My current role, location etc.

I’m Delivery Director for Excitation Ltd, a Microsoft Gold Partner in the UK that specialises in implementing Dynamics CRM. At the highest level, I am responsible for all aspects of service delivery to our customers. About 90% of our work is on Dynamics CRM, with the rest made up of related Microsoft technologies, mostly Business Intelligence features of SQL Server, and the SharePoint products.

I still get involved with a reasonable amount of project work; my technical bias is towards data integration and extending CRM, but I occasionally cover other project areas. A significant part of my role is around promoting reusability of design patterns and extension code across implementations. Although each CRM implementation is different, there are a lot of common patterns, and I consider it important for our customers to benefit as much as possible from our previous solutions.

What was your first job in Dynamics?

The same as the current one – Delivery Director for Excitation Ltd. I was one of the founders of the company in 2000, and we spent the first few years covering a broad range of Microsoft technologies (and incidentally developing and selling our own CRM application). In early 2005 Microsoft released CRM 1.2 outside of the US, and we took a decision to structure our business around providing implementation services on Microsoft CRM.

My role has changed somewhat over time; in the early days of Dynamics CRM the emphasis was much more on defining the scope and structure of a CRM implementation project, and determining what services to offer to our customers. Dynamics CRM is a very interesting product in that it bridges the gap between completely bespoke development on one hand, and fairly rigid business applications on the other hand, and we had to build project processes to make best use of this flexibility.

Who has been your biggest influence/s in Microsoft Dynamics?

Not an easy one to answer, as I’ve worked with many different people at different times over the relatively short lifetime of Dynamics CRM. I think I’ll have to say Jim Glass at Microsoft, who handles to interaction between us CRM MVPs and the Microsoft product team, and much more besides.

What is your biggest achievement/s in Microsoft Dynamics?

On a purely personal basis it must be the MVP award, but overall I think it has to be my part in Excitation’s delivery of Dynamics CRM implementations. When we decided to focus on Microsoft CRM (as it was then called), we were aware that the average failure rate of CRM projects in general was very high (a figure from Gartner is that 55-75% fail or fall well below customer expectations). This was a major concern for us, but I am very proud that we have been able to achieve a success rate of 99% across around 100 customer implementations.

What is the best thing Microsoft has brought to the community?

I can only really answer this with respect to CRM. The best thing is probably the technical forums, and the level of participation, both in terms of the amount of questions asked, and quantity and quality of the responses. I should also give a mention to the CRM Team Blog, which is a very active source of interesting information at many levels.

Why should an end user purchase Microsoft Dynamics?

I’m afraid you’re not going to get a direct answer on this one (and not just because I pretend not to get involved in sales)

First of all, I don’t think anyone would purchase Microsoft Dynamics; instead they would purchase one or more of the Dynamics products – CRM, AX, GP, NAV, POS, RMS or SL. These are still really distinct products that are linked by brand, but not much else.

Also, all Dynamics applications are business applications, and I don’t think you can recommend a business application without first understanding who might be using it, and whether it is appropriate for them. Put another way, the reasons why company X should buy a Dynamics product could be very different from the reasons why company Y should buy that product, or a different Dynamics product.

What are the biggest challenges facing Microsoft Dynamics?

For Microsoft Dynamics as a whole, I think the biggest challenge is to build the disparate products into a more consistent product set. I think this is more of an issue for the products that Microsoft bought (AX, GP, NAV and SL), as there is significant overlap between these products, and few people are clear on where these products complement each other, and where they compete with each other. The biggest challenge is probably to sort this out, without adversely affecting the existing customer and partner base for each product.

As for Dynamics CRM specifically, the above challenge is less of an issue. From a market-share perspective it is clear that big challenge is from SalesForce.com, but I think that is well understood within Microsoft. A different challenge is defining how much it is seen as primarily a CRM application with out-of-box functionality that is customised for each customer, and how much it is considered more a general development platform (the xRM viewpoint). The potential is there to do either very well, but it will be very interesting to see whether it will be possible to do both equally well.

As Dynamics CRM is a relatively new product, with a rapidly expanding user base, there is the challenge of maintaining a sufficiently large set of skilled and experienced consultants and consultancy companies. I think that Microsoft is doing a reasonably good job of providing the structure to support this, with the partner program, training materials and individual certifications, but it is difficult to expand the number of certified people and companies while maintaining the quality. I have a reasonable amount of involvement with Microsoft training and certification, having written training materials and exams for Microsoft, and I maintain my Microsoft Certified Trainer (MCT) qualification.

What would you want to see from Microsoft Dynamics in the future?

For Microsoft Dynamics as a whole, there should be a clearer view of how closely the different products will be integrated from a technical perspective, if at all. I don’t have particularly strong views on how close the integration should be, but I’d like to know what the target is.

For Dynamics CRM, the answer is an unusual one for me, in that I think there needs to be improvement on the cosmetics, and the initial impression of the product. It is already a very good product from a technical perspective, but it lags behind some of its competitors (noticeably SalesForce.com) when it comes to first impressions.