Salesforce Vs. The Competition: A CRM Primer

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 leads worldwide 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.

[Cover image: NorthernStock/iStockphoto]

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Salesforce CRM is closely integrated with Microsoft Outlook, Word, and Excel, so workers don't have to toggle between the Salesforce and Microsoft productivity applications and email tools. Besides integration with popular social networking portals like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and YouTube, Salesforce also comes with Chatter and Radian6, which enable better productivity and insights across social channels.

Microsoft demonstrates social capabilities with integrated social listening, social analytics, and social engagement, while Oracle offers Social Media Connector for Siebel CRM. LinkedIn Connected, although not renowned as a popular CRM tool, offers the best social media integration.

Salesforce.com automation and CRM products can be procured on a per-user subscription basis and are billed annually, which is more or less similar to the cloud-based offerings from all other vendors. Starting at $25 per user per month (for the Group edition), Salesforce.com licenses rise as high as $250 per user per month (for the Unlimited edition).

In terms of revenue growth, from 2013 to 2014 Salesforce grew the fastest among all the primary CRM competitors, with a pace of 28.2% growth in worldwide revenue, followed by Microsoft (21.7%), other companies (11.5%), IBM (10.2%), SAP (7.2%), and Oracle (2.6%).

By default, every Salesforce.com customer gets the Standard Success Plan for online support with any subscription package. That plan includes self-service resources, online problem reporting, and a two-business-day response. The company also offers additional support options for accelerated response through Premium Support Plans (suitable for high-end customers) and Mission Critical Plans (for enterprise customers).

Oracle offers CRM On-Demand to help customers resolve critical issues. That service includes 24x7 access to an online portal and toll-free phone support. Microsoft offers Knowledge Base and community forums, along with Web and phone support options. SAP has a dedicated help portal for its SAP CRM.

Salesforce.com offerings are popular CRM solutions for cloud users, but for an online or a hybrid cloud scenario, users likely will need to consider alternative solutions.

Additionally, Salesforce.com offers ample customization capabilities to adapt to any possible business requirements, but for enterprise-wide, fully integrated ERP and CRM software, alternatives like SAP might be a better solution.

All in all, Salesforce's innovation and simplicity have already earned it a majority share in the CRM solution business. In fact, according to Gartner's Magic Quadrant for Sales Force Automation, Salesforce leads the market both in terms of having a sound future vision and the ability to execute and fulfill the promises it makes to its customers.

Salesforce.com offerings are popular CRM solutions for cloud users, but for an online or a hybrid cloud scenario, users likely will need to consider alternative solutions.

Additionally, Salesforce.com offers ample customization capabilities to adapt to any possible business requirements, but for enterprise-wide, fully integrated ERP and CRM software, alternatives like SAP might be a better solution.

All in all, Salesforce's innovation and simplicity have already earned it a majority share in the CRM solution business. In fact, according to Gartner's Magic Quadrant for Sales Force Automation, Salesforce leads the market both in terms of having a sound future vision and the ability to execute and fulfill the promises it makes to its customers.