the essential crm buyers guide

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Introduction

This guide is meant to help business considering implementing new CRM software.

Regardless of whether you’re a small business implementing a CRM for the first time, or a business who has been using CRM already and is migrating to a new system – this guide is meant to review the strengths and weaknesses of the most popular CRM systems on the market today:

• Zoho CRM• SugarCRM• Microsoft Dynamics CRM• NetSuite• Salesforce.com

THE ESSENTIAL CRM BUYER’S GUIDE INTRODUCTION

http://www.bedrockdata.com/

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https://twitter.com/bedrockdatasync

https://www.linkedin.com/company/bedrock-data-inc

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Table of Contents

2. Zoho CRM

IntroductionEase of Use and System DesignThe Zoho CRM Data ModelCustomizationAutomationIntegrations and APIsPricing and ScalabilityZoho CRM Mobile AppOverall Takeaways

3. Sugar CRM

IntroductionEase of Use and System DesignThe Sugar CRM Data ModelCustomizationAutomationIntegrations and APIsPricing and ScalabilitySugar CRM Mobile AppOverall Takeaways

4. Microsoft Dyanmics CRM

IntroductionEase of Use and System DesignMicrosoft Dynamics CRM Data ModelCustomizationIntegrations and APIsAutomationPricing and ScalabilityMicrosoft Dynamics CRM Mobile AppOverall Takeaways

1. How We Rate Systems

5. NetSuite CRM

IntroductionEase of Use and System DesignThe NetSuite CRM Data ModelCustomizationIntegrations and APIsAutomationPricing and ScalabilityNetSuite CRM Mobile AppOverall Takeaways

6. SalesForce.com

IntroductionEase of Use and System DesignThe SalesForce.com Data ModelImplementation and CustomizationAutomationNotes on APEX Integrations, APIs and the AppExchangePricing and ScalabilitySalesForce1 Mobile AppOverall Takeaways

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5 35

45

16

15

6 36

4617

9 39

4920

12 42

23

7 37

4718

10 40

5021

13 43

5224

25

262728

3031323334

29

8 38

4819

11 41

5122

14 44

535455





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THE ESSENTIAL CRM BUYER’S GUIDE 1. HOW WE RATE SYSTEMS

1. How We Rate Systems

Ease of Use and System Design: How easy is the system to use for your company’s users? What are the best features of this system, how do they work and what can they do for your team?

The Data Model: How are the system objects setup? How will data flow between those

objects?

Customization: Mainly we will look at custom fields and custom objects in a particular system, as well as layouts. Everyone needs the almighty lead object, but after you’ve successfully implemented the standard system objects, what else can you create to represent your business?

Integration and APIs: Does the system have an API and how easy is it to use? Are there available integrations for the system and will it be easy to incorporate existing product and business data into the system?

Automation: Automation refers specifically to lead assignment and workflow rules. We’ll review these capabilities in each system and focus on ease of use of these features.

Pricing and Scalability: We’ll review the pricing and editions that the system offers, including the flexibility you get and the pros and cons of certain editions the system offers.

Mobile: Short review of available mobile applications that exist for the system, developed by the company themselves or by a third party. Focused on iOS and Android apps only.

Overall: Bottom line: how good of a system is this for your business and should you go through with the purchase of this CRM system?





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ZohoCRM

CRM





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Introduction to Zoho CRM

THE ESSENTIAL CRM BUYER’S GUIDE 2. Zoho CRM

Z oho CRM is one of the many product offerings that Zoho has. The company has focused on building out a suite of cloud apps that includes office applications, reporting application and a fully baked CRM that rivals some of the top systems on

the market today.

It’s been said that Zoho CRM is a decent alternative to Salesforce.com and for small to medium sized business, that statement is totally accurate.

Zoho CRM also uses a traditional CRM data model: Leads -> Contacts, Accounts and Op-portunities. Opportunities are called “Potentials” in Zoho, which will catch you off guard if you’re used to another system.

Leads in Zoho are assigned to sales reps via lead assignment rules, then are qualified and converted into contacts, which are associated with accounts and potentials (see the dia-gram on page 37).

Zoho CRM is affordable also (much more so than Salesforce.com): you can get onto Zoho CRM with a small team for free, though the features will be limited. From our research in using Zoho CRM at Bedrock Data, the Professional plan offered the most bang for your company’s buck.





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Ease of Use and System Design

Similar story here for Zoho CRM as SugarCRM and Microsoft Dynamics. The system is very straight-forward and easy to use. We gave Zoho high marks for usability and speed, mainly based on the asynchronous nature of the front end (it will remind you of Gmail in that way). It’s fast and very stable – we hardly noticed a single issue with the front-end, so usability is good.

The design of the product has also changed a good deal over the last few years, but has found a place that makes it easy to use and administer. There’s a reason that our sales reps can essentially administer Zoho CRM without help from someone more technical: it’s intuiti-ve and things are easy to find in the Admin area of the system.

Our sales reps used Zoho CRM for a month or more and found it to be a great system, with very few issues. The system is easy to navigate (once you get used to the “potentials” na-ming convention), the search functionality in the system is excellent.

Customizing views and layouts are easy as well, though our reps found themselves wishing that they could each configure their field layouts a bit differently.





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The ZohoCRM Data Model

Sales records start as leads in Zoho. Leads are people and are sales leads, either qualified or un-qualified.

Leads are assigned to sales reps via automated Assignment Rules. If qualified, leads are then converted into Contacts and associated with an Account.

Contacts are associated with Accounts, which are companies. Potentials, which represent “deals,” or pieces of business are also associated with Accounts, and therefore have contacts linked to them as well. A “closed/won” deal is used to mark a customer.

Other “child” entities such as Activities, Campaigns and any Custom Modules (Objects) that you create can be added to Zoho and tracked over the lifetime of a record in the system.






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Custom Fields

Adding custom fields to Zoho CRM is really easy. You can do so under the “Admin > Customization > Fields” section of Zoho CRM. The “Customization” section of the Zoho CRM Admin area is also where you will find layouts, links and other items. Note that custom fields are not available in the Free version of Zoho CRM.

Custom Objects

Custom modules in Zoho CRM are only available in the Enterprise version. You can create your own custom modules that can represent different pieces of your business. For instance, if you offer consul-ting services on top of your products, you could create a separate “service” module, and relate that to an account (or perhaps a separate “customer” module?). You can treat custom modules just like standard modules.

Layouts

Layouts enable you to add your fields to the screen for your Zoho users to see. Zoho provides an easy to use screen that enables you to drag and drop fields in order to add and remove fields to the layouts for all of your Zoho objects. You can easily add sections to your layouts as well to make sure that you keep your data organized. This is really easy to use – just don’t forget to hit the “Save” button when you’re cone!! This bit us a few times setting up the system.

Customization






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Automation


Zoho automation features allow you to setup rules that move and manipulate data in the CRM. They are most popular for doing lead assignment, as well as setting up workflows.

Lead Assignment

Lead assignment in Zoho is used to assign records (primarily leads) to users. A lead assignment rule looks at a specific set of criteria on a lead in Zoho, and if the criteria evaluates to “true” on a particular lead, then that lead will get assigned to either a particular user, role or to a defined round robin, which is a “ran-dom” assignment to either a defined set of users or roles.

Workflows

Zoho’s Standard, Professional and Enterprise editions enable you to create workflows in the system for as little as $12/user/month. These are fairly standard workflow rules that you’ll find in other systems like Sugar and Salesforce.com with triggers, alerts and actions. Certain advanced functionality like webhooks (which allow you to push data from Zoho to you) and field updates (as an action) are reserved for the Pro-fessional and Enterprise editions only.

Webhooks

Webhooks allow Zoho to send data to an endpoint URL that you configure on your site in order to receive automated pushes of data from the system. Webhooks are useful for integrations and other data manipulations. Once you configure a webhook in Zoho, you can associate it with a workflow rule to actually make sure that it gets sent out appropriately.

Zoho Creator and Deluge Script

Zoho’s answer to Salesforce.com’s APEX scripting langua-ge and the ultimate customi-zation feature for any CRM: the ability to write code (and in Zoho’s case, drag and drop code blocks) directly against the object data within the system itself, letting you really create your own rules and automation for any Zoho data in the CRM. There are some prerequisites to using deluge script though: you have to have access to CRM Enterprise edition, plus another subscription to Zoho creator, but these run fairly cheap (minimum $25/month).

BONUS FEATURES





https://www.zoho.com/creator/help/script/deluge-overview.html

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Integrations and APIs

Zoho’s APIs are one of the only pain points of the system. For some reason, Zoho has baked pretty severe API limits into their pricing model, and the result is the ability to make limited calls per day.

Zoho Free gives you 250 API calls/day, and it goes up from there, but just slightly, increasing based on your plan and the number of users that you have using Zoho (more on pricing on the next page).

Check out Zoho API Limits here.

This is problematic if you’re writing your own Zoho integration, because it means more engineering time to make sure that you’re using your API calls appropriately.

Of course there are platforms that make integrating Zoho CRM easier by using the right amount of calls for your account.

Integration platforms also can be affordable while still providing powerful Zoho integrations. Bedrock Data for instance gives you a Zoho integrtaion where all main objects (lead, contacts, accounts, potentials, invoices, etc…) are integrated - From $99/month, self signup and administration.





https://www.zoho.com/crm/help/api/api-limits.html

https://app.bedrockdata.com/select/menu?app=microsoft_dynamics_online&title=Dynamics%20CRM

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Pricing and Scalability

Zoho’s pricing is affordable for the type of system that you get, which can go a long way for a moderately sized sales team:

Zoho is cheap enough that for many sales organizations considering it, the Enterprisepackage is probably the correct one for many sales teams. The pricing will also allow you to scale with the product, as will many of the features that you’ll find in the Enterprise product.

As a comparison, these price points are a whole lot lower than SugarCRM and Salesforce.com, but again the API limits may but a damper on how far Zoho will scale for your business.

ZOHOFREE PLAN

3 users 5,000 record limit250 API calls/day

ZOHOSTANDARD PLAN

100K record limit250 API calls/day

ZOHOPROFESSIONAL

PLAN

Unlimited Records Automation

250 API calls/user/day

ZOHOENTERPRISE PLAN

Unlimited recordsFull Automation Suite

500 API calls/user/day

FREE $12user/month

$20user/month

$35user/month





https://www.zoho.com/crm/zohocrm-pricing.html

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ZohoCRM Mobile App

Zoho has an iOS and Android app that are both useful, but not awesome. Like many CRM mobile applications, you really lose a lot of the functionality that comes with screen real estate when going from a web app to a mobile app. You can obviously make instant calls to your leads through the mobile app, which is nice, but there isn’t a whole lot of other usefulness with Zoho’s iPhone app at this point, besides lead tracking, calling and emailing.

You can create new records on top level entities (objects) like leads, contacts, potentials, (support) cases and accounts. You can also edit essentially any record and make changes across the board.

It is interesting to note that the Android app has much better ratings than the iPhone app at the time of this writing (October 2014). We weren’t surprised by this, as we found a number of stability issues with the iPhone version – it crashed on us a number of times when reviewing the app.

I P H O N E

A P P S T O R E S R AT I N G S

A N D R O I D 4 / 5 S TA R S

2 / 5 S TA R S





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Overall Takeaways

We like Zoho CRM as an alternative to Dyanmics CRM or Salesforce.com for small, growing businesses

who may not want to spend the money on a system like Salesforce.com or Dynamics CRM.

The real downside to Zoho is the API limits, which I fear does hinder the scalability of the product, especially for high growth and larger companies. If you fit into this category, then Zoho probably isn’t the best fit for you at this time, because you will need to integrate data into and out of Zoho CRM.

That said, like SugarCRM and Dynamics CRM, there really isn’t much that you can’t do with Zoho that you can with, say, Salesforce.com – that’s not a joke.

Features like custom modules (objects), Deluge Script and the mobile app make Zoho a good CRM option at a reduced cost.





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SugarCRM





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THE ESSENTIAL CRM BUYER’S GUIDE 3. Sugar CRM

Introduction to Sugar CRM

S ugarCRM has its roots in open source software, where is began back in 2004 as an open source project. Because of its free, open source roots, Sugar has always been available first as a free piece of software, which you can still download (for

now) here and host yourself.

The company now sells “OnDemand” versions of the software at varying levels of cost (co-vered later), but also makes the “community edition” available for free.

Like Salesforce.com and Dynamics CRM, SugarCRM uses a traditional CRM data model, where leads are created first in the system, then assigned to reps via workflows, qualified and converted into contacts, which are associated with accounts and opportunities.

The cloud “OnDemand” version of the product is by far the easiest implementation of the CRM, but hosting the community edition of the software yourself runs on a traditional LAMP stack and isn’t difficult to host and support, should you want to go that route.





http://www.sugarcrm.com/download-sugarcrm-community-edition-free-b

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SugarCRM is very straight-forward in terms of it’s system design. Leads are the starting point for any record in the system, and get assigned, converted and worked from there, as you can see from the data model on the next page.

The design of the system has come a long way since the systems inception back in 2004, but the out of the box design of the system still is fairly sterile, even though you can change themes in the design of the system, which updates the colors, but not the layouts.

Our sales reps used SugarCRM for a week or so and found it to be a little difficult to digest the amount of records in their lead views. Other than that though, it’s very easy to navigate SugarCRM, and the search functionality in the system is excellent. It’s also extremely custo-mizable in terms of its views and menus for each user, so make sure that you empower your SugarCRM users to create the views and menus that will make them the most productive.

Here, we see a typical Sugar search area where you can search for leads, and then a list of found leads is di-splayed. A typical navigation is also shown here.





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The SugarCRM Data Model

If we’re talking sales, then records start as leads in SugarCRM. Leads are people and are sales leads, typically generated by your marketing team.

Once generated, Leads are assigned to sales reps, worked and “qualified”. If qualified, then the lead will be converted into a Contact and associated with an Account.

Contacts are associated with Accounts, which are companies. Opportunities, which represent “deals,” or pieces of business are also associated with Accounts, and therefore have contacts linked to them as well. A “closed/won” deal is used to mark a customer.

Other “child” entities such as Activities, Campaigns and any Custom Objects (modules) that you create can be added to Sugar and tracked over the lifetime of a record in the system.





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Custom Fields

Sugar lets your create custom fields on any object, including on custom modules in the system. It’s easy to create custom fields, as well as make other customiza-tions. All of these features are located in the Studio area of SugarCRM (Admin > Studio). All standard field types that you’d expect are supported.

Custom Objects

Objects are referred to as “Modules” in SugarCRM. All the standard standbys are there: Leads, Contacts, Accounts and Opportunities, as well as Activities, Campaigns, etc. You can also create custom modules in Sugar, and create custom fields, layouts and relationships for each of these entities as well.

Layouts

With all of the other customizations, you can also customize layouts in SugarCRM, giving the ability to add fields to areas of the system enable your users to see the data that you want to make available. Layouts are also editable in the Studio.

Relationships

Relationships allow you to choose which modules relate to each other, and specify 1:1, 1:many or many:many relationships for each. For example, Contacts have a 1:many relationship to Accounts. You can easily create your own relationships between modules in Sugar, which is a great feature.

Customization





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Automation

Workflows

SugarCRM workflows are very easy and straightforward to manipulate (found here: Admin > Workflow Management) and they are quite similar to other workflow rules that you may have seen in other systems. If you’re unaware of workflows, there are 2 parts to grasp in any workflow rule: Triggers, which define when the workflow should fire, and Actions, which define what the workflow will actually do once it runs. Read about Sugar workflows here. There are a few gotchas with Sugar workflows, such as the “Email Address” field being a separate object in your field list.

Sugar workflows also include “Alerts,” which can be used to send emails to employees (Sugar users) when a workflow is triggered, before the actions are executed:

Lead Assignment

One of the actions of a SugarCRM workflow is to assign records to users. Essentially, the workflow trigger is met on a record (which can be geography, industry, company size or any other way that your company assigns leads) – the action is then to “assign” the (typically lead or contact) record to a user, which would be a sales rep. You can create a lot of these sorts of workflows in Sugar and build out your lead rotator.

Lead Assignment

Sugar allows for coding on the backend of the system as well – you can write custom PHP code that will manipulate SugarCRM data, a lot like Salesforce APEX code. You will need coding know-how for this, so make sure you can get help should you need it before diving in.





http://www.bedrockdata.com/blog/an-introduction-to-crm-workflows-using-sugarcrm


http://support.sugarcrm.com/02_Documentation/04_Sugar_Developer/Sugar_Developer_Guide_6.7/03_Module_Framework/Logic_Hooks/

http://support.sugarcrm.com/02_Documentation/04_Sugar_Developer/Sugar_Developer_Guide_6.7/03_Module_Framework/Logic_Hooks/

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The SugarCRM APIs are in a bit of a transition period. With the release of SugarCRM version 7, there is a new REST API, which is a big, big step forward from the SOAP APIs that were previously available as a part of Sugar. If you’re a new Sugar user and are going to be utilizing the APIs in house, you should certainly use the REST APIs that are available in version 7.

Luckily, there is also software out there that will easily integrate your SugarCRM data with your other business systems. Sugar has a robust marketplace (SugarForge and SugarExchange) of apps and integrations for you to have a look at.

Here are a few of those systems for you to consider:

Bedrock DataAll main objects integrated - From $99/month, self signup and administration.

Boomi All main object integrated - From $2,000/month, self-signup, but SaaS admin knowledge recommended.





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As previously mentioned, Sugar has 2 versions available to all users: the free “community” edition that you must download and host yourself, and an OnDemand version, which Sugar hosts for you (just like other CRMs) and lets you and your team alleviate the worry around hosting and support issues.

The cost of the OnDemand version we found to be somewhat expensive, but not as much as Salesforce.com and other CRM’s in this guide. Here’s a breakdown of the pricing options:

As a comparison, these price points are comparable to Salesforce.com, but the “Ultimate” edition here is about the same price as Salesforce Enterprise.

SUGARCOMMUNITY

hosted in house

SUGARPROFESSIONAL

Basic CRM features reporting, mobile app, sandbox

SUGARENTERPRISE

Phone supportEnterprise opportunitiesPrivate hosting options

SUGARULTIMATE

24/7 and dedicated support

Private hosting included

FREE $35user/month

$60user/month

$150user/month





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SugarCRM Mobile App

We love the SugarCRM mobile app for iPhone, and consider it one of the top mobile apps in the CRM space today. You can essentially achieve all of the functionality of the desktop app, but on your phone with easy call integration as well.

Honestly, if we used SugarCRM, I would probably spend a lot of my day in the mobile or tablet app that SugarCRM offers, it’s a nicer UI design than the desktop app in our opinion.

You can create new records on top level entities (objects) like leads, contacts, opportunities, (support) cases and accounts. You can also edit essentially any record and make changes across the board.

Both the iPhone and Android apps appear to be fairly new, or recently received major upda-tes, per some of the reviews in the Google Play store, which had comments like “Great app! This is a significant improvement to the old Sugar mobile apps.”

N O R AT I N G S Y E T

I P H O N E


A N D R O I D 3 . 7 / 5 S TA R S






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Overall Takeaways

SugarCRM for a business system that has its roots in open source software, with a fairly outdated,

PHP-based core, it’s a great product.

We often get questions like “can we really scale our business with SugarCRM?” and we consistently answer: “Absolutely.” There really isn’t much that you can’t do with Sugar that you can with any other leading CRM on the market today, including Salesforce.com – that’s not a joke. Features like PHP logic hooks, custom modules (objects) and a new revamped mobile app make Sugar a major player in the enterprise CRM market.

Cons include the desktop app design and difficulty to administer (the admin area of the system is sort of a mess).

We’d rate SugarCRM highly overall, especially for businesses of 5-100 sales reps.





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Microsoft Dynamics CRM





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THE ESSENTIAL CRM BUYER’S GUIDE 4. Microsoft Dynamics CRM

M icrosoft’s foray into the CRM space started back in 2003 with release 1.0 and has iterated from there to the excellent cloud system that we see today with their latest release: version 2013.

Dynamics CRM uses a traditional CRM data model, where leads are created first in the system, then assigned, qualified and converted into contacts, which are associated with accounts and opportunities.

One question that will arise quickly as you consider Dynamics CRM, is how you host the platform. You have 2 options for this: the cloud version, which will require you to use Microsoft 365 users for authentication, or you can host it on premise on your own servers.

Introduction toMicrosoft Dynamics CRM





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Dynamics 2013 has adopted the new Microsoft design pattern that we first saw with Windows 8 and their Surface tablet. I’m not really a fan of the pure aesthetic of the “boxes” design, but it does make things easy to find and navigate to. The settings and administra-tion areas of the system still have the 2011 look and feel, but I imagine that a new UI is in the works for that piece as well.

I’ll give it to you straight: Dynamics CRM is increasingly easy to use and navigate. We gave it high marks for its usability, especially from the perspective of a sales rep. A couple of drawbacks to the system in terms of ease of use are around creating custom/personal views and running advanced finds, which we felt were a little clunky (dropdowns with hundreds of fields, hard to manage and edit).

Overall though, it’s a pretty easy system to get around.



Windows 8 on Surface Tablet

Windows Phone 8





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The Microsoft Dynamics CRM Data Model


If we’re talking sales, then records start as Leads in Dynamics CRM.

Leads are people and are sales leads, typically generated by your marketing team.

Once generated, Leads are assigned to sales reps, worked and “qualified”. If qualified, then the lead will be converted into a Contact and associated with an Account.

Contacts are associated with Accounts, which are companies. Opportunities, which represent “deals,” or pieces of business are also associated with Accounts, and therefore have contacts linked to them as well. A “closed/won” deal is used to mark a customer.

Other “child” entities such as Activities, Notes and Tasks can be added to parent objects and tracked over the lifetime of a record in the system.





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Customization

Fields

Dynamics CRM gives you the capability to create custom fields in the system, as well as add them to “layouts,” which in Dynamics CRM are called “forms.”

Objects

Dynamics CRM uses standard data objects, which are called “entities” in Dynamics CRM: Leads, Contacts, Accounts and Opportunities, as well as Tasks, Activities and Preferences on each of these objects. You can also create custom entities in CRM, and create custom fields and forms for each of these entities as well.

Web Resources

This lets you define a custom webpage that you can display within Dynamics CRM on any entity. You can also execute JavaScript within a web resource, for you developers out there.

OTHER CUSTOMIZATIONS





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Here’s an example of Dynamics CRM integrated with marketing data


Dynamics CRM has a SOAP API that are somewhat difficult to use and seemingly haven’t been updated in a seemingly long time. Part of the headache is the authentication which you must do against the APIs, depending on whether you’re using cloud or hosted Dynamics CRM.

Luckily, there is software out there that will easily integrate your Dynamics CRM data with your other business systems. Here are a few of those systems for you to consider:

Bedrock DataAll main objects integrated - From $99/month, self signup and administration.

Scribe All main objects integrated - From $3,000, must use a re-seller for setup and administration.

Boomi All main object integrated - From $2,000/month, self-signup, but SaaS admin knowledge recommended.





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Automation

Workflows

Dynamics CRM workflows are setup as “processes,” and they are quite similar to other workflow rules that you may have seen in other systems. Processes can have different types, including workflows, which have triggers and actions, as well as as “Business Process Flows” which let you define sales stages for a single entity or across multiple entities in the Dynamics CRM system.

Lead Assignment

Dynamics CRM lead assignment is actually handled through the processes module as well. One of the actions of a workflow is to assign a record to a user in Dynamics.

Here’s a screenshot of a Dynamics CRM workflow process that is assigning a lead to a user based on their geographic location:






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As a comparison, this price point is the same as Salesforce.com professional edition, which allows for most of the CRM and sales automation capabilities in Salesforce.com, but not Enterprise features like workflows and API integration.

Much of what Microsoft advertises on their feature comparison on their website, is around other Microsoft products, which are included and integrated with Dynamics CRM, including:

SharePoint IntegrationOffice Fluent User InterfaceOrder and Invoice Tracking

Check out the Dynamics CRM pricing comparison web app here.

Another really nice thing about Dynamics CRM is the cost point that it provides, which is comparatively affordable, and simple:

MICROSOFTDYNAMICS CRM

Monthly Per User Price

$99user / month





http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/dynamics/crm-price-comparison.aspx

http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/dynamics/crm-price-comparison.aspx

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DynamicsCRM Mobile App

The Dynamics CRM mobile app (for Android and iPhone) aren’t awesome. You can cull through a list of the different object types (leads, accounts, opportunities, etc…), edit “top level” records, but that’s about it.

You can create new records on top level entities (objects) like leads, cases and accounts, but you can’t create new records on any of the child objects, such as tasks, appointments or notes. You also can’t convert leads into contacts/accounts/opportunities through the mobile app, so really it’s just viewing records, editing and creating them. Mobile is not a strength of Dynamics CRM, to say the least.

We were also somewhat disappointed by the lack of some UI features in the mobile app, like the map integration that you get in the desktop app, as well as the ability to see a log of activity on a record through the mobile app.

We tested the app on iPhone only, as the Android app didn’t support the latest Android version (!!!). Perhaps their Windows Mobile app is better, but good luck finding a sales team who is using that platform on their phones.

1 / 5 S TA R SI P H O N E


A N D R O I D 2 . 2 / 5 S TA R S





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Overall Takeaways

Dynamics CRM, specifically the 2013 version, is an adequate, modern, easy to use CRM that can scale

to a large team and not break the bank.

Dynamics CRM’s automation and customization features are some of the strongest parts of the system, and those features stand up well against main competitors such as Salesforce.com and SugarCRM.

Cons include the mobile app and APIs, which are not awesome to work with. The mobile piece really must improve, as more of a sales rep’s actions start to happen on mobile devices.

We’d rate Dynamics CRM highly overall and would recommend it for businesses of up to 100 sales reps.






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NetSuiteCRM





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THE ESSENTIAL CRM BUYER’S GUIDE 5. NetSuite CRM

N etSuite was one of the pioneering SaaS business systems that really put cloud computing on the map. Before Larry Ellison invested in Marc Benioff and Sale-sforce.com’s success, there was NetSuite, which also received Ellison’s backing:

the company was founded in 1998 by Ellison and Evan Goldberg, and had an IPO in 2007, which was highly successful.

NetSuite is an entirely cloud-based ERP system. If you’re not familiar with ERP, it’s essen-tially a CRM with many other features and data objects built in. You can use an ERP like NetSuite to manage product inventory, shipping, accounting, product management, sales (CRM), marketing and more.

If you’re considering NetSuite for your business, be warned: it’s not a simple system, and unless you happen to have a NetSuite expert on staff, you’re looking at consulting fees for implementation help. You can’t just buy NetSuite, setup users and hand it off. NetSuite is extremely customizable, and to take full advantage of NetSuite, getting some assistance customizing it is a must.

The consulting model at NetSuite was clearly evident to us when digging into this system, as easy to find and digest documentation is not NetSuite’s strength.

Introduction to NetSuite CRM





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The first time we started playing with NetSuite, it was difficult for us to find the different areas of the product. For example, the CRM aspects of the NetSuite product are sort of hidden (“Lists > Relationships”), and opportunities aren’t located in the same section as Leads and Contacts (they’re in “Transactions”). You can change/customize this of course, as you can with essentially all aspects of the system.

NetSuite makes heavy use of user roles, and you can customize these to suit your needs. Users can have multiple roles, and switch between them in the user interface.

Focusing on the CRM aspects of NetSuite, the data model is a bit different than the traditional CRM data models that we see in the other systems in this e-book.

Leads in NetSuite can have 2 separate types: Companies and Individuals. A “company” lead has contacts as child records underneath it. An “individual” lead does not.

B2B Companies

If you’re a B2B, then the first decision that you want to make is whether to use the “Lead Conversion” feature or not. Lead Conversion will let sales reps “convert” leads into contacts and prospects (companies) once they’re qualified. We consider and recommend Lead Conver-sion for all B2B companies who want to implement and automate their lead flow. The other option is to simply create Leads as companies, with associated contacts.

B2C Companies

If you’re a B2C, then you will naturally want to create “individual” leads, which will follow the typical lead stage down your sales funnel.





38

The NetSuite CRM Data Model

B2B companies using NetSuite can choose to use Lead Conversion or not, based on their sales automation and integration needs.

B2C companies will want to just use The individual lead types

in NetSuite

B2C Funnel B2B Funnel






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NetSuite is an extremely customizable system. Check out the “Customization” menu for access (admin required).

Fields

You can certainly add custom fields to NetSuite. In fact, there are around 7 different types of custom fields that you can create (welcome to the land of ERP). For more information on creating custom fields in NetSuite, check out this blog post on the Bedrock Data blog.

Forms

NetSuite forms are for entering data into NetSuite. These can be for different types of records (leads, contacts, promotions, parts, etc…). You can create custom forms to make sure that data is entered correctly into NetSuite.

Objects

NetSuite calls custom objects “records” in the system, and you can certainly create custom record types under “Customizations > Lists, Records, Fields > Record Types.”

Scripts

NetSuite allows you to script against the system, using custom code. You can use these scripts to perform tasks and setup integrations.

Customization





40


Integrations and APIs (For IT and Developers)

NetSuite has a SOAP API, but the WSDL file we found to be essentially un-usable, so not very helpful unless you want to roll with your own XML.

NetSuite also provides API and integration options through “RESTlets” and SuiteScript (as well as “Suitelets”) explained here:

SuiteScript API and SuiteletsThis provides a way to manipulate the NetSuite user interface (NetSuite Pages), in order to customize your internal NetSuite instance. You can use Suitelets to build custom workflows, build unique custom pages, add UI elements to existing pages and much more.

RESTletsRESTlets are pieces of JavaScript code that allow you to interface with the SuiteScript API using REST-ful methods (GET, POST, DELETE, etc…). You can load RESTlets into Net-Suite and then deploy them in order for the code to be executed via a URL.

If you’re looking for a NetSuite integration, or a straight REST-ful NetSuite API for your own internal use, talk to us!





http://www.bedrockdata.com/business-data-management/netsuite-integrations

http://www.bedrockdata.com/about-bedrock-data-integrations/ask-a-question

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Automation

Workflows

NetSuite Workflows are located under “Customization > Scripting > Workflows.” You can use NetSuite Workflows to automate certain processes in NetSuite, such as lead assignment to sales reps, sending marketing emails, creating new opportunities, and much more. NetSuite workflows work a lot like workflows in other systems, where you have triggers and actions. The workflow will fire when the conditions are met, and the actions will be executed thereafter.

Here’s a screenshot of a NetSuite workflow that is assigning a lead to a user based on their geographic location:

Lead Assignment

Like with any other CRM system, automated lead assignment is an essential part of automation for your sales team. In NetSuite, you can assign leads using Sales Territories, which will assign records based on their geographic region. You can also do this with a Workflow, if you want to use other fields besides state/region to assign leads.






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Price and Scalability

NetSuite’s pricing is not readily available on their website, in fact they have pretty strict rules about not advertising their pricing (they forbid their partners from advertising it also). Luckily, some kind soul added a NetSuite pricing table on Wikipedia – it’s from 2007, so probably not accurate, but does provide a guide for what you’re looking at (essentially $99/user/month):

So the good news is that NetSuite is fairly cheap for its base pricing, but they make their money on all of the little add-ons in the system that you may need as your company scales over time.

For what you get though and all you can do with NetSuite once it’s implemented and rolled out, NetSuite is a great value. It will scale with however big your growth plans are: you won’t need to switch systems once you have NetSuite implemented.

NETSUITE

Monthly Base Price

$499month


$99user / month

NETSUITE CRM

Monthly Base Price

$79month


$0user / month

NETSUITE MC3

Monthly Base Price

$1,999month


$129user / month

NETSUITE SMALL BUSINESS

Monthly Base Price

$99month


$49user / month

NETSUITE GLOBAL CRM

Monthly Base Price

$1,499month


$129user / month

NETSUITE LIMITED LICENSE

Monthly Base Price

$249month


$49user / month

NETSUITE CRM+

Monthly Base Price

$129month


$0user / month





http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NetSuite#Pricing

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NetSuite Mobile App

NetSuite’s iOS mobile app is pretty robust and easy to use. There is a lot of functionality built into the app, which is a great thing for any user.

You can add new records (of essentially any record type), edit records (including all related fields, like Addresses, Companies, Marketing Campaigns, etc… on a particular record). You can also view dashboard reports (KPIs and such) on the mobile app dashboard.

Another unique thing about the NetSuite app, is that you can customize the layout of the data, right from within the app, which is ahead of the curve for business mobile apps, but fits NetSuite’s overall “customize anything and everything” mantra.

The Android app by NetSuite is called “Ope-nAir” and only appears to support Timesheets and Expense Reports – look for a new version more along the lines of the iPhone app in the near future.

2 / 5 S TA R SI P H O N E


A N D R O I D 2 / 5 S TA R S

NOTE - These iPhone app reviews appear to be based on an older version of the app. Note that there are many other 3rd party Android apps that we didn’t test with some higher reviews.





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Overall Takeaways

NetSuite isn’t a CRM, it’s an ERP - be clear about that distinction.

Many companies use NetSuite for CRM, but also use lots of other features around their ERP as well. If you’re considering NetSuite for your CRM needs, make sure that you can make use of it’s other features as well (finance for instance), before you purchase the system.

NetSuite’s CRM features specifically are adequate, though the UI is a little clunky (there is a new UI release coming out right around the time of this writing, so that will hopefully chan-ge). The old UI feels a bit like a web application from 1999.

As I’ve mentioned throughout this guide, NetSuite’s best feature is its flexibility and custo-mization. Just know that this comes with a pretty steep learning curve, which means im-plementation fees and potential training and consulting for your users – it’s not an easy or intuitive system to understand right out of the box.

Overall, our experience with NetSuite, as well as working with many NetSuite clients over the years have been positive.

The general feeling we get is that sales and marketing reps don’t love using NetSuite, finan-ce, IT and Ops reps love it.





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SalesForce.com





46

Introduction to SalesForce.com

THE ESSENTIAL CRM BUYER’S GUIDE 6. SalesForce.com

S alesforce.com (“SFDC”) is the leader in today’s massive cloud based CRM market. In fact in a recent study, 45% of companies with up to 1000 employees report using Salesforce.com, with Dynamics CRM and Oracle in second and third respectively.

SFDC is the leader for a reason: they were the first CRM company to focus primarily on cloud based infrastructure for their software, and first movers advantage seems to have worked out very well for the San Francisco company. They are also the most powerful CRM among other competitors, having taken a platform approach to their software from early on. Salesforce has a large part of their development team working on the platform piece, where they produce APIs that allows internal and external app developers to write apps on top of.

This approach has enabled SFDC to give their users not only the ability to vastly customize the system to suit their business, but also to enable independent developers to write apps on top of SFDC and sell those apps in the Apple App Store-like AppExchange.

There’s no doubt that SFDC is a powerful product that seems attractive. The question you must answer is whether SFDC is the right CRM for your business. The answer will probably be influenced by cost, company size and feature need.

Let’s dive a little deeper.





47



Salesforce has essentially the same high level design as other CRM’s: their lead management setup looks like other CRMs (Lead Contact, Opportunity, Account).

Because of the ease of SFDC’s customization capabilities, the typical SFDC implementation has some custom objects built into it and configured, which play into a customer’s lead and customer management workflow in the system.

For example, if you are a software as a service business (as we are), you may want to have a custom object that represents a “subscription.” Or perhaps you’re a consulting company that’s using SFDC – in which case you may want to build and configure a custom object to represent a consulting engagement.

Integration between objects (both standard and custom objects) in Salesforce is critical. Much of the time, this needs to be handled by SFDC APEX code, which is the product’s own Java-oriented scripting language that gets tested and deployed within SFDC.

For example, if you have a contact record in SFDC, and a change to a field value on that contact should update the parent account record, a simple workflow in SFDC will not make this happen – you will need to write code to accommodate this.

Unfortunately, this means that fully implementing SFDC at your company could become quite costly, should many customizations need to be made. It’s not a cheap or easy system to implement.





48


The SalesForce.com Data Model

Sales records start as Leads in Salesforce. Leads are people and are sales leads, either qualified or un-qualified and can be associated with Campaigns.

Leads are assigned to sales reps via automated Assignment Rules. If qualified, leads are then converted into Contacts and associated with an Account.

Accounts are companies in most cases. Opportunities, which represent “deals,” or pieces of business are also associated with Accounts, and therefore have contacts linked to them as well. A “closed/won” deal is used to mark a customer

Salesforce.com gets more powerful when you create Custom Objects to represent the different aspects of your business. These objects can be related to other objects in the system and customized.





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Implementantion and Customization

Layouts

SFDC layouts are easy to change and manipulate to suit the fields that you’d like to display to your users. Interestingly, the Salesforce platform also includes layouts that you can create on your own: literally your own custom HTML/CSS/JavaScript that you can place in layout elements on the page. This part of Salesforce is called VisualForce, read more about it here.

APEX Code

APEX is SFDC’s proprietary scripting language that allows for deep customization of your SFDC instance. You can use APEX to manipulate data between different objects in SFDC, create new records or edit existing records automatically.

Custom Fields

Salesforce.com makes it easy to create custom fields of various types. They do limit the amount of custom fields that you can create in the system however, which is part of their pricing structure. Something to be wary of in your purchasing process.

Custom Objects

Custom objects are a big part of SFDC for most companies. You can easily create custom objects in SFDC, and setup automation between those custom objects and other object data through workflows or custom code.





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Automation

Salesforce.com automation features allow you to setup rules that assign leads and manipulate data within an object.

Lead Assignment - Users and Queues

Lead assignment in Salesforce is used to assign lead records to users. A lead assign-ment rule looks at a specific set of criteria on a lead and if the criteria evaluates to “true” (based on a formula or a set of rules), then that lead will get assigned to either a user or a queue. A queue in SFDC is a separate data structure that “owns” records. When a record is assigned to a queue, a workflow or APEX code can assign it to a user. For instance, if a lead isn’t initially qualified, you can assign it to a queue first, then if they become qualified, you can re-assign them to a user at that time.

Workflows

SFDC workflows are similar to workflow rules that you may have used in other systems. Each workflow rule consists of criteria that cause the workflow rule to run and immediate actions that execute when a record matches the criteria. For example, SFDC can automatically send an email that notifies the account team when a new high-value opportunity is created. Workflows can also have time-dependent actions that queue when a record matches the criteria, and execute according to time triggers. Workflows only work within a single object (like an account or opportunity) or on a child objects like tasks.





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Notes on APEXX

More APEX: Develop and Deploy

The workflow for Salesforce’s APEX development framework is similar to other “Build > Test > Deploy” development frameworks. SFDC does maintain that your code pass at least xx% of code coverage in order to be deployed, essentially protecting you from yourself.

SFDC Enterprise instances also come with sandbox instances that you can use to deploy the code to initially, test it and then deploy to your production instance once you’re content with the functionality.

APEX Triggers

APEX triggers are bits of code that you can configure to be executed at certain times, such as: insert, update, delete, merge and upsert. For instance, you can have a bit of code that will change a field/value on an acocunt record “after update” on a contact record. Triggers are powerful ways to modify and manipulate data in the system, and take workflows to a whole new level.





52


Integrations, APIs and AppExchange

Many Salesforce integrations are available through third party integration providers like Bedrock Data, as well as on the Salesforce AppExchange, which is the (self proclaimed) world’s leading business app marketplace. There are many integrations on the AppExchan-ge already, along with other apps that may be able to help your company. It’s worth having a look at the marketplace to see if any may help your company with your usage of SFDC.

For integrations or your own internal use, SFDC also provides API access for customers on the Enterprise and Unlimited editions of the product. There are a few different APIs that may be useful to your team, including a REST API that allow you to work with JSON or XML, as well as a SOAP API that returns XML data.





http://www.bedrockdata.com/business-data-management/salesforce-platform-integrations

https://appexchange.salesforce.com/

https://help.salesforce.com/HTViewHelpDoc?id=integrate_what_is_api.htm

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There’s no doubt that Salesforce is a very scalable system – in fact it can really scale just about as large as your company will get, especially with the amount of customizations avai-lable to you in the Salesforce platform.

The drawback with it is in its pricing – it’s not cheap. Plans start at $25/user/month for the Group edition, but to get workflow, automation and APEX access to really customize and scale the platform, you’re going to have to go with the Enterprise edition, which is $125/user/month.

Here’s a pricing breakdown:

As a comparison, Salesforce.com is essentially the priciest system out there for what you get. Notably, it’s also the most powerful.

SALESFORCEGROUP PLAN

Base features supported. Including lead management, Chatter and Cases

SALESFORCEPROFESSIONAL

PLANCampaign support (does not include marketing cloud), dashboards, roles

SALESFORCEENTERPRISE PLAN

Workflows, APEX code support, full sandboxes,

history tracking

SALESFORCEUNLIMITED PLAN

Pretty much unlimited everything, including

24/7 support

$65user/month

$25user/month

$125user/month

$250user/month





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SalesForce1 Mobile App

Salesforce made news last year at their massive Dreamforce conference in San Francisco with the release of Salesforce1.

With the announcement of Salesforce1 comes improved APIs and AppExchange, and also a new mobile app, which was a long time coming for SFCD customers.

The app itself has mostly good reviews in the iPhone and Android marketplaces:

The app gives you basic control over your Salesforce data: create, edit and delete re-cords, and also lets you switch between accounts with ease.

You can access Salesforce apps that you’ve installed in the mobile app as well – and everything can be administered from your Setup area in Salesforce.com.

A big step forward for the company in terms of their mobile strategy, but nothing mind blowing here. Salesforce1 is a useable, adequate mobile app that will likely improve over time (we’re bullish on it).

I P H O N E


A N D R O I D 3 . 7 / 5 S TA R S

3 . 5 / 5 S TA R S





55

THE ESSENTIAL CRM BUYER’S GUIDE

Overall Takeaways

Salesforce.com is a great product - there’s a reason it’s considered the leader in the CRM space today.

It has the features and flexibility to fit virtually any business, small or enterprise alike. You can also scale exceptionally well with Salesforce as your company grows.

The issues that we find are mainly based around costs to achieve that scale and growth with the product. The brilliance of Salesforce is perhaps their business model (based around user seats), combined with the features that enable more than sales people to use the product. At many companies, support teams, consultants and account managers will also use SFDC, alongside sales team members.

These added users will drive up your costs considerably. For instance, if you have a sales team of 30 reps, a support team of 10 reps and 20 other account managers and consultants, those 60 users at the Enterprise edition are going to cost you upwards of $100,000 per year and that doesn’t factor in implementation costs.

We’re not here to complain about the price of Salesforce.com however. We actually recommend it to companies who can afford it and want to grow quickly. If you’re in that category, our advice is to not mess around with the Group or Professional editions, and go right to Enterprise - it’s simply not worth the money when there are other, cheaper systems out there with the same functionality (Zoho, Sugar and Dynamics CRM).

6. SalesForce.com





In Conclusion

56

Bedrock Data is a data management platform that allows businesses to synchronize and manage their data quickly and easily.

Bedrock connect to a lot of different bussiness systems, including CRMs, ERPs, Marketing Email, Suppot, Finance and E-commerce systems. Connect with us to learn more, or just get started with an integration today.

745 Atlantic Ave. 3rd Floor • Boston, MA. 02111 • 1-877-588-2671 • [email protected] • www.bedrockdata.com745 Atlantic Ave. 3rd Floor • Boston, MA. 02111 • 1-877-588-2671 • [email protected] • www.bedrockdata.com

Hopefully we’ve provided you with any information you may need to make an educated decision about implementing a data integration wywtem for your company. Should you have any questions about anything that may not have been covered in this guide, feel free to contact us at any time. We will be more than happy to get you started.

T RY B E D R O C K F O R F R E E

Easily Integrate Your Business DataYou can use Bedrock to sync between your

cloud business systems and keep a running backup of your critical business data




http://www.bedrockdata.com/about-bedrock-data-integrations/ask-a-question

http://www.bedrockdata.com/pricing

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