Microsoft Dynamics 365 Vs Zoho

The market for quality CRM tools is hotting up with a range of vendors looking to provide businesses with comprehensive solutions that will solve their customer management issues. With that said, not all products are created equal.

Dynamics Integrates With The Rest Of The Company’s Product Stack

Companies need tools that allow them to integrate all their touchpoints with customers into a single platform. Microsoft, therefore, is at a natural advantage here, given that it already dominates the productivity and email management markets. Dynamics connects with Outlook, PowerBI, PowerApps, and Excel to provide a comprehensive picture of a customer’s situation at any given snapshot in time. All employees working with a client can gain access to their data through the cloud, updating their CRM interfaces in real-time.

Dynamics 365 integrates with more third-party applications than Zoho (although this may change). The list is too long to report here, but highlights include Intuit, Zendesk, Quickbooks and Easker. Zoho does provide integration with email, projects and mobile apps with a vendor branded versions (such as Zoho email), but you may not want to make the switch from your existing apps.

What is Dynamics 365 and how will it benefit your business?

Dynamics 365 Advanced Find Querying Makes It Easy To Find And Save Data Fast

CRM users need tools that enable them to find and save data fast. Microsoft’s Advanced Find feature is one of the most sophisticated we’ve seen in the CRM space, using a mish-mash of traditional and AI-driven search algorithms. By comparison, Zoho’s features feel a little clunky. Zoho’s systems can also find it challenging to sense duplicate entries, necessitating more manual work.

Dynamics 365 Is Better For Businesses Operating At Scale

Microsoft’s strategy has been very much “up-down.” The company developed its CRM tool with enterprise applications in mind and has slowly been building out the user-friendliness of its systems.

Zoho took a different tack. It began from the bottom up, building out the user-friendliness of its API and then developing scalability as it went on.

For large companies, therefore, the choice is clear: Dynamics is the better option. While it offers a slimmed-down feature set compared to Zoho, it gives growing companies easy scalability for dozens, if not hundreds of users. Customers get access to Microsoft’s legions of full-stack developers for any help they need building out the tool at scale.

Want to find out more about Dynamics 365 for Customer Engagement?

Dynamics 365 Offers Easy Provisioning And Deployment

For businesses who need to implement new CRM systems fast, Dynamics 365 is a gift. Most firms find that they can start using the platform just a day or two after their license goes live.

Zoho Weaknesses

Zoho has some issues too that some firms will find problematic. Here’s a summary of where the solution requires improvement:

• There’s no way to mass update data on the CRM from spreadsheets without using the Zoho ID
• Zoho does not integrate well with some common platforms, including Hubspot
• The software does not automatically recognise and update fields if there is a duplicate entry

Verdict

As it stands right now, Microsoft Dynamics 365 is probably the smarter choice. While Zoho packs in the features, there’s no denying that Microsoft’s product is friendlier to enterprises operating at scale.

To find out more about Dynamics 365 for your business, get in touch.