Microsoft Dynamics vs. SalesForce.com

I have migrated a number of clients out of Microsoft Dynamics CRM (MS CRM) and into SalesForce.com (SFDC), but never bothered to explore MS CRM beyond the export CSVs. I was happily surprised with what I discovered in exploring the on-demand CRM offering from Microsoft. Recently I was asked by a long-time client whether his new business would be better off going with SFDC again or switching to MS CRM. All I could say was that I'd moved people out of the latter, which is a pretty meager advice offering from a consultant, so I decided to dive deeper and come up with a better answer, for him and for others.

The similarities between MS CRM and SalesForce are extensive. Both allow the creation of custom fields and custom objects. Both have role based security, though MS CRM combines what are two separate identities (roles and profiles) into one. (You get the access defined by your job position, not as a separate decision about what you should have permission to do given your company's security decisions.) In both you can also create new roles/profiles by cloning existing ones then customizing. Both have web-to-lead (WTL) forms, mobile access on PDAs, campaigns, and a host of other features. In short, they fulfill a lot of the same business functionality.

Where things change is with the basic approach and robustness of the on-demand offering. Unlike SFDC's open API allowing integration with back office systems and any webs services from within the UI (using Apex code and triggers, classes, visualforce pages, etc.) customization of MS CRM beyond the basics (new fields and objects) requires on-site server hosting, and .NET developer - which is fine for companies that want to keep an internal IT department running servers, but not quite as easy for companies wanting an on-demand solution that can be integrated with other systems. MS CRM is therefore primarily an on-premise based product, although there are vendors who will customize and host it for you.

That said, the robustness within the Microsoft hosted MS CRM system does not remotely compare to that within SFDC in terms of processing speed. I couldn't believe how long it took to run a simple "off-the shelf" report of all Open Opportunities (of which there were only 7). It was literally over 3 minutes (the time at which I decided to get up and make a sandwich, returning to find it finally finished). Similarly, checking for duplicates as the first step in the process of converting a Lead (best practice) is impractical. That is because MS CRM considers checking for duplicates to be too burdensome a request on the system to be done in real-time, so instead it is done as a background process and you are sent an email when it is done.

Another significant difference between the two is on price. If one compares SFDC's Professional Edition ($65/user/month) to MS CRM ($44-59/user/month), the prices are fairly equivalent. But to get workflow and the open API with SFDC you have to go to Enterprise Edition ($125/user/month). That's a degree of difference worth some compromise on quality, but how much? Well here are additional pluses and minuses of each to help you with your evaluation.

Other pluses I found with MS CRM were as follows:

• A familiar Outlook interface is available, though not required
  
• Can be on-demand online option or hosted on internal servers
• Ability to selectively decide some behaviors of master-detail relationship between objects, such as cascade deleting the child with the parent or not and cascade ownership transfer of child record when parent is reassigned 1) only for active users or 2) for all users or 3) for just records owned by the current user or 4) not at all.
• Can export reports as PDFs, web archives, XML files, and TIFF images, as well as SFDC's standard CSV and XLS exports.
• Includes some duplicate detection beyond exact name matches (which can easily be achieved within SFDC by running a name grouped report that counts the number of times a specific name is used for any object's records), but does not work when synching Outlook created Contacts/Accounts with the online version (for records created by the synch). Can select any field and look for an exact match or a match of the first or last X number of characters.
• I liked the Articles templates for creating how-to articles for system usage (or for that matter, any business rules). It is pretty simple (click here to type in this info like in MS Word templates), but a nice feature. Wish they could have been set to show in specific locations like reports (with Accounts for articles on Accounts, etc.). Is sort of like SFDC's Answers feature (one of the 3 templates is for Q&A) but without the interactive feedback functionality where any employee can try to provide an answer. These are more like a static MS Word template integrated into the CRM for quick creation of system how-to pages.
• Ability to easily create many-to-many table structure without having to manually create the tertiary "linking" object was nice.
  
• Loved that workflow could create new records (complete with dynamically assigned fields, like the related Account filled in for a new Case record created) and cascading workflow (trigger evaluation of the next workflow rule as part of the workflow action of the first), as well as SFDC's create task, send email, and update field values. No sending of outbound messages to other systems, but most small to mid-size businesses don't use that feature anyway.
• There is tighter integration with other Microsoft products, so if you are deep in MS Office, you may find it easier to work in MS CRM than SFDC. That said, SFDC does have Outlook, MS Word, and MS Excel plug-ins that allow mail merge, calendar synch, email upload, task synch, and Excel reporting between MS Office and SFDC. It's just not as tight as Microsoft integrates with its own products. (Prelude: Microsoft won't even allow you to access a trial of their system without using one of their email addresses and their browser. Talk about proprietary.)
• You get more storage with MS CRM on-demand than with SFDC
  

Beyond what has already been mentioned, significant drawbacks to MS CRM usage include:

• Email templates had to be specified by object to be able to access merge fields from those objects. The selection "Global," which I presumed would return all objects' fields, actually only allowed access to the User object. Choosing Contact got access to Contact and Account fields, but I couldn't find any way to get all fields from all objects available within one email template.
• Some expected features standard within SFDC are extra $$ add-ins with MS CRM, such as global search of all objects instead of one at a time.
• I could not see a list of related Opportunities/Contacts on Campaigns. I could clearly see campaigns entered on test Opp records, but when clicking on the linked Opp record, no data was found showing the Opp I had just come from, nor any other Opp record that referenced that campaign. The linkage is there, because Campaign reports calculate ROI, but you don't get the related lists showing the linkage on the actual campaign record.
  
• No auto-assignment rules for web-to-lead (WTL). All WTL leads are put in a sort of queue, where presumably anyone can navigate and select a Lead to assign to themselves or someone else. Only then will the Lead appear in general Leads lists. So if you aren't specifically looking for new WTL leads, you won't know there are any. Still, I liked that the WTL form offers a choice of form code you host on your own website or an online page they host on their site, and also the ability to store up to 10 different landing pages (form code or hosted full page), whereas SFDC provides you the code without the ability to store it within the system for later retrieval or minor edits.
• While I could find information on converting several Leads at once (create marketing list then convert the list), it took me until a subsequent review of Dynamics 2011 to figure out how to convert a single lead (by qualifying it). I couldn't figure out how to convert a single Lead, nor find any documentation on that method. As far as I can see, you have to create a marketing list for lead conversions, save the lead(s) you want to convert into that lists, activate the list, navigate to the Marketing Lists Members section of that list, then select the Leads you want to convert. Wow. Nice to have the option of converting several at once, but would be awfully nice to have the flexibility of simply choosing a Lead and converting it with a click or two. Also, to change the Lead status to "disqualified" or otherwise "lost" you go through the same process as converting a Lead, just choose a different option in the final screen. So no changing a simple picklist field to "disqualified." Moreover, the button to show the newly created records after conversion would not allow me to select it, and there was no option of customizing an Opportunity name. Compare with Lead conversion in SFDC, which allows you to customize the Opportunity name while creating it, attach the new Contact to an existing Account or create a new one, optionally create a follow-up task within the conversion screen, and be delivered directly to the newly created/appended Account record upon completion, where you can easily see within related lists the new Contact and Opportunity records you just created and edit them further to complete fields unique to those records.
• Maybe I'm missing something, but I could not find a way to view records in their entirety without editing them. There is the ability to expand the listing for any record when you are on the View for that object, but you only see a few fields. To see all the fields, sections, and related lists (tabs within MS CRM) you have to double-click on the item, which takes you into edit, not view mode. That is a data integrity nightmare just waiting to happen.
• Downtime/Service windows are Tues/Thurs 6pm-10pm PT instead of weekend late nights. I'm still working those hours!
  
• On-demand users are forced to use Internet Explorer as their web browser. Additionally, when I tried to sign up for an MS-CRM trial with my business email address, I encountered a "page not found error." Had to use a personal hotmail/live account to sign up for the trial, which was not at all desired. SalesForce Free Trial sign up accepts any browser and any email address. Beyond sign up, you can always use any browser with SFDC but not with MS CRM.
  
• Although the familiar look of Outlook will be a plus to some, sometimes change is good. The SFDC user interface is easier to read and navigate.
• There is extremely limited customization of mobile integration. Basically you can choose which objects dump data to your phone, but not which records are kept synched or which fields on those records show on your PDA. SFDC's online documentation says you can't change those things within the free mobile app, but you actually can. I've done it plenty of times. But in MS CRM the options simply do not exist in the platform.
• No self-service portal or public knowledge-base for customers
• No customizable forecasting
• No Contact Roles or Partner Roles for reciprocal relationships
• No custom buttons and links (integrate GoogleMaps into Contact records by address, find Hoover's profile with a single click, etc.)
• No Content, requiring purchase of separate SharePoint data storage hosting.
• No free 100 platform licenses for access to custom objects
  
• I could go on, but I think you get the picture.
  

Both CRMs have a sales ecosystem for the purchase of extensions of the base product -- AppExchange and Pinpoint -- though the SFDC one is much richer. There are half as many apps on Pinpoint as on the AppExchange, and it seems like a third of those that are there are actually listings for consulting services starting around $70k (for systems hosted by the MS Dynamics partner company instead of being hosted on MS servers). The variety of offerings is likely to expand in the coming years, as MS goes after more of the CRM market and more vendors decide to play. But right now you get a lot less choice with MS CRM.

The way in which you get set up with the two CRMs seems a little different. With SFDC there is a large ecosystem of consultants who will customize your implementation primarily within the UI, often with some integration of apps and Apex to other systems. With MS CRM the platform hosted by Microsoft won't accept any coding like Apex, which therefore requires either an internally hosted solution or one hosted by Microsoft certified consultants. These consultants are much more expensive than SFDC consultants because their certification requires certification with Microsoft's server technology, as well as the CRM product. So with MS CRM you are likely to do configuration within the UI in-house instead of using a consultant, simply because it makes no sense to pay for server expertise when you don't need any server configuration. In fact, I couldn't even find any MS CRM consultants listing configuration service within the UI that did not include CRM hosting on their servers. While some SFDC users decide to do in-house configuration, the low cost of using a SFDC consultant to get a launch that conforms with best practices and that effectively maps your business process to the technology (in the thousands instead of tens of thousands) makes the use of an implementation consultant a feasible option.

In the end I found the MS CRM system to be the only viable alternative to SFDC out there, but I would still recommend SFDC to anyone who can afford it, especially with Chatter coming out in a few months -- SFDC's Facebook/Twitter like system of automated newsfeeds of any system events you choose to stay updated on -- specific changes to Opp records, status updates by employees on what they are working on, newly uploaded documents, etc., which can often take the place of the need to set up workflow, making Professional Edition the right option for many businesses. SalesForce.com is definitely the best-of-class, but at a price. If the price is too high to get all your users into the CRM who really need to be there, and if you are already using a lot of Microsoft products, Microsoft Dynamics CRM is worth a look.

(Special Note for Non-profits: This review applies solely to the use of the two CRMs within a business environment. If it were a comparison for non-profit editions the clear recommendation by far would have to be SFDC. Non-profits can read a discussion of MS CRM's newest offering here Microsoft CRM Dynamics Webinar today. An excerpt from one of the most detailed comments left in this thread: "First of all, I chose the SaaS option and did not choose to install it on my Outlook client (obviously that would wreak havoc with my Outlook). That said, it still crashed, no kidding. It kept timing out trying to install the NP features and I had to start over a couple of times. Then it appeared to be installed, but wasn't complete, so I shut down my browser, restarted, re-logged in and found the installation complete. What a PITA. Even in the cloud MSFT likes to crash."

You can read the full thread for more particulars, but the concern I normally have with Microsoft products was confirmed by just this statement. Add to that the fact that their non-profit offering is not donated (free) the way SFDC's is, and basically you are paying more to get a lot less. My advice to Non-profits is, stick with the free product that works.)

5/11/10 Update: I heard from someone that they were able to use a non Live/Hotmail email address to sign up for an MS CRM trial. So maybe there was just a glitch on the Microsoft website when I was trying to sign up using my company email address. I used Explorer 8 and their site says it requires Explorer 6 or above, so it shouldn't have been a browser conflict. Yet three tries returned page not found errors, at which time I gave up and tried a live.com email address, which worked on the first try. I wouldn't be at all surprised to find that with a Microsoft product the same behaviors sometimes produce a different response, so if you want a trial of the product, try the email you really want to use on your first attempt, and maybe it will work for you.

1/12/11 Update: See the review of MS Dynamics 2011 vs. salesforce.com for an updated comparison of the two CRM systems