Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational corporation headquartered in Redmond, Washington, United States that develops, manufactures, licenses, and

supports a wide range of products and services predominantly related to computing through its various product divisions. Established on April 4, 1975 to develop and sell BASIC interpreters for the Altair 8800, Microsoft rose to dominate the home computer operating system market with MS-DOS in the mid-1980s, followed by the Microsoft Windows line of operating systems. Microsoft would also come to dominate the office suite market with Microsoft Office. The company has diversified in recent years into the video game industry with the Xbox and its successor, the Xbox 360 as well as into the consumer electronics and digital services market with Zune, MSN and the Windows Phone OS. The ensuing rise of stock in the company's 1986 initial public offering (IPO) made an estimated three billionaires and 12,000 millionaires from Microsoft employees (Forbes 400 list revealed that in March 2011 both Jon Shipley and Nathan Myhrvold lost their billionaire status). In May 2011, Microsoft Corporation acquired Skype Communications for $8.5 billion.

Primarily in the 1990s, critics contend Microsoft used monopolistic business practices and anticompetitive strategies including refusal to deal and tying, put unreasonable restrictions in the use of its software, and used misrepresentative marketing tactics; both the U.S. Department of Justice and European Commission found the company in violation of antitrust laws. Known for its interviewing process with obscure questions, various studies and ratings were generally favorable to Microsoft's diversity within the company as well as its overall environmental impact with the exception of the electronics portion of the business

WHAT STEPS ARE TAKEN BY MICROSOFT TO ACQUIRE NEW CUSTOMERS?

Technology can help you attract new business and keep existing customers happy Customers are a necessity to all companies. Even when times are good, you can lose customers and you need to replace this natural churn to ensure you're not reliant on a handful of customers. So making sure youre attracting new customers while keeping your existing ones happy is an essential part of running any successful business.

Make an impression and build loyalty Knowing youve got the best tools to make a great first impression means finding new customers is so much easier. You can make light work of brochures, email newsletters and websites to make sure your business stands out, even in a crowded marketplace. You can also make a success of all your marketing materials without having to outsource the work, using desktop publishing software like Office Publisher 2010, saving both money and time.

Happy customers will return Once youve grabbed a customers attention, there are simple things you can do to help keep them happy and returning to do more business with you. With easy-to-use tools, like Outlook with Business Contact Manager, its simple to focus on your customers and make sure you give them the best possible service.

Satisfying your customers needs whilst your business grows A basic contact management system is perfect when you have a small and simple customer database but as your business grows, both in number of customers and in complexity, you may want to consider a more comprehensive customer relationship management (CRM) system.

Find and Manage Customers

Find more customers and win valuable repeat business. Microsoft Office with Business Contact Manager and Microsoft Dynamics CRM consolidates your customer information in one place to help you deliver more targeted and personally relevant marketing, quickly recognize new sales opportunities, and deliver superior customer service.
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Deliver superior customer service (contact management). Retain more customers and build loyalty by providing great service and resolving issues quickly. Organise and manage all customer, contact, and prospect information in one place to provide your customers with exceptional service by knowing exactly what they want.

Reduce marketing costs (professional-quality sales and marketing materials). Save design and production costs by producing great looking and professional-quality brochures, multimedia presentations, and other sales and marketing materials in-house. Easily create, manage, and track direct mail and e-mail campaigns to promote your business more cost-effectively and acquire new customers with better success.

Shorten your sales cycle (sales forecasting). Manage your sales pipeline more effectively and easily identify follow up opportunities throughout the sales process. Forecast revenue, qualify and prioritize sales leads, establish consistent follow-up processes, and automate sales activities to drive more sales, faster. Market more effectively (targeted marketing). Winning new clients in a tough economy can be challenging. Easily create, manage, and track high-impact and more personally relevant direct and e-mail marketing campaigns in-house to target new customers and produce better results.

ATTRACT NEW PROSPECTS

DATA: Manage your data effectively

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Effortlessly import data from other sources into Microsoft Dynamics CRM. Use predefined data-mapping rules or creates new ones on the fly. Confirm data import status with automatic e-mail notification. Intelligently cleanse your data to eliminate duplications and decrease your cost per engagement (CPE).

SEGMENTATION: Pinpoint your marketing efforts

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Use natural-language queries to instantly segment customers or prospects. Create highly targeted lists and associate them with campaigns. Set up personal or public views for reuse. Easily share target lists with colleagues and vendors. Export lists into multiple formats for bulk email or direct-mail communications.

PLANNING: Streamline campaign planning

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Plan and track activities, tasks, budgets and details for each marketing activity. Set up product catalogues, price lists and discounts for optimal offers. Tailor messages and offers to highly targeted lists. Save time and money with reusable campaign templates. Use predefined workflows to streamline processes and approvals. Create Internet landing page for campaigns without any coding. Easily create marketing plans with embedded document management capabilities.

EXECUTION: Simplify campaign execution

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Initiate and distribute campaigns and communications instantly. Track and manage all event and customer details in one central platform. Use embedded Mail Merge capabilities to instantly send mass communications. Manually or automatically assign marketing tasks and leads. Create on-the-fly campaigns with the Quick Campaign Wizard. Create rules to trigger responses based on customer interest.

RESPONSE: Improve response management

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Centrally capture and track responses for marketing campaigns. Automatically capture and categorize responses from Internet landing pages. Score responses using predefined rules. Instantly assign responses to most qualified resources for follow-up. Instantly convert responses to leads.

LEADS: Streamline lead tracking

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Better coordinate with sales by tracking leads in one centralized system. Automatically assign or score leads based on predefined workflows. Instantly light up the most promising leads with conditional formatting. Use guided dialogs to streamline the lead qualification process. Ensure your marketing staff are working on the most current leads with bidirectional data synch with Excel.

TIMESAVERS: Extend value with Microsoft Office

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Use Microsoft Dynamics CRM within Microsoft Office Outlook for improved productivity. Instantly find the information you need with preview panes, personal views, record pinning and Most Recently Used lists. Eliminate redundant email tracking through Office Outlook synchronization. Better collaborate with co-workers with embedded presence feature. Streamline mass mailings with built-in mail-merge capabilities. Add Office Outlook contacts to marketing lists with a few mouse clicks.

WORKFLOWS: Automate workflows

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Boost productivity with personal, team, or organizational workflows. Dynamically assign tasks to the most appropriate resource using configurable rules. Accelerate approvals using predefined workflows. Automate followup with predefined triggers. Set alerts and reminders for campaign milestones.

MOBILITY: Mobile Express for Microsoft Dynamics CRM

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Access customer data from any web-enabled device anywhere, anytime. Track budgets and push through approvals while on the road. Create or update campaigns on the fly. Update, qualify or assign leads while on the road. Track key marketing metrics while on the road with rich offline reporting.

ANALYTICS: Gain key insights for decision making

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Measure your marketing success with key performance indicators (KPIs). Gain business insight with flexible dashboards and inline data visualization. Follow key marketing objectives with comprehensive goal-tracking capabilities. Track key campaign indicators with built-in reports. Identify trends and allocate resources with powerful predictive analytics. Use robust data cubes for trending analysis.

Improve sales planning and management

Set up territories and teams for optimal organizational efficiency. o Create price lists, discounts and unit groups to streamline offer management. o Post sales best practices and tips in the Resource Center. o Use strong role-based and group-based permissions for easy information distribution.
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Automate your lead system

Better coordinate with marketing by tracking leads in one centralized system. Automatically associate email messages with relevant leads or opportunities. Assign leads and tasks automatically based on predefined rules. Instantly light up the most promising leads with conditional formatting. Use guided dialogues to streamline the qualification process. Streamline lead scoring and conversion. Instantly segment your customer database to identify new leads.

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Manage opportunities effectively

Close deals faster by centrally tracking key deal information. Enable more effective team selling with teambased ownership. Create and monitor customized offers and pricing for each opportunity. More effectively position against the competition with seamless competitor tracking. Better identify and leverage extended relationships (lawyers, consultants) in the sales process. Streamline proposal creation with embedded document management capabilities. Establish consistent sales processes enterprisewide with predefined workflows. Track generated revenue with out-of-box order and invoice tracking. Use leading sales methodologies like Miller Heiman, SPI and TAS right within Microsoft Dynamics CRM.

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Streamline account management

Track all activities and interactions for each contact and account. Identify influencers, constituents, allies and roadblocks for each account. Quickly identify cross-sell and up-sell opportunities with embedded analytics. Automatically track contract renewal dates and details. Better understand complex organizational structures with hierarchal relationship tracking.

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A broad advertising campaign is aimed at the target audience to raise its awareness of specific IT problems, such as operational complexities that limit an organizations ability to respond to new opportunities, and Microsoft solutions, such as server consolidation and management tools. This campaign generates sales leads as customers order marketing CDs or visit special Web sites to learn more about the issues. Specific marketing tools are aimed at customers who have expressed interest in learning more about Microsoft solutions. They include assessment tools, such as return-on-investment calculators, operational efficiency assessments, or security worksheets, that help customers quantify the potential gains from a Microsoft solution; seminars, either sponsored by Microsoft or partners (who can use a Microsoft-supplied "seminar in a box"); Webcasts featuring Microsoft and partner experts; case studies that illustrate how companies solved similar problems by using Microsoft solutions; and, for larger partners, Microsoft-subsidized consulting engagements, such as proofs of concept, that outline solutions in detail. Training, consulting offerings, and evaluation products help interested customers better understand how a proposed solution solves a customers specific requirements and the steps required to deploy it. Hands-on labs, either at training sessions or delivered online, let customers explore solutions at their own pace. Solution Accelerators and Project Guides aid customers who have committed to a Microsoft solution in deploying, configuring, and managing the solution, minimizing the likelihood of a bad experience or an over budget project for both customers and partners. Partners who sell to enterprise partners can also tap Microsoft Consulting Services to speed deployments. Promotions and incentives. Microsoft offers special incentives to both customers and partners, such as special upgrade opportunities or partner rebates when they sell certain products. At various stages of the process, customers will also be exposed to additional Microsoft products. A customer who expresses interest in Windows Server 2003, for example, might be encouraged to evaluate SharePoint Portal Server, which builds on the Windows SharePoint Services that come with the Windows server; Exchange 2005 for updating their e-mail capabilities; or SMS and MOM for managing a server infrastructure. Measuring Success There are metrics which help focus partners and the Microsoft sales force on the most important outcomes that the company expects to realize, and can include the following:
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Year-over-year increases in sales (frequently broken down into unit sales and gross revenue) of particular products Gains in market share Declines in the installed base of old products, such as Windows NT 4.0 or Exchange 5.5 The number of partners involved in the campaign "Attach rates" for related products, such as the proportion of Windows Server 2003 sales that are accompanied by SMS sales.

Partner Involvement Partners play a critical role because Microsoft itself does not have (and does not want to create) the sales resources to engage the millions of potential customers for its products. The company says it is investing US$100 million in advertising for just one GTMCPIand that threequarters of the total budget for that program will be spent on partner-focused activities. The company estimates that approximately 70% of the revenue involved in partner-led sales to enterprise and midmarket customers will accrue to the partners themselves, in the form of billings for consulting, deployment, migration, and ongoing management, giving partners a significant incentive for involvement. Microsoft also quantifies the market opportunity for partners, such as its scale and potential revenue, identifying likely market segments (e.g., professional services firms in the United States) and their potential spending on new systems. Larger Microsoft partnersglobal ISVs and systems integrator partners, for exampleare specifically invited to participate in GTMs that are relevant to their products and services and are featured in some of the Web sites and other marketing material. (However, GTMs with a broad, horizontal focus might not have a specific set of partners.) Smaller partners get less direct support from Microsoft, but the company makes a significant effort to give them many of the resources they need to be successful in pursuing and engaging their own customers. One example: a new marketing site for partners lets partners design a mailout postcard or an e-mail marketing campaign that combines a Microsoft-designed sales pitch with the partners logo and a custom message for customers. Microsoft will print and mail or email the marketing material (for a fee) to a distribution list uploaded by the partner. Customers can be receiving the partners postcards within two weeks, or e-mail within two days. In return, partners are expected to take any required training, to align their own sales efforts with the focus of the GTM, and to provide feedback to Microsoft on customer wins.