ERP, CRM and eCommerce Blog

According to the Microsoft Dynamics^® CRM Blog, the CRM team was able to run over 100,000 Microsoft Dynamics CRM users concurrently over several organizations. This is the largest real-world business application workload ever seen on a Microsoft Windows Server Hyper-V system and it proves the scalability of Microsoft Dynamics CRM in private cloud deployments. Using virtualization they were also able to consolidate 20 servers down to just two, which means that if you deploy Microsoft Dynamics CRM using this configuration, you can reduce the power consumption, required rack space and management overhead all while maintaining a high level of performance with your CRM system.

Just the reduction of management overhead alone will save your company millions of dollars and resources a year. Some Microsoft Dynamics CRM competitors have in the past argued, "Dynamics CRM doesn't scale as well as our stuff." With a benchmark like this, that argument doesn't hold water. It scales to at least 100,000 users and that's pretty impressive while giving you the highest level of performance possible.

Ignify has deployed Microsoft Dynamics CRM at companies with over 5,000 users. Our experience is that scalability is not an issue with Dynamics CRM. As an example, one of our customers handles over 100,000 claims a day across 5,000 call center agents that all use Microsoft Dynamics CRM. CRM does complex claim processing business rules, has workflow that runs across multiple systems and finally integrates an order into Microsoft Dynamics AX when a claim is approved. Another is a $7 billion organization that has rolled our Microsoft Dynamics CRM for marketing, sales, repairs and customer service. The United States Air Force runs on Microsoft Dynamics CRM. Another customer recently purchased Microsoft Dynamics CRM for over 25,000 users. If anything, Microsoft Dynamics CRM wins on scalability over the competition hands-down.

To get the full benefits of virtualization, you will need to learn a few new tricks, but overall, companies deploying Microsoft Dynamics CRM for multiple departments or using the xRM framework to deliver multiple applications using a private cloud approach can be confident the scale, economics and performance of Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 when using Hyper-V. The complete white paper with details on the tests can be found here.

Sandeep Walia is the Chief Executive Officer of Ignify. Ignify provides design, consulting and implementation services for CRM and ERP initiatives for mid-market and enterprise businesses. Ignify is a Top-tier Microsoft Gold Certified partner ranked in the Microsoft Partner of the Year in 2010 and both the Microsoft Dynamics Inner Circle and the Microsoft Dynamics Presidents Club in 2009 . Ignify offers Dynamics CRM to retailers, banks, insurance companies, contact centers and to several other businesses. Ignify has offices in Los Angeles, Silicon Valley, Nashville, Chicago, Toronto, Manila, Pune and Bangalore.

I still recall the days when shopping at Gap was only possible in the mall. Banana Republic was across the way and Old Navy was in the outdoor shopping plaza across the street with other discount retailers, like Marshall’s. Since the creation of shopping online, shopping for my favorite family of brands gets easier and easier to the point where I prefer to shop online rather than go through the trouble of driving to the mall.

A couple years back, Gap.com merged their family of brands by creating a multi-store website. Each of their clothing brands along with two online-only stores (Piperlime and Athleta) are all available with a click of a tab.

Just like shopping in the store, the look and feel of each brand remains independent of each other. Banana Republic remains subdued and sophisticated; click on Old Navy and it’s young and colorful. Customers have the option of signing up for store-specific emails, so as a customer, you don’t need to be bombarded by the brands you’re not interested in. Of course, Gap does take advantage of cross selling their brands. The email sign-up includes the option of receiving updates for their other brands.

While shopping the Maternity – New Arrivals category on the Old Navy store, the footer banners display Gap Maternity and Gap Kids – categories relevant to where I was currently shopping. At other times, the banners display ads for Piperlime and Athleta. Also, Quick Links float off to the side, ready to take the shopper to a corresponding category on another store.

Jumping between stores really is as easy as the click of the tab. The site is also smart enough to remember what department you were browsing in Gap when you left to check out Old Navy. Clicking on Gap takes you back to that department or that item. To top off the shopping experience, there’s only one shopping cart and one checkout. No waiting in lines at each store; no reentering of address and credit card information. Once you’ve created an account, the checkout process is so fast that you have to slow down to check any impulse shopping at the door.

With the multiple stores, Gap offers flat shipping rate across the stores. Piperlime products ship for free, keeping in step with the trends in other ecommerce shoe stores, like Zappos and Shoebuy. Just like shoes need to be tried on before purchasing, I believe clothes do, too. I’d like to see Gap offer more free shipping incentives since online purchases do still bring me back into the stores to make returns. Their store credit card holders can get free shipping with $100 purchase; a lower minimum purchase would definitely make me more checkout-happy!

Gap also ships four of the brands from the same warehouse so that items from those stores come in the same box – a win-win-win for customers, Gap, and the environment.

When I found out that Ignify eCommerce began supporting the ability to run multiple store fronts, I immediately thought of Gap, the first place I’d seen it. It’s worked well for Gap and perhaps your business fits a similar model and can stand to benefit from running multiple stores from a single instance of Ignify eCommerce.

However, I also realized that multi-store can mean different things. In Gaps case, there is one shared shopping cart, one shared login and even the web address domain name is shared – all the stores are actually sub-domains of gap.com e.g. oldnavy.gap.com. One would almost argue that this is not ‘true multi-store’ because as a customer the other ‘stores’ work more like departments. Ignify eCommerce supports the Gap multi-store model where each store is like a department as well as a more delineated model where each store is completely different. In the latter model you can’t tell that all the stores run on the same multi-store framework – the look and feel is totally different, the domain names are completely different and the shopping cart experience for each store is unique and does not have to be shared across other stores running on the Ignify eCommerce multi-store framework. While the Gap.com model may work for some merchants, other merchants may need a more unique experience for each store. Ignify eCommerce is one of very few eCommerce products in the market that supports a true multi-store experience through a single store manager panel.

What's Good about Gap.com:

• Easy, shared checkout
• Remembers where you were in each store
• Look and feel of each store is independent

What’s Not So Good about Gap.com:

• Could offer more free shipping incentives
• Signing up for multiple stores’ emails means more spam in your inbox. An option for a single email digest could be helpful.

Katie Lee is a Team Lead in the eCommerce group at Ignify. Ignify eCommerce is the only PCI certified eCommerce solution in the market that integrates with the Microsoft Dynamics ERP and Sage ERP solutions. Ignify has been included as the fastest growing business in North America for 3 years in a row by Deloitte, Inc Magazine and Entrepreneur Magazine. Ignify was ranked in the Red Herring 100 finalists for 2010 – this list represents the top businesses in North America with disruptive and innovative technology.