Four Cloud-Based CRM Solutions Compared

Today, CRM software has become essential for just about every organization, thanks to increasing competition, and more demanding customers. Without a proper CRM solution in place, it's extremly difficult to streamline customer management processes. How long for instance, does the sales head keep chasing its sales team to find out how many calls they've made in a day? How long do you keep 'waiting' for the most basic data to come in, like target achievement, top ten customers for different product lines, marcap situation, collections status, etc? In today's highly competitive world, you should be able to get this data when you need it, rather than waiting for the 'Excel' reports to come in!! So if you can relate yourself to this situation, then it's time you started to explore a good CRM solution. The good news is that it has become easier than ever to get your own CRM software, without much of a hassle, because it's available in the cloud via the SaaS (software as a service) model. So you don't have to worry about procuring hardware, software, or the setup. Everything is given to you out-of-the-box. You just have to concentrate on configuring it as per your requirement. Even more important than that is to choose the right one with the right features that suite your business needs. Most cloud based CRM solutions are available in multiple editions, giving you the flexibility to choose one that matches closest to your requirements. They're easier to customize, since they're in the cloud. They're easier to access because they're web-based and mobile friendly. They don't require any technical skills because the vendor will do it for you (for an additional fee, of course). All you have to do is choose the right one. Here, we've compared four of the most popular cloud based CRM solutions. What's more, we've given detailed comparison tables for features and pricing. These will help you understand what sort of features are available, and at what price points. There's something available for every business need, including a completely free edition for up to 5 users.

SugarCRM

This CRM solution has both commercial as well as Open Source flavors. It has a wide range of features like sales-force automation, marketing campaigns, Mobile CRM, Social CRM and reporting, which makes it suitable for companies of all sizes. It provides integrated management of corporate information on contacts and accounts, sales leads and opportunities, plus activities such as phone calls, online meetings and assignments. SugarCRM's Web-based forms make it easy to track new customers. It's main interface is quite neat and easy to use. There are one-touch tabs on the top of your screen to do various tasks, like create an account, contact, lead, opportunity, log a call, send email, schedule a meeting, create a task, connect with LotusLive meeting. Sugar Enterprise provides all features of a fully functional CRM. It also includes plug-ins for Microsoft Office, VoIP, customer portal and Lotus-Live. Sales people can work on lead queues individually, converting leads into opportunities with possible sales forecasts and follow-up targets. It provides sample data for trial versions, a healthy 60 GB storage with the enterprise version, and allows you to connect with different social networks. It also allows you to import and export records from your account. On the smartphone side, SugarCRM offers Sugar Mobile, a Web-based UI that runs in WebKit browsers for mobiles, like those found on iPhones and Android-powered devices, as well as a BlackBerry version and an iPad-optimized version. However, all paid versions require a minimum commitment of five users per month, and also a minimum bond of a year.

Bottomline: If you are ready to spend money then, on-demand SugarCRM completes all your needs offering user-friendly, multi-device features like integrated e-mail marketing and document sharing, making it a good choice.

SalesForce.com's Sales Cloud

Salesforce CRM, the most popular web-based on-demand application, is easy to use and offers the highest number of features as compared to others. The program connects nicely and automatically to Outlook, MS Office, two of the most popular business communication platforms. The Sales Opportunity Management console is complete with marketing, quotes, email, campaigns, web integrated search/share components, territory management and case management. Importantly, Salesforce offers a clean user interface, with full personalization and customization. Salesforce provides customizable solutions which are easy to deploy and use. Salesforce.com includes a sales and marketing automation tool which integrates sales and marketing functions to achieve better customer service. Salesforce.com has a powerful help and support backbone which is available to all users.

Bottomline: If you're looking for a comprehensive on-demand CRM tool that can streamline your sales and support processes, Salesforce.com is an excellent choice.

Zoho CRM

Prices vary by features, so refer to the price table for details

Zoho CRM is another CRM solution that can be considered by mid-sized enterprises. It manages your sales, marketing, customer support and inventory on a single system. Zoho CRM has offered a user-friendly interface, there are one-click tabs to create new leads, accounts, contacts, forecasts, sales orders, events and much more on the home screen. You can also see the overall records for these features. It allows you to import and export records in different formats as CSV, XLS and PDF. It provides built-in forecasts to create quarterly planning and tracking records. The home screen can be customized to classic view or you can add any component. We found reports and dashboard standards fair enough to view different components' pipeline structure, something that can also be customized. It allows you to do group chat, supports unlimited users, provides facility to merge with Zoho writer. Zoho CRM lacks in support for inbound e-mail, which means a user has to manually attach records to email them. Also unlike other CRM services, it does not provide sample data or accounts for trial.

It comes in three editions. The free edition offers hosted CRM for startups who need an immediate solution for tracking their daily sales activities. Professional Edition, priced at Rs 593/user/month offers a complete sales automation solution for small businesses with integrated marketing, support and inventory modules. The Enterprise Edition, priced at Rs 1236/user/month offers an enterprise-grade CRM for managing complex organizational hierarchy with individual user access control. Plus, Zoho CRM is a 'pay as you go' service which enables you to upgrade or downgrade the selected editions at any point in time. It also has a mobile edition through which you can create, edit or delete records in offline mode also and log phone calls for just Rs 148/user/month.

Bottomline: Zoho CRM is a good option for cost conscious users which gives them all the necessary features.

Plz note that for all cases, there are additional charges for implementation, training, data migration, etc.

vTiger CRM

vtiger CRM is an on-demand CRM solution meant for small and medium businesses. Targeting enterprises, this solution has a rich set of features and functions for them. With its user-friendly interface, the tool helps in enhancing productivity as everything can be done with just a few clicks. Its features include Lead Management, Opportunity Management, Account & Contact Management, and Reports & Dashboards specifically useful for an organization's sales team. The lead management feature helps in creating and converting leads. vtiger also allows you to capture leads from websites, based on the enterprise requirement customizing online lead forms, lead conversion mapping & more. It has a module-manager, which allows you to enable or disable each module according to your requirement. It allows you to connect your mail server with it and mail directly from the main homepage of vtiger CRM. You can simply edit/modify and do changes in settings just by clicking on tabs. You can also initiate chat simply through the main screen. On your home screen you can see your leads, invoices, activities, sales orders and much more. It has a good GUI reporting tool, which analyzes the data in the database and shows you the projections in graphs. For example, if you want to know account-wise sales, it will show you a bar chart with account-wise sales figures. The focus is not only limited to sales, it includes features such as market automation, analysis and reporting, accounting & more. This Web-based CRM helps enterprises in understanding their customers and internal processes through a proper work flow. The vtiger CRM On Demand enables clients, partners, resellers, and system integrators to change, extend, or customize an individual CRM instance. You can directly send email which is an advanced feature. It allows you to see user login history. However, it lacks import and export of records.

Bottomline: vtiger is best suited for the cost conscious SMEs with all the necessary features included, except the import and export facility.

Conclusion

If spending money is not a problem then one can select either SugarCRM or Salesforce CRM, since both give feature enriched services for customer relationship management. But if you are looking for a cost saving cloud-based CRM solution then you must go for vtiger CRM which gives a perfect platform to your sales team for managing customer relations. You could even go for the free edition of Zoho CRM, if all you want to do is contact management and are ok with the 5 user limit.