“CRM and xRM – What’s the difference?”

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My name is Joe Basile and I recently joined Perficient as the Dynamics CRM Practice Lead.  I will be sharing news, enhancements, as well as my views on all types of topics specific to Dynamics CRM.  I have been consulting in the CRM space since ’96 and have implemented hundreds of systems from small 5 person companies to some of the largest companies in the world.
One question that I typically come across from customers has to do with the confusion between CRM and “xRM”.  Let me start by stating that Microsoft has developed one product, that is Microsoft Dynamics CRM.  Many partners (and Microsoft themselves) have used the term “xRM” since about ’04 as Dynamics CRM started to become more scalable and feature rich.  Classically, CRM has consisted of three many areas of functionality; Sales, Customer Service, and Marketing.  What most of us figured out very quickly after implementing Dynamics CRM several times is that software was so flexible, that you could pretty much build any type of application on top of Dynamics CRM, using the software as a development platform rather than trying to build the application on conventional custom development languages.  Benefits include, a rich UI/UX forms generator, sync engine, Outlook integration, workflow engine, a robust security model, and under the covers a strong SDK and web services layer.  The beauty of using Dynamics CRM as a development platform to create custom line of business applications is that it cuts development time and testing time way down compared to building from scratch.  Another advantage is that for the most part it is supportable, both by the partner implementing the solution as well as Microsoft themselves.
The heart of Dynamics CRM is a relational database that provides you the ability to track and manage anything…traditionally, customer interactions of all types.  But I have seen asset tracking systems, fleet management, property management, event management to name a few.  I have even talked with a large public energy company that wanted to track their wind turbine farms.  So when you hear “xRM” the “x” stands for “anything”!
Look for more information regarding using Dynamics CRM as a development platform on the Dynamics CRM community as well as future posts from me as I dive into some real world examples.