Microsoft takes 'social' cue from Salesforce.com for its CRM

Microsoft on Tuesday unveiled the latest version of its Dynamics CRM (customer-relationship-management) software, which adds some social software functionality as well as closer ties to the Office 365 online productivity suite.

Best CCNA Training and CCNA Certification and more Cisco exams log in to Certkingdom.com

"What we had prior to now is separate environments for billing and provisioning [of CRM Online and Office 365]," said Brad Wilson, general manager, Dynamics CRM product management group. But now customers will be able to order the application "within the Office 365 experience," he said.

Taking a page from rivals such as Salesforce.com, both the online and on-premises versions of Dynamics CRM software will gain micro-blogging tools and social activity feeds that enable users to post status messages and follow co-workers as well as accounts, opportunities and other CRM system records. The features will be available within the Outlook client as well as the browser interface and on Windows Phone 7, Wilson said.

"We're very much trying to make sure we're treating social as a productivity tool and not just a cool new technology," he said. "We're not the first people to have it, but we're aligning it to the productivity experience people already [have]."

Microsoft plans to broaden its social CRM capabilities down the road. It's not clear whether the vendor will end up doing its own take on "customer experience management," an emerging concept aimed at improving customer support and service across multiple channels, whether in call centers, social media sites or company websites and portals.

Oracle made a high-profile entry into that market on Monday by announcing a planned US$1.5 billion acquisition of RightNow Technologies. Adobe and IBM have also made major purchases to support their own customer-experience strategies.

Meanwhile, the new Dynamics CRM release also delivers enterprise-friendly capabilities such as the federation of a customer's on-premises Active Directory system with CRM Online, as well as redundant data centers in various regions around the world. If the system crashes in a certain region, it can be brought back up from the same area. This should help companies remain compliant with government regulations, according to Wilson.

Dynamics CRM now has some 30,000 customers and 2 million users, Wilson said. That figure compares to July 2010, when Microsoft reported 23,000 customers and 1.4 million users.

Its largest single deployment is a 70,000-seat on-premises installation, according to Wilson. CRM Online deployments have become as large as "several thousand seats," he said.

The global launch of CRM Online over the past year has helped sales immensely because it gave Microsoft an easy way to provide trial versions of the software around the world. Previously, in regions not covered by CRM Online, the software would have to be configured and set up on premises. "This has allowed us to scale up our customer engagement model in a big way."

Google Is Trying to Fix Its Targeted Ad Attitude Problem

Yesterday the company announced a new feature that not only informs users why targeted ads appear but also provides a little ammo to detonate an unsavory targeted ad. "You can also go to the Ads Preferences Manager to make changes that improve the ads that you're seeing, including blocking specific advertisers you’re not interested in or turning off ads personalization entirely (of course, you can change your mind at any time)," explains Susan Wojcicki, SVP, Advertising on The Official Google Blog. Being "targeted," these ads are kind of like mind-readers, showing what Google thinks we would want. "We try really hard to show you ads that are relevant," explains lead software engineer, Diane Tang in Google's promotional video. Sometimes, though, Google's robots don't quite get it right; certain targeted ads feel creepy and can even venture into hurtful territory. But now, Google's giving the user a little revenge power, allowing users to delete certain targeted ads. Unfortunately, while the process provides a little catharsis, it doesn't keep other, similar annoying ads from popping up.

Best Microsoft MCTS Certification, Microsoft MCITP Training at certkingdom.com

Related: Do We Lie to Google?
If a user sees an add that doesn't sit well with them, clicking the "Why this ad?" link in the ad will give a pseudo explanation of why you got the ad: it can be based on search, a combination of search terms, Web history, or the contents of the e-mail or inbox, for Gmail-related ads.

Related: Why Are the Major Networks Afraid of Google TV?
Related: Mixed Buzz Over Google Buzz
The explanations aren't too satisfying, as you can see above. But, Google also gives the option to block certain advertisers from showing up, in the Ads Preferences Manager. It will show recent ads that came up on Google search or G-mail, there you can block away the annoying advertisement forever -- unless for some reason you change your mind.
Related: Five Tips for Larry Page, Google's New CEO

Related: Facebook and Google Join Forces to Oppose Privacy Bill
The problem with this, is that it doesn't change the way Google picks ads. It will still rely on the same algorithm that reads Gmail and remembers Web history, which wouldn't work for some, like an anonymous friend of The Atlantic's Rebecca Rosen. Said friend didn't appreciate Google's "Save Your Relationship" and "Is He Lying?" ads after a bad break-up with her boyfriend. "This snarky little message in my face really pissed me off!," the friend told Rosen. And simply blocking the ad wouldn't really make this problem go away, because another related ad would pop up, too.
The only refuge Google offers is to entirely opt-out of personalized ads completely. But that makes everything spammier. Those who opt in for personalized ads get 10 percent fewer ads than those who receive random advertisements, according to Google. These people are also more likely to click, which is why Google prefers the personalization. But for the recently separated, more unrelated ads might be less harsh than a stream of heartbreak.