With next wave of Dynamics CRM releases, Microsoft firms up social strategy

One of Microsoft's key social investments for Dynamics CRM, Microsoft Social Listening (formerly known as NetBreeze) will see a new release arriving in Q2 of 2014, we found out this week. And based on new statements from product leaders, Social Listening will join Parature as two of the key components that they belivee will make Dynamics CRM competitive in both social listening and social engagement.

Microsoft's Bill Patterson, who is in the process of transitioning to a leadership role with the Parature team, spoke with us about some of the deliberate choices Microsoft is making in terms of managing the roadmap of products with different social strengths and why the differences will remain meaningful.

Microsoft Social Listening will serve as the macro social view, Patterson explained, tracking sentiment and identity for a company's own brand, but also for the identities of organizations or products related to Dynamics CRM entities. For example, on an account in Dynamics CRM, a sales rep could monitor the brand strength of the prospect's company, tailoring his interaction to the observable points of reference, be they negative or positive.

As Patterson puts it, Social Listening is aimed at giving Dynamics CRM users a way to "bring the outside in.".

Parature, on the other hand, will play a role in Dynamics CRM's social strategy through its existing engagement tools. It will continue to focus on areas it can already do well, like enabling the conversion of customer service interactions into managed CRM (or perhaps Microsoft Dynamics Marketing?) entities and process flows.

"We didn't start this journey to just be in the social space, to be interested in the social category," said ...