Competitive Analysis

IVK: Customer Relationship Management

TA6: Competitive Analysis

Contributors:

Jeremiah Clinchoc, Scott Sieber, Evan Fraundorfer, Jonathan Hanna, William D’Andrea

There are positives andnegatives that come with any software solution that a company selects.  Understand the difference between reliable software companies and disruptive innovation companies is crucial. If companies invest in a softwaresystem that is new, affordable, and attracts new customers, it is likely adisruptive innovation and is not thoroughly tested for security risks, etc. (Disruptive Innovation, 2012). Therefore, it is important for companies to do their due diligence when selecting between software and be sure to consider any substitutes to the software that they select.  If a company makes the wrong decision, it could be detrimental to their business.  It’s estimated that 80 percent of corporate tech spending goes toward data center maintenance. Cloud computing [solutions like Salesforce CRM] helps tackle these cost by allowing firms to run their own software on the hardware of the provider, paying only for services that are used.

(Gallaugher, 2017)  

Salesforce CRM has three main substitutes that companies could choose from:

1.     Microsoft Dynamics 365

2.     Pipedrive

3.     Freshsales

These software solutions can be compared to Salesforce CRM in the following ways:

COST

Image 1: Chart of price comparison for different  substitute software companies (Retrieved from https://www.g2crowd.com/compare/freshsales-vs-microsoft-dynamics-365-for-sales-formerly-dynamics-crm-vs-pipedrive-vs-salesforce-crm?category_id=179&company_segment=)

In an attempt to compare the software solutions, one package from each software was selected to be analyzed:

Salesforce top offering is the Lightning Unlimited package that is $300 per user per month which offers the following benefits:

·        Unlimited sales CRM power and support

·        Unlimited online training, over 100 admin services, and 24/7 toll-free support.  

·        Tailor Salesforce to fit your business by building unlimited custom apps and creating custom tabs and objects.

·        Multiple developments and testing locations.

(Salesforce, 2017)

Microsoft Dynamics most popular license is the Professional License that is $65 per user per month:

·        The standard Microsoft Dynamics CRM license that the majority of subscribers will find best suits their needs. The Professional License is the only license (besides Enterprise) that allows users to read and write to Opportunities, making it the best choice for sales professionals.

(Dynamic 365, 2017)

Pipedrives top offering is the Platinum package which is $75 per user per month, which offers the following benefits:

·        Full email sync

·        100 GB storage per user

·        Phone, live chat & email support

·        NEW - Customizable email templates

·        Advanced speed & reliability

·        Advanced user management

(Pipedrive, 2017)

Freshsales top offering is the Estate package that is $49 per user per month, which offers the following benefits:

·        Reports dashboards

·        Multiple sales pipeline

·        Advanced customization

·        Smart forms for web-to-lead capture

·        Website events tracking

·        In-app events tracking

·        Rules-based lead scoring

·        Segment integration

(Freshsales, 2017)

VALUE

Image 2: Ratings from users of software companies and the value they find in them for specific ratings. (Retrieved from  https://archive.sap.com/discussions/thread/3623085)

Salesforce

·        Providing services and products that are exactly what your customers want

·        Offering better customer service, cross-selling products more effectively, and helping sales staff close deals faster

·        Retaining existing customers and discovering new ones

·        Customer service agents can make more calls with reliable data from the CRM

·        Identify what marketing campaigns and events work and ones that don’t work

·        Business decision making improvement - targeting customer segments, price setting, and manufacturing/development changes

·        Users can put more focus on the data rather than the entity that manages the data

·        Salesforce CRM grows revenue, fully cloud-based, is customer focused, and offers a complete customer management solution

(Salesforce, 2017)

Image 3: Example of Salesforce value more information regarding terms can be found at http://help.pardot.com/customer/portal/articles/2127114-prospect-lifecycle-reportingMicrosoft

Dynamics 365

·        Suite of applications that include sales, customer service, field service, project service automation, and marketing

·        Dynamics’ CRM make the customer-facing functions of the business easier through the following ways: Centralize customer information, automate marketing interactions, provide business intelligence, facilitate communications, track sales opportunities, analyze data, and enable responsive customer service

·        Dynamics 365 unifies CRM and ERP capabilities into applications that work seamlessly together across sales, customer service, field service, operations, financials, marketing, and project service automation.

·        Built for your business, works with existing systems

·        Implement business process across silos

·        Start with what you need, expand at your own pace

(Dynamic 365, 2017)

Pipedrive

·        Pipeline visibility and activity based sales philosophy combine to make sure your sales team focuses on the actions that drive deals to close, while a refined system of checks, balances, and reminders ensures no deal falls through the cracks.

·        Email integration, easy import and export of data, and an open API means you always have the right data.

·        Set up in under 2 minutes

·        See all deals in a visual sales pipeline

·        Google Apps integration

·        With three pricing tiers and no hidden costs, you can manage your CRM budget reliably and accurately, while retaining the ability to scale up or down on short notice. We also charge per seat, not in user bands like some other CRMs, so you’re paying for exactly the amount of users you have.

(Pipedrive, 2017)

Freshsales

·        With Freshsales CRM, your team can now use AI-based lead scoring, built-in phone, email, activity capture and more.

·        Automatically capture your website visitors as sales leads and group them based on their engagement with your website. Assign them to the right salespeople on your team. Reach out to each lead with complete context and an informed call-to-action.

·        Access customers’ social profiles, identify customer touch points (website, product, interactions, appointments), and more—from a single screen.

·        Bid goodbye to manual data entry! When a lead is added to the sales CRM, their social profile information and photo are automatically updated in their profile.

·        Group your sales team by territories. Focus on areas where you’re closing more deals, and identify territories with potential business.

·        Schedule appointments with leads and customers; collaborate with your team on tasks. Make quick notes against each contact; manage and share files.

(Freshsales, 2017)

RISKS

Each CRM system is unique in cost and its proclaimed value. However, implementing a CRM system produces a certain amount of risk that isn't specific to one product. Before implementation, IVK will need to thoroughly plan and evaluate its business processes and workflow to ensure that they are properly defined across required system inputs. If IVK doesn't properly evaluate this alignment, their efforts can be bogged down during the integration process. Implementing a CRM system certainly requires a stable infrastructure, which needs to be thoroughly evaluated before choosing a vendor. Often times "phased approaches" are recommended to ensure there aren't system errors (CyberianSoft, 2017). If system errors were to occur, it could be extremely costly to reconcile.

As mentioned previously, these CRM systems are cloud-based and compile large amounts of customer data. Therefore, security and web dependency are also a concern. If a company becomes too dependent on a cloud-based system and the network goes down, there may be significant financial consequences, and customer satisfaction can also decline. However, research has proven that security breaches due to the cloud system utilization are not common. In fact, each company utilizes vulnerability scans, encrypted transmissions, multiple data centers, and implement user securities. The only published breaches for these companies were internal in nature. For instance, Microsoft Dynamics CRM has never had an outside breach. The last reported breach was an internal one, caused by users accessing a third-party developer website that was infected with Trojan (How, 2013). SalesForce is another system that fell victim to an internal breach. In 2007, an employee was targeted with a phishing scam, and that employee provided administrative credentials to the hackers (How, 2013). Implementing a CRM system does come with risk. However, most of the risk occurs with infrastructure integration and user access. All of these systems utilize the appropriate security approaches and protocols to keep information as secure as possible.

After analyzing the various substitutes, we believe that the two main systems to consider are Microsoft Dynamics and Salesforce.  Software Advice analyzed the two competitors by some different areas and can be found at https://www.softwareadvice.com/crm/salesforce-vs-microsoft-dynamics/.  All in all, we believe that after analyzing the costs, values, and risks of the various CRM software solutions, Salesforce remains the best option for companies to choose.  

          

References

CRM Risks and Benefits. (2017). CyberianSoft. Retrieved November 19, 2017, from http://cyberiansoft.com/CrmRisksBenefits.aspx

Disruptive Innovation Explained (2012, March 6). Retrieved from [Video File] https://hbr.org/2012/03/disruptive-innovation-explaine

Dynamic 365 (2017) Retrieved November 16, 2017, from https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/dynamics365/first-look

Freshsales (2017). Retrieved November 18, 2017, from https://www.freshworks.com/freshsales-crm/

Gallaugher, J. (2016). Information systems: a manager’s guide to harnessing technology [5.0]. Retrieved October 07, 2017, from https://scholar.flatworldknowledge.com

How Secure Is Cloud CRM Data? (2013, December 12). Retrieved November 21, 2017, from https://www.crmswitch.com/crm-security/crm-data-security/

Pipe drive (2017). Retrieved November 19, 2017, from https://www.pipedrive.com/en/plans

Prospect Lifecycle Reporting (2016, Jul 25). Retrieved November 20, 2017, from http://help.pardot.com/customer/portal/articles/2127114-prospect-lifecycle-reporting

Salesforce (2017). Retrieved November 15, 2017, from https://www.salesforce.com/