CRM RACE SPEEDS UP

摘要

Microsoft continues its advance into the enterprise application market. Its latest target―software to manage businesses relationships with customers―is a crowded field that's rife with competition from well-established vendors. Microsoft is using its longstanding and usually successful marketing strategy with Microsoft CRM 1.0: Introduce a product for small and midsize businesses that's less complex, easier to use, and less costly than most of the products dominating the market. Microsoft hopes to carve out a piece of a sizable market that's expected to grow. Worldwide revenue for customer-relationship management software this year is projected to be more than $3 billion, flat compared with last year and down from the peak of nearly $4 billion in 2000, according to Gartner Dataquest. But that could grow substantially if the economy improves. Lynn Tsoflias, product manager for Microsoft CRM, says only about 10% of potential customers of CRM applications have purchased the software.