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Thursday 23 July 2015

July 23, 2015
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(Image: Salesforce.com)

Salesforce Vs. The Competition: A CRM Primer

Salesforce.com is a leader in providing cloud-based enterprise software applications and platform services. How does it stack up to the competition? Here's how.

(Image: Salesforce.com)

Salesforce CRM

Salesforce.com's customer-relationship management (CRM) systems enable its customers to track, manage, analyze, and share information about sales opportunities, leads, and ongoing processing, and even make forecasts about sales.
Although at age 16 Salesforce.com is younger than SAP, Oracle, Microsoft, and some other major players offering CRM solutions, it's sitting on top of the sector. The latest report from Gartner indicates that Salesforce.com leadsworldwide CRM software vendors with 18.4% marketshare in 2014, compared to No. 2 SAP, with 12.1% marketshare. Salesforce.com also had the highest revenue growth (28.2%) from 2013 to 2014, versus No. 2 Microsoft with 21.7% growth.
Salesforce categorizes its products under various cloud-based offerings, including Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, Marketing Cloud, Community Cloud, and Analytics Cloud. Its solutions are customizable and can be tailored to meet a business' particular requirements.
Salesforce also offers Force.com and Heroku, platform-as-a-service (PaaS) application development frameworks enabling cloud-based application development, as well as the AppExchange marketplace, which offers more than 300 mobile-ready apps based on the Salesforce1 platform. Overall, the Salesforce.com platform helps improve productivity by managing and organizing contacts, opportunities, leads, and partners.
Take a look through this slideshow for a quick breakdown of this popular CRM platform and data on how it stacks up against its competitors.

Delivery Model Salesforce.com is only delivered as software-as-a-service (SaaS), which means customers do not need to buy, install, update, or maintain dedicated hardware or software for it. However, there is no option available for using this software within a private cloud or on-premises environment. Other big players in CRM offer both on-premises and cloud-based CRM solutions: Oracle has Oracle-CRM On-Demand and Oracle Siebel CRM, SAP has SAP CRM Systems suite and SAP CRM On-Demand, and Microsoft offers Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013 and Dynamics CRM Online.

Delivery Model

Salesforce.com is only delivered as software-as-a-service (SaaS), which means customers do not need to buy, install, update, or maintain dedicated hardware or software for it. However, there is no option available for using this software within a private cloud or on-premises environment.
Other big players in CRM offer both on-premises and cloud-based CRM solutions: Oracle has Oracle-CRM On-Demand and Oracle Siebel CRM, SAP has SAP CRM Systems suite and SAP CRM On-Demand, and Microsoft offers Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013 and Dynamics CRM Online.

Marketshare And Target Customer Size In terms of marketshare, Salesforce.com is the market leader with 18.4% marketshare, followed by SAP (12.1%), Oracle (9.1%), Microsoft (6.2%), and IBM (3.8%). Salesforce.com does not target any specific customer segment and retains a diversified customer base. Its 'Group' and 'Professional' editions suffice for small and midsize organizations, while 'Enterprise' and 'Unlimited' editions can meet the needs of large organizations and multinational enterprises. Salesforce faces steep competition in all market segments. For enterprise customers, it competes with Oracle, Microsoft, and SAP. At the midrange it faces Sage CRM, GoldMine, and RightNow. In the small-business market Salesforce goes head-to-head with Zoho, Nimble, Highrise, Insight.ly, and more. (Image: Gartner)

Marketshare And Target Customer Size

In terms of marketshare, Salesforce.com is the market leader with 18.4% marketshare, followed by SAP (12.1%), Oracle (9.1%), Microsoft (6.2%), and IBM (3.8%).
Salesforce.com does not target any specific customer segment and retains a diversified customer base. Its "Group" and "Professional" editions suffice for small and midsize organizations, while "Enterprise" and "Unlimited" editions can meet the needs of large organizations and multinational enterprises.
Salesforce faces steep competition in all market segments. For enterprise customers, it competes with Oracle, Microsoft, and SAP. At the midrange it faces Sage CRM, GoldMine, and RightNow. In the small-business market Salesforce goes head-to-head with Zoho, Nimble, Highrise, Insight.ly, and more.

Target Industry Segments Salesforce.com specializes in specific industry verticals, including financial services, healthcare, life sciences, communications, retail, media, government, manufacturing, automotive, higher education, and nonprofit. Competing vendors have similar target industries, including NetSuite's SuiteApp.com, SAP's CRM Systems, and Microsoft's Dynamics. That reality puts the squeeze on Salesforce.com in all industry segments. Other midrange vendors also have a few common target industries. For instance, SugarCRM is inclined towards business services, consumer goods and retail, financial services, insurance, government, nonprofit, healthcare, manufacturing, travel and leisure, technology, and transportation. Sage CRM (through its partner networks) and Zoho cover similar verticals, but do not have as much breadth as the industry-leading CRM players.

Target Industry Segments

Salesforce.com specializes in specific industry verticals, including financial services, healthcare, life sciences, communications, retail, media, government, manufacturing, automotive, higher education, and nonprofit.
Competing vendors have similar target industries, including NetSuite's SuiteApp.com, SAP's CRM Systems, and Microsoft's Dynamics. That reality puts the squeeze on Salesforce.com in all industry segments.
Other midrange vendors also have a few common target industries. For instance, SugarCRM is inclined towards business services, consumer goods and retail, financial services, insurance, government, nonprofit, healthcare, manufacturing, travel and leisure, technology, and transportation. Sage CRM (through its partner networks) and Zoho cover similar verticals, but do not have as much breadth as the industry-leading CRM players.

Reporting And Analysis Salesforce.com offers customizable reports and dashboards that empower sales managers and executives with instant access to real-time data and analysis. Support for multiple ready-to-use analysis scenarios, such as sales pipeline analysis, win-loss analysis, and historical trend analysis, is backed up with real-time views of sales data, enabling managers to instantly access the information they need to complete a sales and marketing report. A few advanced features such as territory management and predictive forecasts help in preparing estimates based on revenues, quantities, or geographies. Microsoft Dynamics CRM is backed by the rigid SQL Server Reporting Services engine for report generation. SAP CRM has interactive reporting capabilities, which enable users to perform ad-hoc analysis in real time. Oracle CRM provides the ability to generate reports without much need for technical knowledge. (Image: Salesforce.com)

Reporting And Analysis

Salesforce.com offers customizable reports and dashboards that empower sales managers and executives with instant access to real-time data and analysis. Support for multiple ready-to-use analysis scenarios, such as sales pipeline analysis, win-loss analysis, and historical trend analysis, is backed up with real-time views of sales data, enabling managers to instantly access the information they need to complete a sales and marketing report. A few advanced features such as territory management and predictive forecasts help in preparing estimates based on revenues, quantities, or geographies.
Microsoft Dynamics CRM is backed by the rigid SQL Server Reporting Services engine for report generation. SAP CRM has interactive reporting capabilities, which enable users to perform ad-hoc analysis in real time. Oracle CRM provides the ability to generate reports without much need for technical knowledge.


Mobile Salesforce offers robust mobile CRM capabilities with its easy-to-use Salesforce1 mobile app and Chatter real-time collaboration app. Support for iPhone, Android, Windows, and BlackBerry makes it an easy-to-adopt solution for any major mobile platform. The latest release of touch.salesforce.com, designed specifically for touch screen smartphones and tablets, has built-in support for HTML 5. Microsoft Dynamics CRM recently added to its existing support for Windows and Android mobile devices with its first iPhone and iPad products, and also has solution partners, including CWR Mobility and Resco, that have built add-on mobile products. SAP also offers a wide range of mobile apps, including Sales Pipeline Simulator, Customer Briefing, Sales Diary, Account Intelligence, and Social Contact Intelligence, for better sales efficiency. Most other modern CRM apps, like SugarCRM and Zoho CRM, also have mobile capabilities. (Image: Salesforce.com)

Mobile

Salesforce offers robust mobile CRM capabilities with its easy-to-use Salesforce1 mobile app and Chatter real-time collaboration app. Support for iPhone, Android, Windows, and BlackBerry makes it an easy-to-adopt solution for any major mobile platform. The latest release of touch.salesforce.com, designed specifically for touch screen smartphones and tablets, has built-in support for HTML 5.
Microsoft Dynamics CRM recently added to its existing support for Windows and Android mobile devices with its first iPhone and iPad products, and also has solution partners, including CWR Mobility and Resco, that have built add-on mobile products. SAP also offers a wide range of mobile apps, including Sales Pipeline Simulator, Customer Briefing, Sales Diary, Account Intelligence, and Social Contact Intelligence, for better sales efficiency. Most other modern CRM apps, like SugarCRM and Zoho CRM, also have mobile capabilities.
- July 23, 2015