CRM & Tech for The Small Business

One of the, shall we say, more “creatively aggresive” players in the CRM market has taken aim at Sage’s product offerings for some time now (why not go after the leader, right?), filling the ether with a great deal of mis-information and downright propaganda…  Here are Sage Software’s responses to some of those tall tales:

<Hosted Vendor> Claim: Access CRM data from any location on any device, specifically Blackberry and iPhone, for no additional cost.
Fact: Customers using the most popular editions of <Hosted Vendor> (Enterprise and Professional Editions) must pay an additional subscription of $50 per user per month to access and edit their CRM data through the <Hosted Vendor’s> mobile client.

<Hosted Vendor> claim: No more synchronization required.
Fact: Users access <Hosted Vendor> over the Internet, however, the product still relies on data synchronization for capabilities such as offline access, Outlook integration, mobile access and back office integration. Sage SalesLogix customers also benefit from the convenience of a web client, with features such as its drag-and-drop tabs, right-click menus throughout, smooth scrolling, and drag-and-drop file/email management ensure a rich user experience at all times.

<Hosted Vendor> claim: Access to a powerful and dynamically developed eco-system of over 70,000 companies using <Hosted Vendor>.
Fact: <Hosted Vendor> imposes strict limits on the number of custom applications that customers can add to their <Hosted Vendor> installation. Enterprise Edition customers are limited to a maximum of 10 AppExchange or custom applications, while Professional Edition users are limited to 5.

<Hosted Vendor> claim: No more infrastructure investment or reliance on internal systems.
Fact: Sage SalesLogix Cloud Edition enables customers to purchase and consume their CRM application as an on-demand service for a fixed monthly fee without the need for additional investment in infrastructure or IT resources.  ACT! can also be hosted.

<Hosted Vendor>: Dynamic security for much better record sharing and visibility.
Fact: <Hosted Vendor> does not provide field level security as standard across all editions of its product.

<Hosted Vendor> claim: Powerfully simple dashboards and reporting.
Fact: In most editions of <Hosted Vendor>, dashboards inherit the security privileges of the user that created them rather than the user viewing them. Therefore, in order to distribute a new dashboard to a group of users, a <Hosted CRM Vendor> administrator would have to manually create a new dashboard for each individual user in order to get around this weakness in the product.