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Fabric IT have been helping businesses across the UK with all their Microsoft Dynamics implementations and IT support for over…
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Which CRM package, Microsoft Dynamics 365 or Salesforce?
Salesforce describes itself as the world’s number one customer relationship management platform. The fact that it is purely CRM immediately differentiates it from Microsoft Dynamics 365, which is a comprehensive business solution.
Need CRM or more?
So if you're looking for whole business solution, integrating a diversity of data across the totality of the business, this contest is over before it started. Microsoft Dynamics 365 is the only one of the two you can choose. What if you require a pure CRM solution? That's when things become interesting, because the two products are widely perceived to be evenly matched. Both provide a single integrated platform for all data connected with a company's customers and prospects, encompassing sales, customer service and business analysis.
Customer-centred
The Salesforce sales pitch says that it "brings together all your customer information, enabling you to build a customer-centred business from marketing to sales, customer service and business analysis, providing a more complete understanding of your customers to drive business success". Exactly the same claims can be made for Dynamics 365 as a CRM solution. Both Dynamics 365 and Salesforce give customers the option to select the functionality they need between sales, marketing, and customer service. The core offering in Salesforce provides sales automation. The standard offering in Dynamics 365 provides not only sales automation, but also automated case management, basic marketing and customer service.
Apps on the up
On the other hand, the Salesforce App Exchange offers more than 3,000 apps. Microsoft's App Source offers far fewer, although the number is growing. To identify trends and track key performance metrics, both CRM solutions analyse data and provide valuable insights. Dynamics 365 offers business intelligence via robust analytics, real-time dashboards, inline data visualisation and flexible reports. Salesforce recently updated its analytics engine to provide improved reports, charts, and dashboards. Perhaps the biggest difference between Dynamics 365 and Salesforce is that Salesforce was designed and built for the cloud, and is in fact the leading cloud CRM. Dynamics 365 allows the flexibility to choose between cloud, on-premise or hosted solutions.
The Microsoft premium
Of course the perennial advantage of Dynamics 365 is its ease of integration with existing Microsoft applications. Dynamics 365 and all the popular Office 365 productivity tools, Excel, Outlook, OneNote, PowerPoint, SharePoint, Skype, Word, and Yammer, work seamlessly together. Best of all Dynamics 365 turns Microsoft Outlook into a one-stop-shop for managing customer information, email messaging and scheduling. In fact the Dynamics 365 interface can be accessed within Outlook, so users can perform all CRM activities without leaving their email application. As Microsoft Gold Partners, we at Fabric are perfectly placed to help you benefit from the synergy between Dynamics 365 and other Microsoft applications.