Matt
Thu Apr 07 21:24:04 CDT 2005
C'mon Dave.... "hundreds of thousands (probably millions)" ??? I find it hard
to believe that it would cost that much to build. If it did, you wouldn't be
charging $50-$150/user. ;-)
But I will give you this, I'm sure it would be cheaper to buy unless there was a
huge user count and/or you value the dev time very cheaply.
Matt Parks
MVP - Microsoft CRM
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On 7 Apr 2005 12:27:21 -0700, "Dave Carr (dave- no spam-@vscrm.com"
<dave@vscrm.com> wrote:
C'mon Chris,
Come join the Visionary family of happy VAST customers! First, if you
really consider $50-$150 per user to be expensive, please send an email
to me at dave-(no spam)_@vscrm.com to discuss.(we do also have volume
licensing programs I'd be happy to discuss with you.)
Second, all of the Micrsoft people I've talked to (over a dozen at
Convergence, including Alex Simons, the Product Manager for CRM) said
that they have no plans to include audit tracking functionality. I
have the 2.0 Beta, and it definitely isn't there. so it is at a minimum
2007 before it would be there, and maybe not even then. Looking at it
from their point of view, if they can point customers who need auditing
at a Veritest approved ISV solution that costs a few thousand dolars
for the average customer, why should Microsoft spend hundreds of
thousands (probably millions) to build it? They have a lot of other
fish they need to fry for the next few years.
Third, VAST will help in you in more ways than just showing you the
last owner of a sales opportunity. If you are truly in such a
fast-paced environment, I'm sure opportunities disappear almost as fast
as they appear. Do your sales managers know why the monthly forecast
looks great until the last week, when all of the forecasts move out a
month? Do they know who is routinely over or under-estimating their
prospects? Who moves the fastest from Lead to Quote? From Quote to
Close?
Having this historical data that VAST provides, and making it available
for loading into a warehouse and doing some really business critical
analysis could easily pay for itself if you can improve your sales
processes by even a small amount.
As to time and effort, it takes me about 15 minutes to install it,
although it might take somebody up to an hour to do it the first time.
But after that, VAST has minimal IT impact. Even after you add a new
custom field, once you publish it, VAST will audit changes to that new
field without you doing anything else!
Not only that, but if you are a public company, then you really need
VAST so your upper level execs can personally certify that your
internal IT systems have the proper controls in place. Or, if you are
in the healthcare industry, you should consider VAST because of HIPAA;
in the financial industry, you have GLBA to worry about; and all
companies need to be sure they are meeting the standards of the Privacy
Act (if somebody from Florida tells you not to fax them, and you do,
your company could be sued for millions! It'd be nice to know who
reset the flag from 'no fax' to 'fax' in that instance, wouldn't it?)
So Chris, I urge you to take another look at VAST. I know we can make
your users happier, and your system more verifiable, at a very low cost
in terms of time/money/effort for you.
Please excuse the shameless self-promotion everybody, but I couldn't
let that one go by! ;-)
Dave
-------------------------------------------------
David L. Carr, President
Visionary Software Consulting, Inc.
Main #: 971-327-6944
Introducing our newest software product...
VAST - an auditing solution for Microsoft CRM 1.2
VAST shows you "Who Did What When" in Microsoft CRM
To download our free trial, get more info, or to order, visit
http://www.VSCRM.com