Microsoft are offering a free 30 day trial of CRM 2011 online. This is a great way to not only demo to customers CRM 2011 but also to allow potential customers to sample CRM 2011 and quickly put some of their own data in and see if it can satisfy their needs for a CRM system. The Company I work for Crimson Ltd have recently used an online version of CRM 2011 to show potential customers how their CRM might look. We have done a quick day’s development to modify the vanilla CRM, add in a few custom entities and workflows. The cusotmer then has a chance to see what CRM is like and import some data. It allows the customer to have a good play around with CRM 2011 and see what it can do and if it’s a good fit for their company.
With the 30 day trial it doesn’t cost anyone any money. If you are interested in the 30 day free CRM trial then you can find out more information here. I would say it’s beneficial to get some help from a Microsoft gold partner so they can quickly help the customer to modify the initial CRM 2011 Installation. I think it would be in Microsoft’s interest to help people taking up this offer to get someone local to help the interested party to setup their initial system.
I think the 30 day trial is a great idea for the following reasons.
- it is well suited to CRM 2011 because CRM 2011 has a lot of quick wins which can get users excited like dashboards, quick reporting, document management.
- CRM 2011 looks better than CRM 4. CRM 4 was a bit clunky looking where as CRM 2011 has smoothed some of the edges.
- It’s a great way to show how easy it is to use CRM 2011 online, Itis also a lot cheaper for some small customers to use the online version because they don’t need to buy any hardware.
- The user can customize their trail version of CRM 2011 as much as they want.
- With CRM 2011 the solutions enhancement means you can easy export all the changes you have made with the trial version. So if you decide you want to have an on premise version you can easily import the changes. You can even export the changes and then import them later in the year if you don’t want to use CRM 2011 straight away
- It means companies don’t have to use their own servers and CRM installations to demo to users what their solution might look like. You also don’t use up any of your CRM licences.
- Gold/silver partners get an amount of free licences for the cloud, so why not use them.
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