Is Business Contact Manager as bad is it appears?

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BCM installation failed out of the box ... crashing Outlook 2003. A manual
update to SP 1 fixed that. Every step of the way BCM has been failed ...
Links don't link, contacts don't show under account and accounts don't show
under contacts. It appears that this product is VERY green and I am thinking
I should cease wasting my time on it. Is anyone out there finding BCM in
Outlook 2003 functional enough to be worth using?
 
Yes. We were using ACT! and it was horrible in a multi-user enviroment. All
we wanted was to get activity reports and pipeline reports from our sales
people, and when we went to Exchange I started experimenting with the BCM.
Does what we need it to do as a sales organization.
 
Thanks Christopher,

Ah! It makes sense now. I'll bet that Microsoft has only put their focus
only the Exchange context. I imagine the non-Exchange configuration was
built and tested with ... shall we say ... less execellence.

So ... Is anyone able to get Business Contact Manager to be stable and
functional in a non-Exchange environment?

Thanks in advance ... chris
 
Are you using BCM version 1 or the version 2? I have found v 2 to install
and perform flawlessly in my single user (non-exchange) configuration. My
main gripe with BCM after over 2 years in existance is not with its stability
or reliability. It does what it is supposed to do consistently for me. My
gripe is that it was not designed to do as much as most users would normally
need when compared to other entry contact management application options such
as ACT. BCM still has a very rudimentary, non-robust, non-customizable,
limited functionality that is due to the numerous ill thought out design
limitations that are built in to it. New users often do not detect or
discover these little crazy makers until well after they are moved into the
app and somewhat committed to its use. The trade offs, compromises, and work
arounds have been very annoying to adjust to. BCM has so much potential but
Microsoft has seemed slow in my opinion to accurately comprehend common user
base needs.

-THP

Thanks Christopher,

Ah! It makes sense now. I'll bet that Microsoft has only put their focus
only the Exchange context. I imagine the non-Exchange configuration was
built and tested with ... shall we say ... less execellence.

So ... Is anyone able to get Business Contact Manager to be stable and
functional in a non-Exchange environment?

Thanks in advance ... chris
Yes. We were using ACT! and it was horrible in a multi-user enviroment. All
we wanted was to get activity reports and pipeline reports from our sales
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Design limitations are not built into a product, rather they are
inherent to the design. For example, BCM has to work with the same
limitations as other Outlook Add-ins. Why doesn't ACT just rush out an
Outlook Add-in for their software instead of using a clunky interface
to Outlook? According to you the money just sitting on the table
waiting for someone whip a CRM add-in that'll have every feature for
every user. Designing software is about a series of trade-offs. The
ideal feature set for most small businesses will not be the same as the
feature set for an IT pro. For example, making BCM an Exchange module
might make it easier to share data in corporate IT departments, but it
wouldn't work for the 90% of small businesses that don't even have a
server of any kind, let alone host their own mail services.
 
Luther,

You are semantically correct. Design limitations are not built "IN" to a
product such as BCM. These limitations being "inherent to the design" are
the sad result of the lack of a more energetic effort to build such
limitations "OUT" of the product thus enabling the product to better meet
user's real world needs vs. theoretical marketing driven needs of the
intended user of the product. (ie: Most small business) This is the very
point I seek to consistently make. I am not an apologist for ACT or any
other alterative application and whatever they do or do not do well. The
obvious attractive drawing card of BCM that lures many users of other
alternative applications such as myself is due to the attractive promise and
possibility of operating within a single user interface as part of the
familiar Office environment. The interest for a more simple, seamless
integration among our key software applications is in everyone. The sad fact
is that BCM is still not as robust and ready for prime time for anyone
wishing to avoid having to make so many compromises and trade-offs in order
to use it.

I have never contended that BCM should contain every feature for every user.
That is obviously a ridiculous and unrealistic expectation for anyone to have.
My assertion is simply this. Ever software application design should have
the goal of aspiring to offer as ideal of a feature set as possible for its
intended target user base. I would assume this to be especially true for an
area as important to the small business arena as an entry CRM tool. Of
course there will always be trade offs but your comments are of an apologist
nature that would be more appropriate if this were 1985. Providing such
features as forms customization, many-to-many database object linking, Multi
remote user sharing, etc. is not new stuff requiring a lot of new development
investment. The fact that these features still do not exist after several
years indicates that the targeted needs that BCM is intended for is widely
misunderstood. BCM absolutely does NOT currently provide anywhere near an
"ideal feature set" for even probably 10 to 20% of small business normal
usage needs. To believe otherwise is (in my opinion) direct evidence of the
enormous disconnect which results from a mindset unable to think outside of
the larger, corporate IT enterprise level shoebox frame of reference.

A small business person's desire to do more with their database should not
automatically exclude this from becoming more of a possiblity simply because
this desire resembles what has previously only been done this way before on a
corporate IT level in a manner that required an in-house server to host mail
services, etc. Outlook add-ins do not have to remain as limited as they
currently are. If I were the leader of a design team for an Outlook add-in
such as BCM my immediate and overriding directive to everyone on my team
would be to develop an empathy based approach by going out into the real
world and determine as accurately as possible exactly WHO my intended users
are and then discern just how most of my intended users truly wish to operate
with their data. Indeed such an analysis will eventually conclude as
ultimately a subjective judgement call. My overriding principle however
would not be to just cobble something together and then try to justify its
limitations by trying to convince my users to adopt my product with slick
marketing and excuses. If I wished to achieve excellence with my product
design I would not rest until I fully explored the best features of every one
of my competitor's products all the while continuously demanding of my team
whether a way could be found to incorporate and include such best features
rather than exclude and apologize with excuses later after releasing a turkey
on the public. I use BCM only because I can tolerate most of its limitation
trade offs and I prefer to remain within a single environment. I am likely a
small minority though and most folks that I have turned on to BCM can't and
won't live with its limitations. Most of my peers lack my patience.

Microsoft appears to be making the attempt to evolve beyond this paradigm of
limited thinking (business as usual) but I contend that this evolution
remains very slow as one might expect from such a large organization.
Changing the direction and momentum of such a large ship takes time. I am
still inclined to believe that the near laughable limitations and outright
omissions of functionality in BCM are not accidental in nature from a company
with as many financial resources that MS has at its disposal. It is not
credibly logical to me that there is a conscious intent to be mediocre. It
seems more plausible that the masters of marketing in Redmond are ruling the
day here with intention and if BCM were more made robust and feature rich it
would simply provide too much of a competitive alternative and disincentive
of demand for the full Microsoft CRM product.

Thank you for your provocative thoughts Luther.

-THP
 
Hating to be all tactical and practical ... A new HP ZD8000 max
configuration, Windows XP Pro, and a fresh Office 2003 Pro from Microsoft.
Initial BCM install failed, auto upgrade failed, manual upgrade succeeded,
BCM production values below those of Office in general (e.g. cannot deselect
BCM toolbar), functional values below those of Office (e.g. imported contacts
never show up in the Accounts select contact tool and new contacts do not
show in the select tool for minutes). Apparently BCM's excellence is lost on
me.

ACT does not meet my needs but its production values are consistent and its
functionality is crisp and consist across functionality and with doc.

Longing for better engineering ... chris
 
A few comments.

The lack of customization is clearly due to problems in Outlook 11. If
you write an add-in and try to customize the forms from the add-in I
expect you'll run into the same problems as BCM. I know I did.

Having worked for large companies, I found that in the best case the
abundance of resources from the deep pockets was nice, but that
advantage was reduced by the inability to make quick reactions. I don't
know how much BCM is constrained by internal resistance from other
groups not wanting their competition, but it hasn't stopped MSCRM from
focusing their marketing on the small business market. However, this
article on MS CRM indicates that what MS CRM considers as small
business is larger than what BCM is targeting.
http://www.smallbusinesscomputing.com/news/article.php/3568831

The success of BCM will be judged by the market and not only by the
critics. In the article above MS CRM is clearly hoping to upgrade users
from BCM as their companies grow. Both that and the fact that BCM is
now working on version 3 indicate to me that they are growing their
installed base. Given the lack of 3rd party support to BCM
specifically, I'm betting that it's probably a smart move to invest in
providing BCM users with additional support.

That said, some of the features in the beta have me scratching my head.
Customization is obviously highly desired, but I'll leave the market to
pass judgement some of the other features they've added. Hopefully they
are monitoring feedback and will concentrate their work on improving
the popular features.
 
When considering whether or not customization can easily be done with an
Outlook 11 add-in, look no further than an alternative such as the 3rd party
Prophet add-in offered @ www.avidian.com Prophet is built on a .Net MSDE db
very similiar to BCM. Prophet's entire Opportunity Record has field and
layout customization that afford the flexibility to adapt to specific needs.
As evidenced by this specific example, the availability of features such as
customization does not appear to be dependant on making a programming
development design breakthrough rather it appears to be simply based on the
(political?) will to provide this type of feature set in the add-in. The big
question is the following: If Avidian can provide forms customization with
their Outlook 11 db add-in why can't Microsoft do the same with BCM? (Note:
I do not represent or work for Avidian in any way).

You make a good point Luther with the contrast of the small business market
that MSCRM is targeting vs. BCM. I'm still very mystified by what BCM is
trying to accomplish in terms of real world user targets. In my humble
opinion there is a lot more variety of need than what can be credibly boxed
into a clever Marketing campaign and then represented to be "good enough" for
what small entry business only needs for now. Using my previous posting
example above where I am the fantasy leader of an add-in design team, I would
strive far more agressively to create as much flexibility to my app as
possible in order to garner the broadest appeal and potential adoption as
possible. More flexibility of the feature set available in any add-in will
always do well regardless of the the intended specific target of users one is
shooting for. Why limit the app based upon user need perceptions that may
not be entirely accurate?

The success of BCM will be judged by the market because the market is the
ultimate critic. I just wish that MS would see that by more aggresively
enhancing the versatility of BCM they would actually create an even larger
funnel to lure users away from other (non-Office based) entry contact mgt
apps. Microsoft clearly wants to leverage off of the successful dominance of
Office that already exists. BCM could contribute so much more strongly to
that if it were more robust enough for users (of non-Office Contact Mgt apps)
to be able and willing to migrate to BCM in far greater numbers by being able
to comfortably abandon these more robust non-Office based alternatives
eventhough their business may not yet be ready for the full MSCRM yet.

My critique is only that where the quality of BCM is now a decent flow it
could be made a torrent of user adoption with just a few tweaks to make it
far more flexible and adaptable for more entry users. It doesn't matter as
much what anyone perceives a specifically sized business "should" need
according to the designer's subjective judgement. Make the app as robust as
possible and let all of the needs of the market then judge accordingly. The
agressive guiding principle for the design team hopefully is one of expand
and improve flexibility vs. rigidly limit the app and then make excuses later.
Basically, ... shoot for a wider target!

That is what makes sense to me anyway. Great CRM article link BTW!

-THP
 
Avidian Opportunities don't use Outlook forms. The same is the case
with MSCRM. There are design trade-offs in uuing Outlook forms vs.
creating your windows. I don't know why BCM made the decisions they did
and Avidian and MSCRM made different decisions, but there are things
BCM Opportunities can do in Outlook that Avidian can't.
 
Setting aside the various pro vs con comparisons, the great mystery remains.
It appears that customization CAN be provided (one way or another) as a
feature. The million dollar question is WILL this ever be provided as a
feature?

-THP
 
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