“CRM” stands for “Customer Relationship Management” and describes the management of customer relationships, A CRM system is used for the structured collection and central administration of customer information. Complete data collection enables companies to address their customers in a more personal way. Marketing teams are generating more leads and sales employees are generating more deals with the usage of an CRM system. The various departments of a company are connected through one system and media disruptions are avoided.
Two CRM systems stand out from the cloud: Salesforce & Microsoft Dynamics 365.
Salesforce is a cloud-based CRM system and consists of different cloud-solutions such as Sales Cloud, Marketing Cloud or Service Cloud. Since Salesforce was founded in 1999, more than 150.000 companies worldwide trust the continuously evolving system.
There are a few reasons why Salesforce is the world’s leading CRM platform out there. Salesforce impresses through its great variety of products, though the various clouds and integrated tools. The interface offers users a high level of user-friendliness and, thanks to its possibility of individual adaption, great flexibility. You can either make user-defined adjustments yourself or use external resources for customization.
Two other things that make Salesforce exceptional are the Appexchange and Trailhead. Appexchange is a kind of app store from Salesforce and a large collection of tools, both free and paid apps, that extend Salesforce functions for users. Trailhead is Salesforce’s learning platform with a huge knowledge community behind it. It is useful to acquire skills, and you have the opportunity to use the concentrated collective knowledge of other users and experts.
However, the grate variety of Salesforce product also has its price, and like with any other system, there are weaknesses to be found with Salesforce. The pricing of the individual cloud solutions are per user and, for example, with the Sales Cloud for the enterprise package it is 150 euros per user. In addition, there are costs for the other functions and apps. That can quickly bring the prices up. Of course, there are also cheaper packages available, especially for smaller businesses, but this still can be a hurdle when choosing Salesforce.
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High price per user
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Extra costs for add-ons
If you are unsure whether and which Salesforce solution is right for you, please contact us for free consultation.
Microsoft Dynamics 365 is an also cloud-based CRM and ERP solution from Microsoft that was introduced in 2016 and consists of the main modules Sales, Marketing & Customer Service. The system is a further development of the former CRM solution from Microsoft.
The main advantage of Microsoft Dynamics 365 is the seamless integration of other products from the Microsoft cosmos. Dynamics 365 is therefore particularly for Microsoft-affine companies that have Microsoft-based workflows. For example, if you work a lot with Office 365 you don’t have to worry that the systems won’t work together.
In addition, Dynamics scores with more flexible pricing. For the Sales Enterprise package, for example, you only pay around 80 Euro per user. Furthermore, Dynamics 365 offers you not only CRM but also ERP functions on one platform.
While the big plus point is the easy integration of other Microsoft solutions, the connection of third-party systems outside the Microsoft cosmos is more of a challenge, because there are far fewer integrations available than with Salesforce.
Dynamics can’t keep up with the two bid advantages of Salesforce, Appexchange and Trailhead. Microsoft Appsource is significantly smaller and does not offer a large variety of additional apps. In addition, Dynamics does not have a mature learning platform. The acquisition of your own knowledge is not necessarily in the foreground, and you cannot ask a large community to solve development or adaption problems independently.
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Less possible integrations
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Small variety of apps in Appsource
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No well-engineered learning platform & knowledge community
While Microsoft Dynamics 365 scores with more flexible pricing and good connection to other Microsoft systems, Salesforce stands out in particular with its product variety, Trailhead and Appexchange. In the price comparison, Salesforce does worse with 150 Euros for the enterprise model of the Sales Cloud in contrast to the Dynamics solution for around 80 Euro. However, Salesforce offers a cost-effective version for up to 10 users, specially tailored for small businesses and start-ups. In addition, significantly more third-party systems can be integrated, including Microsoft products such as Office.
We hope our insight could help you. If you are still unsure, please contact us for a free consultation. Let’s find out together which system suits your company!
