March 14. 2008 15:08

Thanks Craig... I'll know who to call when we attempt it

Darren Neimke

June 27. 2008 02:08

But how is your overall experience with MS CRM? Ours hasn't been that great - too slow, too cumbersome for remote users, etc.

Andrew

June 30. 2008 13:18

The overall experience has been pretty good.
We don't use it remotely though.
And although we've had some performance problems with lower spec hardware in the past, putting it on a decent server has greatly improved things.
CRM has its quirks though. The interface is clunky at times (yes still, even in V4) and having it spin up a new IE instance each time for popups is always a performance perception killer - when will they use AJAX to it's fullest I wonder...

Craig

June 30. 2008 14:49

Thanks Craig.  The biggest areas of pain for us (still being in 3.0 land) are:

* the poor integration with Outlook (ie contacts are fragmented between Exchange Contacts and CRM Contacts)
* the time that it takes to navigate around the UI (the pop-ups I don't actually mind so much.  I actually have all pop-ups open in a new Tab)
* the workflow behind creating orders and opportunities seems inordinately long for such tasks

Looking forward to upgrading.  Matt Cosier is currently evaluating it for us.  One thing that would really push us across the line would be if the Office integration was much nicer.

Darren Neimke

July 1. 2008 12:15

Darren,
Yes, the UI in CRM 4 is better, but don't expect to be blown away... it still is cumbersome in places.
I don't think the Outlook integration has improved much either.
And, other than Outlook I don't think there is any Office integration.
Come to think of it, why bother upgrading...
It is more stable.
And once we got better hardware, performance improved.
CRM is still a disappointing product overall in my opinion, but has so much potential. That said, we run all our Sales, and a lot of our Project Management on it.
Good luck with the upgrade (if you do proceed).
Cheers,
Craig

Craig