this from me. (Constructively of course) It is my opinion that
the design "politics" and the marketing of BCM need to join up to better
reflect the real needs of small business or this add-in app will remain
largely irrelevant for most users. It's just amazing for me to observe such
apparent indifference to such a large chunk of market share. (I don't design
or sell software though so what the heck do I know?) Full CRM does not have
to be extremely expensive and require an IT staff. That is the old
enterprise level development model and it is rapidly changing. Companies
like Salesforce.com are being watched very closely by Redmond and big changes
are afoot among the reseller partnership network to compete for the small
business piece of the pie. Many industry observers are skeptical that MS can
make this leap effectively. Contrary to what many may think from my posts, I
am a big cheerleader for them to pull this off but I have my healthy doubts
after several years of waiting. The BCM design team need not be relegated to
an afterthought team of developers. I would think that their efforts could
be more fully supported by the Office division if there was the larger
corporate will to do so.

We shall see!

-THP

If anyone here does manage to become a beta tester of BCM v3 could you
please, OH please recommend they give some OWA.

[quoted text clipped - 4 lines]

 

[boe]

You da man!!!

I don't mean to piss on MS or on BCM - it is just soo frustrating that it
does exactly what all my clients need except the OWA/WM5 component
(effectively the same). It has SOOO much potential to be every thing my
clients need. Sure bells and whistles later would be fine but this is just
the biggest chunk missing from this product in my opinion.

If BCM had lots of other issues I wouldn't care, I'd just say oh, you should
get such and such CRM product but it really does what my clients want short
of the OWA/WM5. I think since my clients are in radically different
industries and BCM nearly does everything all of them want it has soo much
potential but only if they make that OWA/exchange integration leap. Hell
they don't have to include the activities in the v2.5 fix they just have to
have the basic contact data you would normally see in OWA available from the
BCM contact info. Integration wouldn't even be necessary if they just
slapped together a simple two way sync tool between BCM contacts and regular
contacts to hold us over.

 

[boe]

Thanks - will these work with exchange OWA and sync with WM5?

Boe,

I don't recall if I have recommended this to you already but you may want
to
check out the following alternatives that are designed to work nicely
within
an exchange environment WITHOUT (as you have put it) all the needless
hoops
to jump through. Go to www.avidian.com or www.teamscope.com

-THP

Boe,

I am participating in the BCM v3 beta and you can bet your life that they
will hear this from me. (Constructively of course) It is my opinion that
the design "politics" and the marketing of BCM need to join up to better
reflect the real needs of small business or this add-in app will remain
largely irrelevant for most users. It's just amazing for me to observe
such
apparent indifference to such a large chunk of market share. (I don't
design
or sell software though so what the heck do I know?) Full CRM does not
have
to be extremely expensive and require an IT staff. That is the old
enterprise level development model and it is rapidly changing. Companies
like Salesforce.com are being watched very closely by Redmond and big
changes
are afoot among the reseller partnership network to compete for the small
business piece of the pie. Many industry observers are skeptical that MS
can
make this leap effectively. Contrary to what many may think from my
posts, I
am a big cheerleader for them to pull this off but I have my healthy
doubts
after several years of waiting. The BCM design team need not be relegated
to
an afterthought team of developers. I would think that their efforts
could
be more fully supported by the Office division if there was the larger
corporate will to do so.

We shall see!

-THP

If anyone here does manage to become a beta tester of BCM v3 could you
please, OH please recommend they give some OWA.

[quoted text clipped - 4 lines]

change/new version must be in the works. I would be happy to sign up
as a
beta tester if there is an easy place to sign up please let me know.

 

[Tim P via OfficeKB.com]

Be prepared for a long wait for this.

-THP

You da man!!!

I don't mean to piss on MS or on BCM - it is just soo frustrating that it
does exactly what all my clients need except the OWA/WM5 component
(effectively the same). It has SOOO much potential to be every thing my
clients need. Sure bells and whistles later would be fine but this is just
the biggest chunk missing from this product in my opinion.

If BCM had lots of other issues I wouldn't care, I'd just say oh, you should
get such and such CRM product but it really does what my clients want short
of the OWA/WM5. I think since my clients are in radically different
industries and BCM nearly does everything all of them want it has soo much
potential but only if they make that OWA/exchange integration leap. Hell
they don't have to include the activities in the v2.5 fix they just have to
have the basic contact data you would normally see in OWA available from the
BCM contact info. Integration wouldn't even be necessary if they just
slapped together a simple two way sync tool between BCM contacts and regular
contacts to hold us over.

Boe,

[quoted text clipped - 40 lines]

 

[boe]

Hopefully someone at Mapilabs or another company will at least be willing to
whip out something for those of us who can't wait for the 400lb gorilla to
listen to their clients.

Be prepared for a long wait for this.

-THP

You da man!!!

I don't mean to piss on MS or on BCM - it is just soo frustrating that it
does exactly what all my clients need except the OWA/WM5 component
(effectively the same). It has SOOO much potential to be every thing my
clients need. Sure bells and whistles later would be fine but this is
just
the biggest chunk missing from this product in my opinion.

If BCM had lots of other issues I wouldn't care, I'd just say oh, you
should
get such and such CRM product but it really does what my clients want
short
of the OWA/WM5. I think since my clients are in radically different
industries and BCM nearly does everything all of them want it has soo much
potential but only if they make that OWA/exchange integration leap. Hell
they don't have to include the activities in the v2.5 fix they just have
to
have the basic contact data you would normally see in OWA available from
the
BCM contact info. Integration wouldn't even be necessary if they just
slapped together a simple two way sync tool between BCM contacts and
regular
contacts to hold us over.

Boe,

[quoted text clipped - 40 lines]

a
beta tester if there is an easy place to sign up please let me know.

 

[Luther]

"Hey, all you OWA kids.
You can hear BCM say, get ready, ah,
Office Live! Come on baby now! Office Live! Oh-oh-a! Office Live!"

http://www.microsoft.com/office/officelive/default.mspx

{Apologies to sweet Lou Reed...}

 

[Tim P via OfficeKB.com]

I love surprises like this and if this ultimately becomes what it appears to
be I am very excited. My hope is that such a service will simply allow a
convenient browser based access experience among a multiple number of
different remote users who can each access the same central source of data in
real time. This would eliminate so many synching hassles, etc. As I grow my
service business and need to add additional team members, we need to all
easily collaborate remotely within the same (virtual) office space! If this
is done well it will address a glaring need for so many varied sized business
entities.

This news motivates me to fnally activate my current Office 12 beta email
invite that I have been just too damn busy to get to this week. I have to
stop posting here so much and get to work!

-THP

 

[boe]

WOW - I have to say WOW. I read PC Magazines review of Office 12 beta and
have to wonder if the person was held prisoner until they wrote a nice
review or if they were being blackmailed.
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1895,1888060,00.asp PC MAG claims Office 12
is the biggest change to Office in 10 years! I would be embarrassed to
write such a boot-licking review if I were that writer. I thought a
reports job was to be objective. Instead of just going on about how
wonderful it is, why not point out some of the major flaws in it as well.
Since PC Mag went on about the good stuff - I'll let you know a few of my
major concerns about the version 12 release so you have some balance.
Please do read their review as they do highlight the good things you might
be waiting for in the next version of Office.



OK - they changed to toolbar - it is now even MORE mac like than before -
OOOH - AHHH. If I was that hung up on a MAC interface I'd just by a MAC -
please get over it MS - it isn't everything - there is more to improving
your products (office and windows) than just making them look like MACs!! I
don't consider a mac toolbar a big change. I had little problem navigating
it so it isn't a bad toolbar layout so I'm not complaining that it is bad -
just not what people who actually have more than a kindergarten education
need MS to focus on. We need Office to be more FUNCTIONAL - prettier
doesn't justify an upgrade in a corporate environment. You want our money
MS - than make it worth it for us to upgrade! Does it really need to be
THAT much more intuitive that you spend so much time on that menu bar?
Anyone who has used a product for a day pretty much knows 80% of all the
functions they will use and after a week you probably are at 90%. So why
not focuts on giving those of us who have actually used a computer for more
than a week the functions we have been needing for YEARS!



MS doesn't seem to really want to hear what is wrong with their product as
the click here to provide feedback button is not functioning!





Before anyone gets all concerned that I'm bashing a Beta vs. a final
release - relax, I'm not going on about how it is slow or hung many times or
things like that because I'm expecting issues like that in a beta. It is
CORE features that are missing that I'm concerned about. If I thought MS
had even thought about these missing key features I wouldn't be writing
this. But as the article says it is the biggest change in 10 years - so
let's give those developers some things to think about.







Here is what my issue is.



They haven't improved the two biggest gimped applications in Office -
Outlook and Access.



1 Access - still can't use JPGs effectively - they are a package - in Office
12 you had Photo Editor so JPGs showed up in reports/forms. So what does MS
think we are LESS likely to have databases with pictures 5 years later? If
you want to bring databases to the average user think about what they would
have in it. Even contacts in Outlook has pictures! Contacts are a
database. Your default database is for an inventory - don't you think most
companies would start to consider pictures essential in a database? When
you shop on line - do you ever buy anything without a PICTURE? Isn't it
sad that previoius versions of Office - pre2003 had no issue with pictures
but the newer ones can't handle them



2 Databases with JPGs still absurdly large. The jpgs by themselves are only
about 2MB but with all the white space in Access, they take up 600MB!!!!



3 I saw no way to convert my database - save as, export etc so I could save
it to a 2006 format. Not sure if I could if that would help with JPGs.
Frankly I couldn't figure out how to create a table with pictures from
scratch in the new version! I didn't see a way of creating any field type -
e.g. currency, date, etc. I could select templates - e.g. begin, current
value etc - but not just add any type as before.



Outlook. I'd love to tell you about Outlook but it always came up out of
resources!! I have 1 GIG of RAM - 100 GIG FREE on my hard drive and a P4
2.8 and a 256MB video card. I'm hoping MS doesn't think that isn't
sufficient for opening mail! I ended up creating a new profile and I was
able to get into e-mail.



1 MS keeps on talking about improving SEARCHING technology. Guess what
people do A LOT of in Outlook - SERCHING. So when I search more than one
folder, I want to see both the TO and the FROM folder - because if I am
searching MY mailbox it is always FROM me, and if I'm searching my sent
folder as well as my inbox, I need to know who it went TO.



2 When is outlook actually going to EXIT completely when you close it or
click on exit. It is the most tenacious program I've ever seen. If you
need to flip between outlook profiles it is essential to have Outlook
actually stop all processes. Which leads to my third point.



3 Let us open more than one outlook profile at the same time. Let's face it
how many people have at least 3 e-mail accounts - their personal, business
and their register/buy products account where they don't care about getting
on a spam list. I have 2 business accounts that I keep in one profile and
three personal accounts I keep in a separate profile. Switching between the
two is unpleasant but I would never want the two profiles combined.



4 I don't see an import function for Goldmine. I realize that isn't a
function too many people will want but it would be nice.





Business Contact Manager.



BCM is such a simple thing for them to improve upon. If they just synched
the basic contact data with a normal exchange account contacts so you could
access the data via OWA and sync it with your pocketpc/WM5 device the
product would offer something head and shoulders above Saleslogix, Act,
Goldmine etc. It probably would take a programmer about 1 day to develop it
and test it. Supposedly BCM is for Small Businesses and yet so is Small
Business Server if I'm not mistaken. So why not give the SBS people the
contact management feature they need?

 

[Luther]

You are so different from the typical Office and BCM user that you
should look for something that matches your particular needs. SAP on
Open Office? Then you could grace their newsgroups with you invicible
superiority to hoi polloi.

80% of Office feature requests are for features that already exist.
Hence the need for a better UI so that users can discover them.

95% of small businesses use POP for email, so rewriting BCM to make it
an Exchange application might help you, but not the target audience.

BTW, I recall Goldmine import in a beta of BCM v1. I suspect no one
used it. Goldmine is a mid-sized business app (e.g. it requires a
server to host it). MSCRM probably imports from Goldmine.

 

[boe]

Thanks - Actually I work for two companies that use goldmine but don't have
servers. I'd love to get them off GM and onto BCM if BCM did what they
needed it to and offered an advantage. BCM is sooo close to offering a
great deal more if it functioned just a little more with Exchange. Two of
the companies I work for are both small companies -under 40 employees each.
Only the sales departments in each use GM. But the only thing that would
compel them to move to BCM would be if they could access their basic contact
data using OWA since they already have exchange servers. I consult for
companies from 1500 employees to some that have 8. Based on the number of
companies I work for and their diversity in business functions, I don't
think I am that unique. I think businesses are changing the way they
acceess e-mail and with SBS many many more companies are starting to put in
their own exchange servers and just hire out the setup and maintenance to
companies such as mine. The issue is that many of these small companies
can't afford/justify the expense of a full CRM solution. Since BCM does so
much of what they are missing in standard Outlook/Exchange just a sync of
the main contact data would give them 95% of what they would want and would
give them the justification to move to BCM.

Just as Goldmine is starting to be a less than ideal solution for those
companies, so is POP. I would say more of my clients have started to use
IMAP and OWA than before.

I honestly don't mean to sound snooty if that is what you took from my
posting - I could use some courses in memo writing.

 

[Tim P via OfficeKB.com]

Boe,

In contrast to and with all due respect to Luther's comments, I do not think
you are very different from the typical Office BCM user. Your comments are
dead on in my opinion. It does not matter whether one gets their email via
POP or not. What you are requesting is for the ability of more than one user
among a small business sales team to easily access a central source of
company data via the web. For the life of me, I cannot understand what is so
hard to comprehend about such a usage scenario. This is the 21st century and
the web is now dominant. This is not a rare situation! BCM limits you to
non-remote access of data. Most small business (not a few) would like to
have remote access to their data and don't really care HOW (programming wise)
that is done as long as the real world experience can be acheived in their
day to day operation. BTW, Gold Mine is a single user entry platform
application made by Front Range Solutions, Inc. (Based in CO Springs, CO)
They have additional mid to large enterprise CRM upgrade options to move up
to from the basic GM app.

It really comes down to the need for more versatile access to one's data from
places outside of the "work-group-under-one-roof" sharing model that BCM is
stuck in. I too would like to see MS think more outside of the shoebox in
order to break free of their apparently limited perception of just how a
"typical" small business user needs to operate. Well designed software
should not attempt to keep telling its intended user base how it should
operate in order to align with the limited functionality of the app. This
seems entirely backwards and driven only by a marketing agenda. They should
instead intuit more broadly how users operate and then design features and
functions as flexibly as possible accordingly. Like you state, BCM is so
close to being so much more useful to so many current Office system users.
They either just don't get it or they do and just choose to maintain an
incentive for migration to the full MS CRM rather than improve BCM in the way
you describe.

-THP

Thanks - Actually I work for two companies that use goldmine but don't have
servers. I'd love to get them off GM and onto BCM if BCM did what they
needed it to and offered an advantage. BCM is sooo close to offering a
great deal more if it functioned just a little more with Exchange. Two of
the companies I work for are both small companies -under 40 employees each.
Only the sales departments in each use GM. But the only thing that would
compel them to move to BCM would be if they could access their basic contact
data using OWA since they already have exchange servers. I consult for
companies from 1500 employees to some that have 8. Based on the number of
companies I work for and their diversity in business functions, I don't
think I am that unique. I think businesses are changing the way they
acceess e-mail and with SBS many many more companies are starting to put in
their own exchange servers and just hire out the setup and maintenance to
companies such as mine. The issue is that many of these small companies
can't afford/justify the expense of a full CRM solution. Since BCM does so
much of what they are missing in standard Outlook/Exchange just a sync of
the main contact data would give them 95% of what they would want and would
give them the justification to move to BCM.

Just as Goldmine is starting to be a less than ideal solution for those
companies, so is POP. I would say more of my clients have started to use
IMAP and OWA than before.

I honestly don't mean to sound snooty if that is what you took from my
posting - I could use some courses in memo writing.

You are so different from the typical Office and BCM user that you
should look for something that matches your particular needs. SAP on

[quoted text clipped - 10 lines]

used it. Goldmine is a mid-sized business app (e.g. it requires a
server to host it). MSCRM probably imports from Goldmine.

 

[boe]

Thanks for confirming that I'm not the freak whose users want what no one
else does. I just got another response like this in another group - 80%,
most users, no one else wants... Where are these people getting their
statistics? I don't need angled text in my excel format but that doesn't
mean no one else or 99% of the rest of the world doesn't. I support many
people in diverse environments from one of the world's largest University
(with many radically different divisions), a couple of multimedia companies,
a couple of financial investment companies, a retail store and an
electronics development company. I see a similar goal with just about all
of these companies - what a statistical anomoly I must be to happen to have
found the same need in all those different environmnets.

Boe,

In contrast to and with all due respect to Luther's comments, I do not
think
you are very different from the typical Office BCM user. Your comments
are
dead on in my opinion. It does not matter whether one gets their email
via
POP or not. What you are requesting is for the ability of more than one
user
among a small business sales team to easily access a central source of
company data via the web. For the life of me, I cannot understand what is
so
hard to comprehend about such a usage scenario. This is the 21st century
and
the web is now dominant. This is not a rare situation! BCM limits you to
non-remote access of data. Most small business (not a few) would like to
have remote access to their data and don't really care HOW (programming
wise)
that is done as long as the real world experience can be acheived in their
day to day operation. BTW, Gold Mine is a single user entry platform
application made by Front Range Solutions, Inc. (Based in CO Springs, CO)
They have additional mid to large enterprise CRM upgrade options to move
up
to from the basic GM app.

It really comes down to the need for more versatile access to one's data
from
places outside of the "work-group-under-one-roof" sharing model that BCM
is
stuck in. I too would like to see MS think more outside of the shoebox in
order to break free of their apparently limited perception of just how a
"typical" small business user needs to operate. Well designed software
should not attempt to keep telling its intended user base how it should
operate in order to align with the limited functionality of the app. This
seems entirely backwards and driven only by a marketing agenda. They
should
instead intuit more broadly how users operate and then design features and
functions as flexibly as possible accordingly. Like you state, BCM is so
close to being so much more useful to so many current Office system users.
They either just don't get it or they do and just choose to maintain an
incentive for migration to the full MS CRM rather than improve BCM in the
way
you describe.

-THP

Thanks - Actually I work for two companies that use goldmine but don't
have
servers. I'd love to get them off GM and onto BCM if BCM did what they
needed it to and offered an advantage. BCM is sooo close to offering a
great deal more if it functioned just a little more with Exchange. Two of
the companies I work for are both small companies -under 40 employees
each.
Only the sales departments in each use GM. But the only thing that would
compel them to move to BCM would be if they could access their basic
contact
data using OWA since they already have exchange servers. I consult for
companies from 1500 employees to some that have 8. Based on the number
of
companies I work for and their diversity in business functions, I don't
think I am that unique. I think businesses are changing the way they
acceess e-mail and with SBS many many more companies are starting to put
in
their own exchange servers and just hire out the setup and maintenance to
companies such as mine. The issue is that many of these small companies
can't afford/justify the expense of a full CRM solution. Since BCM does
so
much of what they are missing in standard Outlook/Exchange just a sync of
the main contact data would give them 95% of what they would want and
would
give them the justification to move to BCM.

Just as Goldmine is starting to be a less than ideal solution for those
companies, so is POP. I would say more of my clients have started to use
IMAP and OWA than before.

I honestly don't mean to sound snooty if that is what you took from my
posting - I could use some courses in memo writing.

You are so different from the typical Office and BCM user that you
should look for something that matches your particular needs. SAP on

[quoted text clipped - 10 lines]

used it. Goldmine is a mid-sized business app (e.g. it requires a
server to host it). MSCRM probably imports from Goldmine.