People people I implore you...It's all about big business and the net worth of some guy in the Seatle area...BCM wasn't designed by a company with more resources than God for convenience and flexibility for its users...It was designed to assimilate, even further, the omniscient collective mind/machine of the almighty Microsoft! Glory I say glory! Why does MS even waste the time and effort in beta? Just fire up the machine and tell the cogs in the machine it's all good! Let's look at BCM and SBA how can anyone, not assimilated yet, believe that MS can't put out a product that is at least as feature rich as the competition (Goldmine/Quickbooks for example) on the first round? If I (small biz) were to be so arrogant to my clientele well resistance would be futile and assimilation would no doubt take over. Does not the machine have accountants who are capable of putting together a model by which the cogs in the machine could design and implement a program that connects people (accounts/customers) to revenue less expenses, COGS, and other expenses into one package? Truly not all of the masses can be assimilated. It boggles even the collective mind that a behemoth, the almighty of a company wouldn't be able to top the competition on the first release. How long has Quickbooks and Goldmine been in circulation? Are contact management and debits and credits new concepts? The assimilated would think so. Funny one of the collective attempted to tell me that new concepts and models took an enormous amount of time to bring to market; indeed as was the calculator. I replied that it wasn't like MS was into astrophysics or something along those lines. These days most 12 year old greasy faced kiddos can program with the best of them...He replied, how would you know are you some sort of a rocket scientist, I replied as a matter of fact I am...I suggest someone call the "Whaaaaabulance" (from the movie "The Kid") for the poor soul. He also replied with something along the lines of putting myself in their shoes. A fine idea, I replied, before you criticize someone(s) walk a mile in their shoes that way you will be a mile away from them and have their shoes too.
Tim P via OfficeKB.com wrote:
Robert, I don't think you are missing anything at all. It seems to be Microsoft that is missing something. Yours is but another real world user example of the limited design expectations of BCM. The irony is most pure sales organizations cannot even use BCM as a practical tool without making a LOT of tradeoffs with its use. Wireless Exchange synch with a smartphone is something that most remote sales reps would love to use. (And we're supposed to be excited over the limited Business Contacts info transfer to a Pocket PC) .. After almost 3 years since its initial release it is entirely comical for the designers of BCM to sit back and smugly excuse away the reasons for such limitations. They are not inherent and could be improved upon if there were more of a will to do so. -THP Robert (AAT) wrote:
First installed BCM as part of Office SB, looked at it but really never made the plunge into it and it fell by the way side. Then I bought a new computer and re-installed BCM. Set up some accounts and Business Contacts and realized Business Contacts were separate from regular contacts because they had to be in 2 separate folders. I thought that was weird and it felt awkward to have two contact folders: business contacts and sales reps, vendors, support, and friends/family in another. Shortly thereafter we upgraded to Small Business Server 2003, and we got busy with the implemenation of that. The real killer application is wireless sync with Exchange and a Smartphone. Wow, your inbox, calender and contacts up to date on your phone. Wow. Then, I realized that my Business Contact never made it over to Contacts on the Smartphone. Duh! It seems like BCM could be practical tool for a pure sales organization. But I am thinking that if a company needs to decided between BCM and wireles sync, they will chose the latter. Am I missing something here?
