The Startup and Small Business CRM Buyer s Guide. How to make the right decision for your company

Transcription

1 The Startup and Small Business CRM Buyer s Guide How to make the right decision for your company Version 2013

2 Authors: Adrian Mott Ben Smith Bedrock Data, Inc. Adrian Mott is a co-founder of Bedrock Data, and has been a consultant and developer in the business automation space for 10+ years. Adrian has implemented CRM, marketing and integration applications at companies of all sizes. Ben Smith is a co-founder of Bedrock Data, and is former director of operations at HubSpot, Inc. where he oversaw a huge deployment of Salesforce.com. Ben has worked with many CRMs and brings unique perspective to the industry.

3 TABLE OF CONTENTS: Highrise Capsule CRM Batchbook Pipedrive Close.io Zoho The only source of competitive advantage is the one that can survive technology-fueled digital disruption an obsession with understanding, delighting, connecting with, and serving customers. This means effectively managing the four key areas of customer relationship management (CRM) - William Band, Forrester Research

4 How We Rate Applications There are 8 specific metrics that we re going to use to rate the different CRM s in this e-book, defined below: 1. Customization: Does the system let you create custom fields and objects? If so, are all the field types that you may need supported? Everyone needs the almighty lead object, but after you ve successfully implemented the standard system objects, what else can you create to represent your business? 2. Automation: Automation refers specifically to lead assignment and workflow rules. We ll review these capabilities in each system and give you 3. Bonus Customizations: Other customizations that may be available to you in the system s core functionality, including custom coding, to-do lists, dropboxes, etc 4. Mobile: Short review of available mobile applications that exist for the system, developed by the company themselves or by a third party. Focused on ios and Android application only. 5. Marketplace and Add-ons: Integrations can often be the make or break factor for choosing a system to roll out automated data transfer is key to saving time and money. We ll look at how well each system has done to find integration partners to date. 6. Pricing, Editions and Scalability: We ll review the pricing and editions that the system offers, including the flexibility you get and the pros and cons of certain editions the system offers. 7. Best Features: What are the best features of this system, how do they work and what can they do for your team? 8. Overall: Bottom line: how good of a system is this for your business and should you go through with the purchase of this CRM system?

5 Highrise CRM 37 Signals, LLC Highrise is a CRM offering geared for small teams, due to it s simple functionality and design. If you re aren t familiar with the company who makes Highrise: 37 Signals, they re the same folks who wrote the popular project management software Basecamp and also the popular web programming framework Ruby on Rails. It s simple design and limited functionality make it great for the right team, but not great for larger sales organizations who need room to grow. Customization: Fields: Highrise does give you the capability to create custom fields in the system, though the fields that can create can only be of one type: text. There is no way to create fields with other types like dropdowns, picklists or checkboxes. Objects: Highrise s standard data objects: Contacts, Deals, Tasks and Cases accentuate the simplicity of the system. There isn t a way to create custom objects, and that s exactly the way things were meant to be designed. The spirit of Highrise is simplicity, and thus should probably be considered more of a contact management application with sales tools than a fully featured CRM.

6 Automation: Workflows: No workflow automation functionality exists. Lead Assignment: Highrise doesn t have any automated lead assignment rules, but does allow you to tag contacts and then search and view contacts with these tags. Other than that, there is no concept of a lead owner in the system, so therefore lead assignment rules are a moot point. Bonus Features and Customizations: Dropbox: Highrise has a dropbox feature that enables integration from your client (no relationship to the Dropbox backup product). This feature enables you to send s to a dedicated address linked to your Highrise account. Any contact included on an will automatically get that message appended to their profile in Highrise, or a new contact will get created if that contact s address doesn t exist. There is also dedicated addresses to create tasks in Highrise by sending an the task will be named by the subject line in your . Mobile: ios: Highrise has a native iphone app in the app store. At the time of this writing, the app had a 3/5 star rating and many bad reviews complaining about limited functionality in the app. The biggest insult about the ios app is that you can t interact fully with all of your data that you have in Highrise. You can only access Contacts and Tasks in the app, there is no way to access Deals at all, which is frustrating. Android: N/A -- No Android app exists. Marketplace Add-Ons: Something that Highrise has a nice collection of is 3 rd party integrations and connectors to different systems out there. We haven t vetted many of these add-ons, but Highrise appears to link to a lot of other application home pages form their add-on links page. These applications do integrate with Highrise, but it s not entirely apparent how at first glance. Nice set of applications list here in any case.

7 Pricing, Editions and Scalability: The theme of Highrise is in its simplicity and usefulness for small teams. Thus, the notion of scaling Highrise with a growing team isn t recommended. A breakdown of the Highrise pricing reveals some interesting tidbits ( Free Plan (2 users, 250 max contacts): Free Basic Plan (6 users, 5,000 max contacts, 10 max deals): $24/month Solo Plan (1 user, 20,000 max contacts, unlimited deals): $29/month Plus Plan (15 users, 20,000 max contacts, unlimited deals): $49/month Premium Plan (40 users, 30,000 max contacts, unlimited deals): $99/month As you can see, even the highest, most expensive plan only gives you the ability to have 30,000 contacts in the system, making Highrise a systems for small companies and sales groups only. Best Features: The best feature of Highrise is its simple design and usability. The simple design goes beyond aesthetics also, the data objects that you get with Highrise: Contacts, Deals and Tasks represent the records that they actually are in real life, and that simplicity shouldn t be overlooked. You don t need a CRM admin to implement or use Highrise, and that alone is valuable. Overall: Highrise is a system meant for small teams and it s a generally nice product for teams of 5 users and under. It s easy to use and almost easier to administer. It s also easy to import/export your data from Highrise, making moving on and off the system a breeze. We recommend using Highrise if you re an independent consultant or have a team of 3-5 sales reps.

8 Capsule Zestia, Ltd. Capsule is a lean CRM system that is limited in functionality but allows for basic but essential contact management, along with opportunities and also cases for basic customer support. The system is very similar to Highrise and Pipedrive, with some added functionality built in such as the calendar application and the before mentioned case management. There are also some built-in integrations that you can get with Capsule, which are handy these include Zendesk, Wufoo and Freshbooks. Customization: Fields: You can create custom fields of various types in Capsule and also create separate fields on each object (people and organizations, cases and opportunities). Field types are basic: text, date, list, checkbox (multi-select) and link. Objects: While you can t create custom objects in Capsule, the standard objects that you really need are there: people, organizations, opportunities and cases. Opportunity Stages: Capsule let s you customize your opportunity stages in the system to define your own pipeline to track deals over time.

9 Automation: Workflows: No workflow automation functionality exists. Lead Assignment: Capsule doesn t let you assign records to user in the system, but you can tag people records and then view people by these tags. You can assign opportunities to users however, but none of this is automated, which is sort of frustrating. Bonus Features and Customizations: Lists: Perhaps the best part of the product Capsule lets you create lists of your contacts and opportunities, and then download them to Excel, bulk add tags or notes to each contact in that list or export them to MailChimp as a part of that integration. Sales Pipeline Customization and UI: Perhaps the biggest differentiator with Capsule is the nice Sales pipeline user interface that they provide to their users. It comes with an out of the box dashboard with a forecast report and a report based on opportunity stage. Dropbox: Essentially an identical feature to Highrise and Pipedrive here, this let s you CC a dedicated Capsule address from your client and that message will be automatically appended to that contact in Capsule. This makes it possible to get message data onto a person record in Capsule, but you have to remember to do this each time, which can be a pain with a team of sales reps. Mobile: ios: Capsule makes an ios app that is pretty functional, and essentially mimics the functionality of the web application. Android: No native Android app exists. Marketplace Add-Ons: One place where Capsule succeeds against its competition is in it s native integrations with some other popular web applications: Freshbooks Integration: Let s you sync contacts to/from Freshbooks. Also lets you view invoice and payment information from Freshbooks in Capsule. MailChimp Integration: Works in conjunction with the lists app in Capsule. Create a list and sync it to MailChimp as a mailing list in that system.

10 Pricing, Editions and Scalability: The pricing and editions for Capsule are minimal and easy to understand: Free Plan (2 users, 250 contacts, unlimited opportunities, no integrations): Free Professional Plan (50,000 contacts, unlimited opportunities, integrations included): $12/user/month It s that simple, no joke and no nonsense with Capsule s pricing. It also makes that edition decision easy for you in terms of which edition to go with. Best Features: Integrations: The best features of Capsule is the ability to create lists of contacts and sync them to MailChimp, as a part of the Professional edition of the CRM. Sales Pipeline Reporting: Another nice feature is the out of the box sales pipeline reports that you get out of the Capsule system. While the reporting functionality is somewhat limited, this report is at least something for sales to report on. There are some other nice bonus features of the system like case management, but these are limited and more geared for basic support queues and don t match up well to Zendesk feature wise, which at their lowest pricing level is very affordable. Overall: Capsule is a lean system, and that s consistent through out the model of their business, including their pricing. It s a good system for small groups, but lacks some of the functionality and usability that make systems like Pipedrive and Close.io awesome to use. It s for this reason that we d recommend you take a hard look at some of the other system on our list here before making your final decision. Bottom line: If you re looking to grow your business and sales team over time, you re probably going to have to move off of Capsule at some point to accommodate the needs of your team and your reps.

11 Batchbook Batchblue Software, LLC Batchbook is less of a fully baked CRM system and more of a social contact management application. It is meant to handle social interactions that your contacts have with your brand, as well as create to-do lists and track communication over time. There is no concept of a deal or opportunity in Batchbook, which speaks directly to target audience being for groups who don t have as much of a lead for sales tracking/reporting/management and more for contact management with regards to the relationships that you or your small company shares with your leads and contacts. Customization: Fields: Batchbook enables you to create custom fields and add values to them, but only on the people records in the system. A nice aspect of these custom fields in Batchbook is that you have the ability to organize your custom fields into sets that keep these fields organized (organization is a common theme here) Objects: Being a lead CRM tool, you can t create any custom objects, and the object that come out of the box are people, companies and to-do lists.

12 Automation: Workflows: No workflow automation functionality exists. Lead Assignment: There is no concept of a lead owner in Batchbook, but you can assign to-do list items to users in the system. No automation around this though. Bonus Features and Customizations: People/Company Lists: Batchbook lets you create lists in the system that encapsulate both people and companies, but it s not very easy or intuitive how this is done in the system. Another frustrating thing about the lists piece is that you can t actually drill down to the people in the list in the user interface you have to export to Excel or CSV to gain this insight. To-Do Lists: Batchbook does come with this useful feature that allows you to create to-do items, tag them, assign them to other users and attach them to contact records. Nice-to-have feature that aligns more with project management than CRM, but we re not complaining. Dropbox: Essentially an identical feature to Highrise and Pipedrive here, this let s you CC a dedicated Batchbook address from your client and that message will be automatically appended to that contact in Batchbook. Mobile: ios: Batchbook does have an ios app, but it has only 2/5 star review in the App Store, something that is pretty telling. Many of the reviews complain about frequent crashing of the app and lack of functionality. Also, it appears that you must have at least the small version of Batchbook to use the mobile app, as we couldn t even get the app to authenticate with the free version. Android: No native Android app exists. Marketplace Add-Ons: Batchbook has a collection of integrations that they list on their website, many of which are marketing and financial applications that allow you to sync people and lists to and from applications like MailChimp, Freshbooks, Xero and Quickbooks online. There are also a number of third party integration offerings like Bedrock Data.

13 Pricing, Editions and Scalability: The pricing and editions for Batchbook are fairly minimal and flexible: Free Plan (1 user, 200 contacts): Free Small Plan (Unlimited users, 2,000 contacts, 5 GB storage): $20/month Medium Plan (Unlimited users, 10,000 contacts, 15 GB storage): $50/month Large Plan (Unlimited users, 30,000 contacts, 30 GB storage): $100/month Contact and relationship management for small groups, it s really geared around solo entrepreneurs, creative folks and small stage startups, as 30K contacts is the max you can have on any plan. Also note that there is no phone support at this time, support only. Best Features: Social Media Lookups and Aggregation: Unique to Batchbook is the ability to pull social interactions into a contact or company profile. You can automatically look up a person or company Twitter/Facebook/LinkedIn profile and have their activity streaming right on the profile page in Batchbook. It s a big differentiator and an excellent feature for sales reps looking to engage in social media as a part of their sales process. Integrations: Batchbook, like Capsule has done a pretty good job with internal integrations, including some popular systems that small business certainly make the most of. Along with some other 3 rd party integrations that they list this is a strong point. Overall: Contact and relationship management for small groups: this is Batchbook in a nutshell, and it does a pretty good job with that. It s not a CRM in the same sense that some other systems are Batchbook is not geared for sales management and reporting, it s a contact management system with some nice other features. We d definitely recommend Batchbook for any artists, sole proprietorships, or small groups who want to share contacts. But if you re working deals in a sales process as a part of your day-to-day, then Batchbook is not for you.

14 Pipedrive Pipedrive, Inc. Pipedrive is a sales management tool that is built with the sales rep mentality in mind. It s built with modern technology, is fast and responsive and extremely useful for a sales organization who may be diversified or who has sales reps who can benefit from a visual representation of their funnel. Many modern CRM offerings that have hit the market in the last few years have had similar user experiences, gearing their UX around the sales pipeline, or lead/deal statuses, rather than the more traditional systems that aren t as UI/UX driven. Customization: Fields: With Pipedrive, you can create custom fields of various types, including text, multi-select, single option, dates, etc Fields are shared globally throughout the account; there is no way to prevent a user from seeing certain fields in the system currently. Pipedrive also give you the ability to create separate fields on each data object. Objects: Pipedrive has standard objects that represent the entities that they encapsulate very well: Contacts (People), Deals, Organizations and Activities. Everything is geared around the deals that you re working on, and Pipedrive s analytics module works around that data as well. There is no way to create custom objects within Pipedrive, but you can have multiple pipelines.

15 Automation: Workflows: No workflow automation functionality exists. Lead Assignment: Pipedrive does have the idea of leads assignment, but there doesn t appear to be automation around this at all. If you re integrated with a product or are using the Pipedrive API at all, then you would be able to do automated assignment through that, but not through the product today. Bonus Features and Customizations: Pipeline UI and Customization: Really the best feature about the platform is the ability to simply organize your potential deals in an intuitive way. This UI alone makes me want to use the product for our sales team. Google Integration: Pipedrive provides native integration with Google apps like Google Drive for backing up your Pipedrive files, Google Contacts for importing contacts and Google Calendar integration for syncing activities that you create in Pipedrive to your Google Calendar (extremely useful!). Dropbox: Essentially an identical feature to Highrise, this let s you CC a dedicated Pipedrive address from your client and that message will be automatically appended to that contact in Pipedrive. Mobile: ios: Great ios app in the app store, no ranking or rating to date however, which means not much engaged usage. Nice app though, essentially get all of the functionality of the web application and access to seemingly all objects. Android: No native Android app exists. Marketplace Add-Ons: No dedicated add-ons or integrations besides the Google integration mentioned above or from third parties. Perhaps it s something that Pipedrive will expand on in the future, but it s lacking now. The Pipedrive API is easily accessible however and very easy to code against.

16 Pricing, Editions and Scalability: There are a few pricing plans, which accentuate Pipedrive s target market: SMB s and smaller sales organizations. All editions are paid and break down as follows: Solo Plan (1 user, unlimited deals): $14/month Lite Plan (5 users, unlimited deals): $29/month Business Plan (12 users, unlimited deals): $59/month Business XL Plan (30 users, unlimited deals): $129/month Larger Plans (Call them ): $???/month As you can see, even the highest, most expensive plan they advertise only gives you the ability to have 30 users in the system, making Pipedrive a system for small companies and sales groups only. If your sales team is greater that 30 employees, then you want to consider another CRM. Best Features: The best feature if Pipedrive is its user interface, which is sleek, easy to use and learn and also incredibly useful. The deals pipeline in their system, which is simply a way to look at a list of your deals, categorized by stage and laid out side-by-side, seems simple but is incredibly helpful and intuitive. You can also drag and drop deals from one stage to the next, another plus. Overall: There is no doubt that Pipedrive, like Highrise, is a CRM for small groups and start-ups. It s inexpensive, fairly feature rich for a small company, and nicely designed. There s no doubt in my mind that Pipedrive is a nice system and we do recommend it for small teams that don t yet have a need for more automation in their systems. It s also great for teams that may work apart from each other, as it really caters to the independent sales professional who keeps track of their own sales funnel. We recommend using Pipedrive if you re building a team or have a team of under 15 sales reps.

17 Close.io Elastic, Inc. Close.io is a new CRM application that incorporates calls and call tracking along with more traditional CRM sales tools. This calling stuff I was skeptical about at first, but it s actually a really nice feature of the product and a huge differentiator for Close.io and the team at Elastic. The product also includes native Mac and Windows desktop apps, is nicely designed and the team provides fanatical support that is truly inspiring. Customization: Fields: Custom fields in Close.io are interesting in that you can create custom fields, but they are administered from the lead detail pages themselves, rather then from an admin area. Custom fields appear to be custom to their leads that you create them on also, meaning that if I create a custom field on one lead, it isn t accessible on any others. Also, custom fields are text only, but the fields remember their past values, creating a sort of dropdown field type. Objects: Close.io doesn t have the ability to create custom objects. The standard objects are basic but efficient: Lead (which is really a company), Contact (associated with leads), Opportunities (deals) and Tasks round out the platform.

18 Automation: Workflows: No workflow automation functionality exists. Lead Assignment: There isn t currently any lead owner functionality in Close.io, thus automated lead assignment isn t feasible at this time. Bonus Features and Customizations: Voice Integration (calling): This is the feature that makes Close.io. Through a native integration with call platform Plivo, Close.io s bonus feature is also it s best feature and biggest differentiator. It works by assigning you a dedicated number that you can then pop onto your website or in your signature. Close.io will then route any calls to your personal number right to the app on your desktop where you can chat with a lead from your laptop (oh, did we mention that there are native OSX and windows desktop apps?). You can also make calls out from the app to any lead, and the price of the voice integration is rolled into the cost of the system, which isn t cheap. Mobile: No mobile apps exist at this time. Marketplace Add-Ons: No dedicated add-ons or integrations besides the Plivo phone integration mentioned above or from third parties. Perhaps it s something that Close.io will expand on in the future, but it s lacking now. It should be mentioned that the Close.io API is easily accessible, and very easy to code against with it s RESTful layout and JSON data formatting. // Page 5

19 Pricing, Editions and Scalability: Close.io s pricing had us scratching our heads from a consumer perspective. At $59/month you don t get any calling stuff, so the product becomes very expensive for what it is. At $99 and $149, you get the calling functionality, but it also becomes very expensive very quickly. At these prices, I can put a new iphone in each of my sales reps hands and have them use Zoho and I ll still save money: Basic Plan (No phone features): $59/user/month Professional Plan (No int l calling, no call recording): $99/user/month Business Plan (Everything included): $149/user/month Because of the seat pricing and lack of resource limits in the product, Close.io is certainly scalable to a large sales team, but because of some lacking automation features, this isn t very practical for a team of more than 5-10 sales reps. Best Features: Hands down, the best feature of Close.io is the calling functionality and their native apps. The lead/contact/opportunity breakdown in Close.io is also interesting and rather unique, but there isn t a ton of value added here, and we found it actually less intuitive than more traditional CRM apps where leads are converted into contacts. Overall: Close.io is a young product, we get it. The product exudes the innovative, smart thinking that it s creators certainly can bring to the table, and launching with a native app for both Mac and Windows, as well as the web is an impressive move on their end. This certainly is a system to keep an eye on as they build out more reporting functionality (currently basically non-existent) and look to create mobile apps (which could be groundbreaking if executed well). We certainly recommend Close.io as a CRM and call tracking application, if you can afford it.

20 Zoho CRM Zoho, Inc. Zoho CRM is one of the many product offerings that Zoho has. The company has focused on building out a suite of software that includes office applications, reporting application and a fully baked CRM that rivals some of the top systems on the market today. It s been said that Zoho CRM is a decent alternative to Salesforce.com and from what we ve seen that statement is accurate. Customization: Fields: Zoho gives full ability to create any custom field, but does set limits to the amount of custom fields that you can create on certain levels of the product. In our instance, we re limited to 130 custom fields, which is probably more than enough, but should be noted anyhow. Objects: Zoho CRM includes the full set of standard CRM objects: leads, contacts, accounts and potentials (opportunities), as well as tasks, s and notes. There is no custom object creation in Zoho at this time. Layouts and Tabs: Love this feature about Zoho because it really sets it apart form some of the smaller CRMs and makes it feel like a more legit CRM system. Zoho lets you edit field layouts and create tabs for viewing your data.

21 Automation: Workflows: Zoho s Standard, Professional and Enterprise editions enable you to create workflows in the system for as little as $12/user/month. These are fairly standard workflow rules that you ll find in other systems like Sugar and Salesforce.com with triggers, alerts and actions. Certain advanced functionality like webhooks and field updates (as an action) are reserved for the Professional and Enterprise editions only. Lead Assignment: Automated lead assignment is a nice feature in Zoho, allowing you to create automated lead assignment rules based on specific criteria. This is a key part of sales automation: letting sales organizations organize their team members by territory, industry, buyer personna, company size, etc This is key feature for any CRM system to have to scale to a growing sales organization. Bonus Features and Customizations: Zoho Creator and Deluge Script: Zoho s answer to Salesforce.com s APEX scripting language and the ultimate customization feature for any CRM: the ability to write code (and in Zoho s case, drag and drop code blocks) directly against the object data within the system itself, letting you really create your own rules and automation for any Zoho data in the CRM. There are some prerequisites to using deluge script though: you have to have access to CRM Enterprise edition, plus another subscription to Zoho creator, but these run fairly cheap (minimum $25/month). Mobile: Zoho has a ios app that is useful but not awesome. Like many CRM mobile applications, you really lose a lot of the functionality that comes with screen real estate when going from a web app to a mobile app. You can obviously make instant calls to your leads through the mobile app, which is nice, but there isn t a whole lot of usefulness with Zoho s iphone app at this point. Marketplace Add-Ons: One of the only features that holds Zoho CRM back is their notoriously low API limits, which can get in the way of automation and integration for any add-ons. There are add-ons in the CRM, but they focus on other Zoho apps, which is sort of a cop out.

22 Pricing, Editions and Scalability: Zoho s pricing is affordable for the type of system that you get, which can go a long way for a moderately sized sales team: Free Plan (3 users, 5,000 record limit, 250 API calls/day): Free Standard Plan (100K record limit, 250 API calls/user/day): $12/user/month Professional Plan (Unlimited records, Automation, 250 API calls/user/day): $20/user/month Enterprise Plan (Unlimited records, Full Automation Suite, 500 API calls/user/day) Zoho is cheap enough that for many sales organizations considering it, the Enterprise package is probably the correct one for many sales teams. The pricing will also allow you to scale with the product, as will many of the features that you ll find in the Enterprise product. Best Features: The best features of Zoho are the amount of features themselves. It s fine to talk about software simplicity for many web and mobile applications today, but if you re a sales/marekting/it professional responsible for rolling out a CRM system that can increase sales efficiency and scale with your growing company, then there are certain automation features that you must have, and Zoho (thankfully) has them. Reporting is also a strength of Zoho s, giving you the ability to create nice customized reports that you can export, save and share with your team. Their reporting application is much like some other CRM s, letting your create and organize reports on the data within any object in the system. Overall: Zoho is hands down a great CRM (full disclosure: we re customers and we love it), that we d highly recommend. It s a fantastic alternative to Salesforce.com, especially around the customization and automation functionality. Save for not being able to create custom objects in Zoho, there isn t a lot that this CRM can t do.

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