CRM Vendor Takes Positive Outlook

ENT, Feb 26, 2001 by Joseph Mckendrick

When the enterprise resource planning (ERP) revolution began a few years back, many solutions where built on top of client/server architectures. Now, as customer relationship management (CRM) applications pick up steam, many vendors and companies are piggybacking on top of ERP infrastructures and adding browser front ends to increase accessibility.

But because ERP was designed to reach specified users, its reach is too limited for CRM use, says Dan Metzger, vice president of marketing at Worldtrak. Worldtrak opted to build its solution on a platform far more accessible and ubiquitous than ERP: the corporate e-mail system. And the most universally accepted e-mail systems around are Microsoft's Outlook and Exchange.

"Unlike an ERP solution where you need to put it in the hands of maybe 50 people, CRM is an application that you ideally want to deploy universally throughout the organization," Metzger says. "E-mail is the only universal platform. We built a solution within the most prevalent and most-used e-mail system in the world."

Worldtrak's eCRM solution can run on top of any Microsoft Exchange Server 2000 and Outlook system -- which serves as a ready-made CRM infrastructure. "With Outlook and Exchange you already have the IT infrastructure in place to deploy CRM, as opposed to having to make additional purchases in networking and hardware," Metzger says.

Worldtrak's solution was built using Microsoft Active Server Pages and native Outlook forms. Because Worldtrak uses core Microsoft technology, the solution wraps around Exchange 2000 and pro vides synchronization with SQL Server 2000 for Web access. Worldtrak provides direct synchronization of a CRM data store -- held within SQL Server -- with an extended Exchange 2000 mailbox for field users. Worldtrak will use standard Exchange 2000 messaging functions for future communication with other Microsoft modules, such as BizTalk Server and wireless connectivity.

Since Worldtrak's CRM solution is built within the Outlook infrastructure and has one Web interface, users do not have to toggle back and forth between Outlook and separate customer account software. This may help drive acceptance among field sales personnel -- the key user group for CRM applications -- that are already accustomed to Outlook.

"It's imperative to have a CRM solution that salespeople will readily adopt," says Harry Watkins, senior analyst at Aberdeen Group. "Worldtrak's Outlook-native solution is built within a system many front-line sales people already know how to use." User resistance is the main reason most CRM and sales force automation solutions fail, he notes.

Worldtrak considered offering a browser-based-only Internet solution as other CRM vendors offer -- but decided an Exchange/Outlook-based system retains more functionality, Metzger says. "All the CRM solutions that have been built in client/server bolted on a browser front-end," he explains. These vendors, however, have not been able to effectively support field and sales forces, which can't always be attached to the network.

Sales force acceptance was the reason ParentWatch, an Internet viewing and online childcare services firm, selected Worldtrak's software to manage its customer communications. "Our team was able to cut through the glitter and focus on selecting a CRM solution that in addition to having the functionality we were looking for, was easy to integrate with our existing Microsoft platform and would actually get used by our sales force," says Rick Pulling, vice president of sales at ParentWatch. Maintaining and nurturing an established customer base is key to ParentWatch's growth, and the organization was concerned about sales force adoption of any CRM solution.