Cisco updates joint CRM system with Microsoft

Cisco Systems is enhancing its CRM (customer relationship management) software with small and medium-sized businesses in mind, integrating it with an improved version of Microsoft's Dynamics CRM and bringing it to the screens of Cisco phones.

Cisco's Unified CRM Connector works with Microsoft Dynamics CRM to streamline contact-center functions for users making and receiving calls. The software creates automatic screen pop ups with caller information, provides click-to-dial capability, captures call information and creates customer records. It delivers these features on a PC through integration with Cisco IP (Internet Protocol) phones.

The latest version, Unified CRM Connector 3.0, is integrated with the recently announced Microsoft Dynamics CRM 3.0. In addition to taking advantage of improvements in Microsoft's software, the new CRM Connector can deliver to any Cisco IP phone a subset of the information it currently puts up on a PC screen.

Small and medium-sized businesses (SMEs) are interested in IP telephony but want to see more capabilities than they have with conventional phones, according to Yankee Group SME analyst Gary Chen.

"Integration with CRM is one of the killer apps with VoIP," because customer information is so closely involved with phone calls, Chen said. Many SMEs use CRM software, and Microsoft's product has done well among them, he added.

The prospect of using CRM Connector convinced GreenStone Farm Credit Services, in East Lansing, Michigan, to adopt IP telephony. The lender, with 37 locations around Michigan and Wisconsin, is in the process of deploying IP phones companywide. The lender is testing CRM Connector 1.2 and plans to roll it out midyear. It expects to deploy version 3.0 later this year or in the first half of next year, said Dominic Roberts, vice president of information services.

GreenStone started using Microsoft Dynamics CRM a few years ago to bring together customer data from several different platforms, Roberts said. The result has been better customer service, because employees have more information at hand: for example, what each customer has bought and what promotions they have already been offered.

The extension of CRM Connector to Cisco IP phones will be a major benefit of the new version, Roberts said.

"They don't like it when 10 windows pop up in their face when they're looking at a CRM screen," Roberts said. "They would love to have two screens."

Roberts hopes to bring the company's internally developed GreenConvert application to employees' phones. GreenConvert grabs information about a customer's existing loans and calculates whether there is a lower interest-rate loan it can offer that will benefit both GreenStone and the borrower, he said. If so, the details would pop up on the screen of the phone.

Cisco is making the Unified CRM Connector 3.0 available immediately through certified channel partners in the U.S., Canada and selected European and Middle Eastern markets. It expects the software to be available in most of Europe by the fourth quarter.