Microsoft beefs up Dynamics CRM with Twitter’s power

Zsolt Balla — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 09:51:11 +0000

The marketing power of social networking sites, such as micro-blogging site Twitter, has been known for marketing professionals for a long time. The trend of integrating these sites (some of which is still regarded as non main-stream, and of a dubious marketing value) into “official” marketing is now strengthened by an announcement of software giant Microsoft last Thursday, saying they have created an add-on to tie their enterprise CRM software, Dynamics to Twitter.
The plugin, called social media accelerator, is a part of three new add-on modules Microsoft released for Dynamics CRM. The tool not only collects and aggregates relevant tweets (such as those including the Dynamics user company’s name and responses to these), but provides its users with various analytic features as well.
Data provided by social accelerator can be used to enhance the database the user has: Twitter usernames can be converted into customer database records, boosted with additional information, such as real name, email address or phone number.
The add-on is, at the moment, compatible with Twitter only, but Microsoft was reported to go on with integrating other social networking and social media sites as well in the near future.
The modules can be downloaded free, and Microsoft says, they will be available in the upcoming weeks. Social networking accelerator aside, the three-module package includes Partner Relationship Management Accelerator, which aims to centralize sales management across multiple channel partners, as well as distribute sales leads, and Portal Integration Accelerator, a connection between Microsoft’s Dynamics CRM, and the user’s website or portal. According to Microsoft, this latter module “allows users to rapidly extend to the Internet any business process and drive costs out of everyday business interactions.”
Industry experts agree that, it is just a matter of time when Twitter will irreversibly end up in the CRM marketing game, as the quest for its integration has already begun several months ago.
CoTweet, for example, is a company entirely aimed at mapping and tapping Twitter’s marketing potentials. Another renowned CRM provider (and Microsoft competitor), Salesforce.com also announced a similar service in March, binding its services to Twitter and its ilks on numerous levels.

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Microsoft beefs up Dynamics CRM with Twitter’s power