Industry dept outlines MS CRM plans
The federal Department of Industry, Tourism and Resources (DITR) has detailed plans to implement at least three new customer relationship management (CRM) systems based on Microsoft software.
DITR is a department broadly focused on Australian industry but with a number of smaller and very diverse responsibilities. According to its 2004/05 annual report, the department had around 1900 employees in the middle of last year, with that number expected to increase in 2006.
In tender documents released today, the department said it was firstly looking for a supplier to help implement Microsoft CRM 3.0 as part of a system redevelopment program for a tax concession initiative within the department's AusIndustry division.
According to DITR, the Research and Development (R&D) Tax Concession program was introduced in 1986 to encourage local R&D. It now receives applications from some 6,000 companies annually.
An existing R&D component of the department's IIPMIS software platform will be replaced with Microsoft CRM 3.0.
"Implementation of the CRM component requires specialised technical skills that are currently unavailable within the department," the documents said.
But that's just the start of DITR's overall CRM program.
"The CRM product will need to be able to be reused for other areas within the department such as Invest Australia and the National Measurement Institute," said DITR.
After those implementations are bedded down, phase four of the department's plan of work will see the software customised to offer a grants management solution.
DITR will pick an integrator in late November for the R&D implementation, and will decide later on how the other systems will be put in place.
The environment
The department appears primarily to be a
Microsoft shop, utilising Microsoft's Windows Server 2003 and
2000, Exchange, SQL Server 2000, Active Directory and IIS Web
server software at the server level.
However Sun Microsystems Unix boxes are also in use, in addition to Oracle and jBoss server. Novell's eDirectory software is used for file, print, directory and naming services.
DITR has around 2200 desktop PCs around the nation, running Windows XP Service Pack 2, Internet Explorer, Office 2003 and Outlook, with automated software installation done through Novell ZenWorks. Citrix is used to provide remote access to a small number of users.