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What's the difference between Microsoft CRM and Access

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  • Access Data
  • Microsoft
  • Business Computing
Last response: in Business Computing
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September 1, 2014 10:41:35 AM

Hello Everybody,

I'm working on a new business that will hopefully serve many clients.

In order to keep these clients happy, I'm going to need a system that will help me keep track of their requests.

I was wondering which software I should implement in the business, and to be more specific, I was debating between the two mentioned in the title: Microsoft CRM or Access (also by Microsoft).

Feel free to ask me any question that will help you provide me with the best answer.

Thank you!

More about : difference microsoft crm access

September 1, 2014 10:52:15 AM

Seriously? you really need do your own research... that's a big question... not suited to Toms.

But CRM = "Customer Relationship Management".. and so is completely different from raw "Access" which is a Database tool (and set of tools to help make using the DB more user friendly).

So there is no real way to answer your question without MUCH more info.... way more than can sensibly covered in this forum.

But may be others will give it a shot.
Cheers
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September 1, 2014 11:15:51 AM

Yoji.

I know the deffinitoin of CRM, but as I see it, there is the basic data base, Access offers tools to manage and see this data base better and the CRM system is more of better looking sophisticated Access.
Please, if you have the sufficient knowledge, correct me of I'm wrong.

The business itself is supposed to have clients that each will get several different services, that I should monitor.

Again, Thank you yoji and future repliers.
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September 1, 2014 11:43:26 AM

I've been involved with both a customized Access database and CRM. A non-profit found that its customized access database was becoming too unstable, as it had been modified numerous times and was growing quite large. It crashed almost daily. They used it to manage fundraising campaigns, to keep track of donors and customers of the services they offered, and to schedule new services/events.

They chose to use CRM, which, although geared toward businesses and their sales and sales followup, can be tweaked for use with non-profits (donors can be treated as sales contacts).

While Access is a database and CRM uses a database (SQL), they are not the same. Microsoft Dynamics CRM has been heavily customized to offer useful services to businesses, such as tracking sales contacts and customer follow-ups. It is quite an advanced and comprehensive product, as is demonstrated by its price. It uses SQL as the underlying database, but that is hidden to the users (perhaps not to the implementer and customizer). Access is just a database engine and associated tools. In order to do anything with it you need to know how to organize and build databases, and to create a customized user interface. CRM has that already done, and to a much higher degree.

However, it will most likely be required to hire a consultant to set up and customize CRM for your business. But it still saves you from having to have a database designed from scratch, as with Access.

Also, CRM is way overkill if you're considering it for a one-man business, as implied in your initial post. It does things like track e-mail contacts with sales leads, and allows different people to be assigned to follow-up with contacts or leads, so that no one "falls through the cracks" and is ignored. This of course implies a large enough organization in the business to have multiple people who would handle different aspects of contacts and customers.

I hope this helps.
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September 1, 2014 2:07:57 PM

mbreslin1954 said:
I've been involved with both a customized Access database and CRM. A non-profit found that its customized access database was becoming too unstable, as it had been modified numerous times and was growing quite large. It crashed almost daily. They used it to manage fundraising campaigns, to keep track of donors and customers of the services they offered, and to schedule new services/events.

They chose to use CRM, which, although geared toward businesses and their sales and sales followup, can be tweaked for use with non-profits (donors can be treated as sales contacts).

While Access is a database and CRM uses a database (SQL), they are not the same. Microsoft Dynamics CRM has been heavily customized to offer useful services to businesses, such as tracking sales contacts and customer follow-ups. It is quite an advanced and comprehensive product, as is demonstrated by its price. It uses SQL as the underlying database, but that is hidden to the users (perhaps not to the implementer and customizer). Access is just a database engine and associated tools. In order to do anything with it you need to know how to organize and build databases, and to create a customized user interface. CRM has that already done, and to a much higher degree.

However, it will most likely be required to hire a consultant to set up and customize CRM for your business. But it still saves you from having to have a database designed from scratch, as with Access.

Also, CRM is way overkill if you're considering it for a one-man business, as implied in your initial post. It does things like track e-mail contacts with sales leads, and allows different people to be assigned to follow-up with contacts or leads, so that no one "falls through the cracks" and is ignored. This of course implies a large enough organization in the business to have multiple people who would handle different aspects of contacts and customers.

I hope this helps.


First of all, thank you for the elaborated response.

It's indeed supposed to be a one man business, at least at the beginning.
Of what you say, I understand that implementing at the beginning a CRM system is not a smart move.

I have a very basic experience in Access and I can take a quick course in that. Would it be recommended to program the business' data base and managing tools myself?

I appreciate your time and advice.
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September 1, 2014 3:06:59 PM

It depends on what you want to do with the database. Most of the ones I've created have been simple mailing lists or organization membership lists (mainly used to generate mailing lists).

Make sure you understand database normalization first:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Database_normalization

The quick and dirty is that in a relational database you want to avoid duplicating information. Say you have a database of dog owners, their addresses, and their breeds. Your main table would be the owners, think of them as the rows, one row per dog owner, and one field in each owner's record is the dog breed (think of the "breed" field as a column). You want to avoid having to type in "German Shepherd" 200 times, in part because you might mis-spell it occasionally, but also because it's wasted space to duplicate that text field so often. Also, it makes searching by dog breed much slower.

You would want a second table containing a list of dog breeds, one entry per dog breed. Say the "German Shepherd" was Breed Table entry (row) 3. In the main table, the Owners table, in the Breed field you would have just a number, which would be the index into the Breed table. So owners with German Shepherd would have a "3" in their Breed field.

Anyway, your first job is to determine what information you need to track and store, how you're going to use it, then organize it into a relational database, making sure to normalize the data. I remember the Third Normal Form as being the highest I ever thought about, although it goes higher than that.
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September 2, 2014 12:46:35 PM

mbreslin1954, thank you again for your response!

I'll start going over an Access tutorial on YouTube... I hope it remind me things I learnt in the past and teaches me new stuff also.

I'll keep you posted, and might even come back with additional questions.
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September 2, 2014 12:59:55 PM

Access is easy to start with, but unless you really understand database design and what you are trying to do with it, it is also easy to end up with a poorly performing application.
I've seen this dozens of times.

Investigate the various template applications that are available from MS. Some of them might even be a 95% solution for what you're trying to do. Already built.

MS Dynamics CRM is built (mostly) on a SharePoint platform underneath. Waaaaay overkill for a 1 man shop. And far, far too expensive.
Access is just a part of Office.
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September 4, 2014 11:43:40 AM

USAFRet
Could you tell me more about Sharepoint platform?
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September 4, 2014 2:35:56 PM

l_r_c_t said:
USAFRet
Could you tell me more about Sharepoint platform?


SharePoint.
A collaboration tool, also an online extension of the MS Office suite.

Run on MS Server 2008 or 2012.

But again, it is almost certainly overkill for your purposes, and SP can be very maintenance intensive.
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