Microsoft Updates Business Portal With KPI, HRM Talents

Release 1.2 of the portal, which initially shipped in April, adds a promised Human Resource Management (HRM) Self-Service Suite and a Key Performance Indicators (KPI) module.

HRM Self-Service Suite includes modules for Employee Profile, Employee Pay, Time and Attendance, Recruitment, and Skills and Training. These modules tie into the Great Plains U.S. payroll and human resource applications and start at $500 (for recruitment or skills and training) ranging up to $2,500 for time and atttendance.

Users will be able to review their own personnel and payroll information, fill out and approve timecards and submit requests for vacation and time off, according to Microsoft.

The KPI module enables executives and line-of-business managers to easily gain access to the key business metrics in graphical or chart form, with color-coded alerts of key conditions. It drafts off data from Great Plains or Solomon applications. It costs $3,000.

The update is just Microsoft's latest incremental foray into business applications. Two weeks ago it released Navision 3.70, its ERP solution with enhanced wholesale and distribution talents and a revamped user interface.

A five-user financial solution featuring the foundation layer and basic general ledger only starts at $20,000.

But as the MBS group churns out promised upgrades, it is facing an increasingly nervous set of channel partners, who are irritated that Microsoft is taking Microsoft CRM into its volume sales model. Microsoft assurances aside, they fear the company will put its Great Plains and Navision ERP and accounting applications into the broader channel as well. (See related story.)

Microsoft, which bought Great Plains and Navision in the past three years, has made those companies' applications the basis of its business solutions push into small and midmarket companies.

These partners say ERP and accounting solutions require a much higher level of customer "touch" and support than prototypical Microsoft productivity applications like those in Office.