REDMOND, Wash. — Sept. 19, 2006 — Microsoft Corp. today announced that Microsoft Dynamics™ CRM 3.0 has won CRM Magazine’s 2006 CRM Market Leader Awards in both the Midmarket Suite CRM and Small Business Suite categories. Brad Wilson, general manager of Microsoft CRM, has also won the magazine’s CRM Influential Leader Award for the second consecutive year. These awards, as well as a new report published by Gartner Inc. on Microsoft CRM, follow the recent announcement of over 100 percent growth for Microsoft CRM in the past fiscal year. This includes over 50,000 new customer seats and major multi thousand-seat enterprise wins in the last quarter, and validates the rapid growth of the product across all segments, geographic regions and industries.
The CRM Market Awards honor the individuals and companies that stand above the rest in customer relationship management (CRM) as a result of their significant influence, innovation or accomplishments. The CRM Market Leader award recognizes the top vendors in eight categories. Each category includes six CRM vendors (one winner, four leaders and one company to watch), which are selected based on weighted criteria that include revenue, revenue growth, market share, reputation for customer satisfaction, depth of functionality and company direction. The magazine’s CRM Influential Leader Award spotlights executives in the CRM marketplace who have left an indelible mark on either their industry or their company this past year. Microsoft executives accepted both awards Monday night at the first destinationCRM 2006 conference in San Jose, Calif. More information about CRM Magazine and the Market Leader Awards can be found at http://www.destinationcrm.com.
Independent Analyst Firm Evaluates Microsoft Dynamics CRM 3.0
A report published by Gartner, the leading analyst firm in the technology industry, provides the latest evaluation of Microsoft® CRM. The August 2006 report, titled “Status Report on Microsoft Dynamics CRM 3.0,” discusses the product’s first year on the market as well as customer reaction to the solution.
“Gartner believes there’s a growing market for ‘pragmatic CRM,’” said Brian Prentice, research director with Gartner and the author of the report. “This involves deployments, usually in subsidiaries and business units of Global 2000 organizations, along with discrete midsize businesses, in which the goal is to achieve higher user adoption rates for a system that automates one or two straightforward end-to-end sales, marketing and service processes, or a broader set of department-specific processes.”
Wilson said the recognition by CRM Magazine and the Gartner report affirms Microsoft’s strategy for developing and delivering powerful and affordable CRM solutions on a global scale.
“We believe this recognition by CRM Magazine and the Gartner report echoes what we’ve been hearing from our customers and our partners,” Wilson said. “We offer a CRM product that’s easy to use, easy to deploy, and easily configured to meet the unique needs of businesses. The level of worldwide customer demand confirms the power of our vision for Microsoft CRM.”
Microsoft Dynamics CRM 3.0 was received with great acclaim when it was introduced late in 2005, and has since achieved great market success around the world, with more than 7,500 customers and 250,000 users. The company recently announced plans for Microsoft Dynamics CRM Live, a Microsoft-hosted CRM service that offers complete product functionality and a transparent migration path to the Microsoft CRM on-premise and partner-hosted offerings.
An electronic version of the Gartner report is available at http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/itanalyst/default.mspx. To learn more about Gartner, interested parties can visit http://www.gartner.com.
About Microsoft Dynamics
Microsoft Dynamics is a line of financial, customer relationship and supply chain management solutions that help businesses work more effectively. Delivered through a network of channel partners providing specialized services, these integrated, adaptable business management solutions work like and with familiar Microsoft software to streamline processes across an entire business.
About Microsoft
Founded in 1975, Microsoft (Nasdaq “MSFT”) is the worldwide leader in software, services and solutions that help people and businesses realize their full potential.
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