SharePoint 2010: Can SharePoint 2010 work as a CRM? The Complete Roadmap

Can SharePoint 2010 work as a CRM?

If you have already worked with MS Dynamics CRM, you would definitely know that this system has came a long way and grown into a a gigantic, robust and a mature application. As a SharePoint developer, I see SP2010 with comprising of all the ingredients  with which one can develope a CRM. So It is  possible. But having said that, if you want a complete replica of MS CRM built on the top of SharePoint platform, you should ascertain amount of time you want to invest since it is a huge task and implementing such an application would take years. Rather I would focus of the individual modules or feature that we could actually implement. Since implementing a selected module will definitely be feasible is couple of months' time. 

Secondly, it totally depends on how robust of a CRM you want and also how much effort you want to put into making it happen in SP2010. In fact, I already came across two CRM products that are build on the top of SharePoint. There may be many but following have somehow impressed me:

Difference between SharePoint

Having said so 

Salient Features of MS Dynamics CRM:

Sales Force Automation
Using Sales Force Automation, you can:

  • Qualify leads and manage opportunities.
  • Manage contacts and accounts.
  • Track quotes, orders, and invoices.
  • Manage and track e-mail, phone call, and other communication activities with customers.
  • Run direct e-mail campaigns and measure their success.
  • Create and access a database of products that your organization sells.
Marketing Automation
Using Marketing Automation, you can:
  • Create targeted marketing lists.
  • Plan and run campaigns.
  • Track each campaign response and lead generated from campaigns.
Customer Service Management
Using the Customer Service area, you can:
  • Track individual cases and manage services.
  • Track and share common problems and solutions in a knowledge base.
  • Manage customer contracts.
Appointment-Based Service Scheduling
Using Service Scheduling, you can:
  • Define the services you offer.
  • Identify available resources and equipment for service activities.
  • Define work schedules for individual resources, as well as their locations.
  • Navigating the Service Calendar (on page 2)
  • Booking Service Activities in the Service Calendar
  • Configuring Service Scheduling
  • Scheduling Users and Other Resources
Analyzing Data and Reporting
Microsoft Dynamics CRM has several features to help you analyze data and generate reports:
  • Create a chart.
  • Create a dashboard.
  • Run a default report.
  • Create an Advanced Find query to find a filtered set of records and then export the list for analysis.
  • Create a custom report using  Microsoft SQL Server Reporting Services or other reporting tools.

Features Offered by BPM CRM

BPA CRM is a feature packed system build on SharePoint. Here are the salient feature offered by BPM CRM.

 Sales Force
  • Manage leads, accounts and contacts
  • Track all interactions with contacts
  • Manage sales opportunities
  • Better communicate with BPA Email Management - the most flexible emailing tool in the market today
  • Close more deals and increase revenues with BPA Sales System
  • Discuss with colleagues about specific opportunities with BPA Social Networking
  • Generate quotes based on your product catalogue
  • Easy connect with Outlook, your web site or external systems
  • Stay connected on the road with BPA Mobile solutions
  • Automate sales processes with BPA Workflow
  • Measure processes efficiency with graphical charts, dashboards & scorecards
  • Build powerful multi-list reports with our browser-based report builder 
Sales System
  • Display the sales opportunity pipeline in a visual system
  • Apply color schemes to highlight good opportunities, late opportunities…
  • Filter & search opportunities by business line, sales person…
  • The system counts opportunities in each stage and displays KPIs like days open, next appointment date...
  • The system plots calendar for sales people
Email Management
  • Send an email or mass email directly from the browser
  • Send emails from any list
  • Easily search and select recipients
  • Send personalized emails using merge fields
  • Share email templates
  • Manage email signatures
  • Check recipients prior sending
  • Generate activities
Marketing
  • Build multichannel marketing campaigns
  • Easily select campaign members in many lists
  • Send emails to targeted contacts with huge flexibility with BPA Send Email
  • Assign follow-up tasks to sales people
  • Generate invitation letters directly in the browser
  • Get contacts automatically registered from your web site
  • Track opportunities and return on investment related to campaigns
  • Display graphical charts about your campaigns
Customer Service
Self-Service
  • Manage user registration and validation processes
  • Manage shared documents & information
  • Manage your customized request form (or other forms)
  • Display related requests only to the connected user (permissions)
  • Manage requests with related replies until resolution
  • Synchronize requests & replies with your internal xRM solution
  • Manage 2 levels of usage (i.e. partners and end-customers)
Reporting
  • Export data in a formatted spreadsheet and build pivot charts in seconds
  • Track late items, overdue tasks, inactive accounts… with colored flags in a dashboard
  • Display real time graphical charts like gauges, funnels and many others
  • Manage all KPIs in scorecards
  • Build powerful reports using our browser-based query builder
Automation
  • Manage workflow logic like steps, roles & permissions, automatic alerts, workflow branches...
  • Provide a user-friendly & intelligent form with field permissions and user instructions
  • Display a graphical workflow view with allocated & consumed times for each step
  • Display a summary page of the workflow with a complete traceability on the completed steps
  • Drive SharePoint data/documents or external data in workflows (e.g. SQL Server, Oracle…)
  • Manage sequential, parallel or voting steps
  • Perform workflow actions and calculations
  • Manage parent workflows and related sub-workflows
  • Runs on SharePoint or non-SharePoint environments
    Integrate with BPA xRM Platform
Mobility
  • Navigate, search, add or edit items like in the office
  • Pages adapt automatically when connecting with a smartphone
  • Pages are optimized for smartphones and tablets
Connectors
  • Copy Outlook emails in BPA CRM in seconds and update properties
  • Copy Outlook events, tasks, contacts in BPA CRM
  • Connect BPA CRM with your web site (e.g. web to leads)
  • Connect BPA CRM with BPA Self-Service
  • Display or import external data into BPA CRM (e.g. Oracle, SQL…)
Social Networking
  • Define communities of users
  • Launch a new discussion or view specific discussions from any CRM page
  • Include external users to discussions through email
  • View discussions in a graphical map

Conclusion

Actually I am still working on this very idea. But there are some random thought lingering in my brain. If we take Dynamics CRM as reference point, the basic features a CRM should offer are given below:
  • Keep and use all your customer information from one place (Solution: Implement a List Accounts, Contacts, Opportunities, Leads, Tasks, Interactions and Document Management and Use info path customize the Edit/Insert forms, Create relationship among the lists using look up columns)
  • Schedule and track activities and send e-mail messages.
  • Analyze data using charts and dashboards (Solution: Business Intelligent plays a role)
  • Generate report
  • Manage marketing lists.
  • Track advertising and marketing campaigns.
  • Analyze customer responses to your sales and marketing initiatives.
  • Keep detailed notes and an activity history for each business record.
  • Run Microsoft Dynamics CRM from within Microsoft Office Outlook. 
I am still working on it and definitely post when I reach a conclusion.
Hope this helps
Cheers  

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