Microsoft Dynamics CRM is #1 for Midsized Businesses

As you can see, Dynamics CRM is the outright leader in all three categories in the midmarket.  According to Forrester, Microsoft CRM’s strengths are its flexibility, ease and speed of implementation, and pricing structure that suits the midsized businesses.

Microsoft Dynamics CRM Balances Strengths Best for Large Organizations

Microsoft Dynamics CRM was found to have the strongest balance of existing capabilities and future strategy to meet the requirements of large organizations.  Microsoft’s current offering proved to be stronger than Salesforce.com, and their future strategy exceeded those of industry heavyweights, Oracle Siebel and SAP. 

Forrester Blogger William Band stated that the native integration to Outlook in both the on-premise and SaaS deployments of the solution was sited by users as one of it’s greatest advantages in both the large business and midmarket spaces.

Try Microsoft Dynamics CRM Free for 30 Days!

The new Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) deployment of Sage SalesLogix is now available across the US!  Sage SalesLogix Cloud offering is built upon the Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud™ (EC2™) infrastructure and costs $65 per named user per month for new implementations. Current on-premises Sage SalesLogix users who wish to migrate to the cloud can do so for $35 per named user per month. Multi-user and multi-year discounts are also available.

Sage understood that they would need to bring new and current CRM customers alike up to speed on the difference between their on-premise and on-demand deployments, so they created a world-class educator named Professor Crumblehorn to provide some brief video tutorials:

Cloud Computing 101 – Prof. Crumblehorn explains what an on-demand crm system is, some of the issues that plague other SaaS CRM deployments, and how Sage SalesLogix Cloud combines the best qualities of SaaS with the best qualities of on-premise to create a one-of-a-kind hosted CRM solution.

Cloud Computing 102 – Prof. Crumblehorn dives deeper into the benefits of Sage SalesLogix Cloud including:

• Data Storage and Ownership
• Control, Change, and Customization
• Complete view of relationships and insight
• Flexible payment options

Sage is also offering a 30-Day Free Trial of Sage SalesLogix Cloud so you can get a taste of their new deployment offering:

Sage SalesLogix Cloud CRM deployment officially launched this week and Sage is accepting orders for this Software as a Service (SaaS) customer relationship management solution.  The product will officially become available in June to North American companies looking to manage their relationship data in an online environment. 

New customer pricing is $65 per user per month for Sage SalesLogix Cloud CRM.  However, currently Sage SalesLogix users with an on-premise deployment can transition to the Cloud for $35 per use per month. 

Sage has also launched their “Cloud Watcher” website:  www.watchthecloud.comthat allows people to register to receive updates and information about Sage SalesLogix Cloud CRM as it comes available.  Become a cloud watcher today!

You see, Socius is a professional services company, providing a wide variety of consulting services to companies across the country.  This makes us a great candidate for customer relationship management software.  Our relationships with our clients and partners are the lifeblood of our organization and we need a system to manage those relationships. 

Unfortunately for the company sending the email, many of the services that we offer center around the selection and implementation business management software solutions; including industry leading CRM software from Microsoft Dynamics and Sage.   We also use those CRM systems internally to track, not only our sales activities, client relationships and the services we provide, but also our marketing activities. 

The CRM solutions that we use and support have advanced marketing functionality with robust data cleansing and segmentation tools, leading campaign management features, and insightful marketing analytics to increase the effectiveness of marketing programs, improve efficiencies, and better track key metrics.  First and foremost though, our CRM software products have marketing data and list management capabilities that help you segment and target your marketing activities for maximum efficiency and return on your investments.  These tools can also help you navigate through the marketing minefield and keep you safe from costly mistakes (like marketing directly to your competitors). 

Learn more about the marketing, sales and service functionality of SageCRM, Sage SalesLogix, and Microsoft Dynamics CRM or request a complimentary business strategy assessment for advice on which CRM solution can help you streamline and secure your marketing efforts.

According to Gartner, “Leaders demonstrate market-defining vision and the ability to execute against that vision through products, services, demonstrable sales figures, and solid new references for multiple geographies and vertical industries. Clients report that the vendors deliver a high level of value and return on their commitment. The development team has a clear vision of the implications of business rules, and the impact of social networking on customer service requirements. A characteristic of a leader is that clients look to the vendor for clues as to how to innovate in customer service.”

Once again, Microsoft Dynamics CRM has made it into the leaders quadrant with other top names in the industry, including salesforce.com, Oracle (Siebel), RightNow, and Pegasystems.  But what sets Dynamics CRM and these other solutions apart from their competition as industry leaders in customer service?

Gartner research indicates that:

Through 2011, 30% of organizations moving to a new platform will select a software-as-a-service (SaaS) deployment for customer service functions. 

Through 2013, customer service strategies will be directed by the following four initiatives:

• Tying all service interaction channels together
• Integrating social CRM capabilities (by 2013, at least 35% of customer service centers will integrate some form of community/social capabilities as a part of the contact center solution)
• Analysis of the customer experience
• Business rules and knowledge will be applied in real time

Microsoft Dynamics CRM and the other CRM solutions in the leaders quadrant have strategies in place to address each of these initiatives and serve clients looking for a SaaS deployment for their customer service software: 

Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online is the full-featured SaaS alternative to Microsoft’s on-premise CRM solution.  Both Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online and Microsoft Dynamics CRM (on-premise) leverage “Accelerators” to extend the core product’s functionality at no additional cost to users. 

Read about the Social Networking Accelerator for Microsoft Dynamics CRM

Last week, Microsoft announced the upcoming release of the Customer Care Accelerator for Dynamics CRM. This new accelerator helps provide a consistent customer service experience by combining data elements from disparate applications such as mainframes, databases or Web sites for display in a single user interface. Gain quick and easy access to information, empower your agents to provide more efficient service, and improve overall customer satisfaction.

E-marketing is available starting at $249.95 per month and is geared to help businesses:

• Reach more contacts more efficiently by easily and inexpensively sending professional e-mail campaigns to help drive sales
• Nurture prospects automatically by creating multi-step nurture or drip marketing campaigns that include e-mail, print (such as postcards), telemarketing or direct sales, and automate campaigns to help sales and marketing departments operate more efficiently
• Qualify more sales leads by automatically assigning scores to contacts based on their interaction with e-mail campaigns for a ranked and qualified list of who to call first
• Grow a larger prospect database with more contact details through the use of Web forms to collect contact details and interests from prospects that are transferred into existing or new contact or lead records

According to Forrester Research, email is the most cost effective tool for small and midsized businesses.  In their US eMail Marketing Forecast 2009 to 2014, Forrester revealed that email marketing delivers a ROI that is two to three times higher than that of other direct marketing. 

Learn more about E-Marketing for Sage SalesLogix

Cost:  In the CRM Software pricing competition, Maximizer wins.  Their per-user pricing starts at $499 where as the Microsoft Dynamics CRM pricing for a full user is $995 plus server costs.  With this gap in pricing, it is to be expected that there would be a significant difference in functionality. 

Sales Force Automation (SFA) Features 

Both products boast a complete set of lead, opportunity, and territory management tools including analytics, real-time offline and mobile access, forecasting and tracking, and email marketing tools. 

The largest different in SFA features comes at the point of integration.  While Microsoft Dynamics CRM has direct integrations with other Microsoft Dynamics software including accounting and financial management business solutions like Microsoft Dynamics GP, Maximizer ties-in to QuickBooks accounting software.  This is the first hint that Maximizer is geared towards smaller organizations while Dynamics CRM is better suited to fit the needs of a growing small to mid-sized business. 

Service and Support Features

Both Microsoft Dynamics CRM and Maximizer CRM contain very similar centrailized case management features.  Both provide automated creation, monitoring, and response mechanisms as well as searchable Knowledge bases and customized reporting. 

They both also have unique ways of streamlining service processes.  Microsoft Dynamics CRM provides team and group workflow so that customer data flows to the right people at the right time, while Maximizer provides an “at-a-glance dashboard” of service and support activity.  Both are viable ways of displaying this critical data; the question is: how do you want to see it?

Marketing Features

Both Maximizer and Dynamics CRM solutions contain similar marketing campaign planning, automation, and management tools.  At the center of Maximizer’s marketing functionality is email marketing automation including list and campaign management as well as anti-spam tools.  Microsoft Dynamics CRM’s email marketing functionality leverages elements of Microsoft Outlook, in which it is set.  

While Maximizer focuses on email functionality, Dynamics CRM focuses on workflow and connecting marketing to the rest of the organization.  The Microsoft Dynamics workflow model enables enhanced marketing and sales collaboration as well as automating information sharing through portals and reporting using other Microsoft applications. 

When you look at all of these functional areas together alongside cost, it appears that these two products are better suited for different types of organizations.  Maximizer has a slightly more limited feature set and integrates with small business tools.  Both of those facts, along with the lower user cost, indicate that it might be best suited for a smaller organization that does not have plans for significant growth.  On the other hand, Microsoft Dynamics CRM’s more robust feature set and direct integration with Microsoft Dynamics ERP solutions make it a better solution for mid-sized businesses or small business gearing up for long-term growth. 

Find out first-hand which CRM solution is right for your business:  Try Microsoft Dynamics CRM for yourself for 30-days!

It can be confusing to know when it would benefit you to use each of these marketing campaign management tools.  To help clarify this point, Microsoft Dynamics CRM Software Development Engineer, Jim Schumacher has put together two scenarios featuring “Benjamin” a marketing manager who uses both the Campaign and Quick Campaign tools to manage his data. 

Campaign Scenario – Benjamin uses a Campaign to promote his company’s new lawn tools for spring

Quick Campaign Scenario – Benjamin uses a Quick Campaign to do follow-up after exhibiting at a trade show

As you can see from these scenarios, both the CRM Campaign and the Quick Campaign are useful tools for running a campaign and tracking the results.  Below is a side-by-side view of these two processes:

Sage SalesLogix v7.5.2

Web Client Performance: Significant performance improvements were made in the areas of navigation, Activities, Calendars and more.  These changes help increase page loading times and reduce bandwidth.

Field Customizable Unicode: Multiple multi-byte languages in the area of Unicode are now supported.  This should ease the burden of growing a global business and reduce the cost of supporting multilingual and global implementations.

Calendar Enhancements: There is now a visual indicator for attachments in the activity main view and calendar as well as hyperlinks from the calendar to accounts, contacts, tickets, opportunities, etc. 
 
Activities Enhancements: Improved efficiencies including the ability to confirm or decline activity confirmations; mass delete activities; mass dismiss and snooze individual, multiple or all reminders in a single step; and complete multiple activities in a single step.

SalesLogix Mobile v5.6

Improved Calendar Integration: Ensures email and activity sync engines work together without creating duplicates in SalesLogix, SalesLogix Mobile, or Outlook

Usability Improvements: Provides BlackBerry Storm UI and navigation updates, support for high-resolution devices and Sdata support for subscriptions.  Supports Windows Server 2008, Oracle 11g and Windows Mobile OS 6.5.

To view the complete details about Sage SalesLogix v7.5.2 and Sage SalesLogix Mobile v5.6, please view the Recorded Demo: “Considering an Upgrade? Check Out What’s New in Sage SalesLogix v7.5.2 & Sage SalesLogix Mobile v5.6”.

Visit the SalesLogix 7.5 Upgrade page to download the Upgrade Comparison Chart or Client Feature Comparison Chart or request a pre-upgrade meeting.

CRM Notifications Accelerator

Through the CRM notifications accelerator, users are able to subscribe to the CRM “business events” that are significant to them, e.g. a salesperson is interested in new leads and opportunities assigned to them whereas a customer service representative is interested in new service cases assigned to them. Once the user has subscribed (each user manages their subscription profile) to the types of events that are important to them they can elect how they want these event notifications to be delivered. Notifications are delivered via a Really Simple Syndication (RSS) feed and can be consumed with many desktop tools including Microsoft Outlook 2007 or the standard newsfeed Windows Vista® gadget.

Event Management Accelerator

Manage the planning, execution, tracking and reporting requirements for events with the Event Management Accelerator, which focuses on three areas of event management, namely: 

1. Event Planning – logistics around an event such as:
   • Booking the venue
   • Presenters
   • Catering
   • Presentation content preparation
      
2. Event Attendance – all aspects around managing the attendees such as:
   • Inviting the target audience via phone, fax, letter and email
   • Managing registrations via phone, letter, fax, email and web
   • Tracking all people who actually attended the event
      
3. Event Review – Microsoft Dynamics CRM reports that measure the effectiveness of the event:
   • How many people attended the event?
   • What was the revenue impact of the event?

A core component of the event management accelerator is the web registration portal that customers and partners can deploy to allow web registration for their events and track these registrations in Microsoft Dynamics CRM.  The solution also consists of a plugin to manage registration counts and waitlists.

Sales Forecasting Accelerator

The sales forecasting accelerator extends and enriches the out-of-the-box sales forecasting capabilities in Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0. Principally, sales users of Microsoft Dynamics CRM can review their individual sales pipeline and quickly classify opportunities as committed, excluded or upside. Sales managers can monitor and track sales targets, budgets and performance against these forecasts for specific time periods (e.g. months and quarters).

New Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 reports that summarize sales performance for the organization as a whole or for individual salespeople serve as a foundation for the sales forecasting accelerator.

Request Socius’ assistance in implementing any of the CRM Accelerators.