 Customer Relationship Management Showdown: Microsoft Dynamics CRM vs. SageCRM vs. Oncontact CRM
Hi, I’m Larry Blitz, editor of Technology Evaluation Centers’ (TEC) Vendor Showdown series. Today's Showdown pits three leading customer relationship management (CRM) vendors’ solutions against each other in a head-to-head contest: Microsoft Dynamics CRM vs. Oncontact CRM vs. SageCRM. We hope you find this Vendor Showdown helpful and informative, and we invite your comments and questions at showdown@technologyevaluation.com. |
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| Introduction |
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Given that sales and customer retention are the lifeblood of any organization, we thought we’d take a closer look at three of the leading mid-market CRM solutions. Two of them, Microsoft Dynamics CRM and SageCRM, come from large, integrated vendors, while the third, Oncontact CRM, comes from a smaller, best-of-breed vendor that offers CRM solutions only. Sage's CRM solution comes in both hosted (SageCRM.com) and non-hosted configurations. | |
For this Showdown, we looked at all three of the main CRM modules: sales force automation, marketing automation, and customer service and support. To eliminate any chance of bias and to ensure a level playing field, all the criteria that make up these three modules in our CRM Evaluation Center were given equal weight and priority. In other words, no area of functionality was treated as being more important than any other. All results were based on the most recent request for information (RFI) data supplied to us by the three vendors.
The chart below shows the overall rankings.
CRM Vendor Overall Rankings
Results
As you can see in the chart above, straight out of the box, Microsoft Dynamics CRM ranked first overall, with Oncontact CRM coming in second, and SageCRM/SageCRM.com placing third. Overall scores were based on the average level of support the vendors offer across all three main CRM modules.
However, as with most aspects of enterprise software, it's not that simple or clear-cut. As the chart below shows, each of the three vendors had a first-place finish in one of the main modules.
CRM Main Module Rankings
What, then, do the overall rankings suggest? In the broadest sense, if your organization is largely sales force–driven, Microsoft, the overall winner, may indeed be the best solution to look at. But if marketing initiatives and programs are the key drivers to your organization’s success, then Sage, finishing second in the overall rankings, may be the better choice. If your organization requires a solution that is strongest in customer service and support, Oncontact, taking third place overall, may be the best of the three for your needs.
It must be pointed out, though, that rankings, whether overall or by module, do not tell you everything you need to know. What they do provide is a basic, high-level view of the general strengths and weaknesses of vendors' solutions right out of the box. However, the fact is that few businesses, if any, can use a CRM solution right out of the box. Every business has special requirements and priorities that need to be supported by any CRM solution it uses.
Even within individual modules, the top-ranked vendor may not necessarily be the right one for your organization's needs. For example, Microsoft was the overall winner in Sales Force Automation, but as you can see in the chart below, each of the other two vendors placed first in one of two Sales Force Automation submodules. Specifically, Oncontact finished first in Opportunity Management, and Sage ranked first in Sales Forecasting Management.
CRM Opportunity and Sales Forecasting Management Rankings
Conclusion
Given that “out of the box” rankings rarely, if ever, reflect the real-world needs of an organization, and that the rankings can shift depending on what area(s) of functionality you look at, how then do you determine which CRM solution is best suited for your business?
The fastest, simplest way is to do what we did to produce the results you see here: use TEC's CRM Evaluation Center. We got our results in 20 minutes, versus weeks—or even months—of struggling with huge spreadsheets.
TEC's CRM evaluation center allows you to set priorities that reflect your organization's business model and special needs at every level of functionality. At the modular and submodular levels—even down to the individual criteria—you can tell the system which business processes are critical, important, or not important to your organization. The system then compares your priorities against the vendor responses to produce a shortlist of solutions. You get a custom comparison—one that ranks vendor solutions not on out-of-the-box functionality, but rather on how well that functionality matches the business requirements of your organization.
It's the best way we know of to evaluate CRM solutions, and we invite you to give it a run-through. Simply click on the link below to visit our CRM Evaluation Center to conduct your fast, free custom CRM comparison. After all, there's no other organization quite like yours.
For a free custom comparison of CRM solutions, click below. Find out which CRM solutions are best suited to your company's particular requirements and type of business.