No doubt about it, there are a lot of CRM solutions available on the market today, and an increasing number of cloud-based CRMs are also becoming available. So how do you decide if the Bamboo Cloud with hosted SharePoint is the best option for your business?
First, think about what will make for a successful CRM implementation; collaboration, customization and value come to mind. Is your tool going to let your team collaborate smoothly and in real time? Can it be easily customized to ensure quick acceptance and maximum adoption? How quickly can you start using the CRM, and what type of resources does it take to scale? What kind of value will you get from your CRM? What features come built-in, what can be paid for, and how much time and effort will it take your team to implement?
We have answered these questions before in several different blog posts:
The importance of Customization and
Creating Collaboration Sites with BambooCRM and Bamboo Support are two good examples. In the coming weeks, we will give you a rundown on how the Bamboo Cloud features compare to some of the other solutions you may be considering.
Salesforce.com is the first CRM solution we will discuss. One of the key features that sets the Bamboo Cloud apart from Salesforce is that it is built on a hosted SharePoint environment. If you are unfamiliar with SharePoint, the value of this important differentiator may not be clear initially. First, Microsoft SharePoint is an industry leader in collaboration software that encourages teams to improve communication, document management, and more. SharePoint has traditionally been an on-premises solution, but hosted SharePoint applications on the cloud have recently been introduced. Through the hosted SharePoint features offered by BambooCRM and BambooSupport, your business gains the ability to create custom collaborative websites geared towards your specific need, such as a regional sales team and product- and document-specific spaces.
What's more, these sites can be customized by your team within minutes. In fact, standard features like Lead Source, Campaign Type and even Sales funnels can all be easily customized, and it doesn't take consultation with your IT department or ours to do so. Customization, like everything else with the Bamboo Cloud, is intuitive. Take your business rules and tailor the BambooCRM and BambooSupport settings to match them. Even better, there is no multi-level subscription price point to gain access to this customization.
With Salesforce, while collaboration tools are available, with some of the basics being available for free, they can't match the depth of the collaboration offered by SharePoint to Sales and Support teams alike. Imagine your product support or customer service teams traveling easily back and forth between Sales and Support histories, providing better, more accurate customer service, up-selling products and flagging issues for Sales teams as they come up. With the Bamboo Cloud CRM & Support bundle, your team can document a customer's experience, giving the next team member who interacts with that customer an advantage. Previous customer questions, concerns and cases are documented and all of this information becomes part of a database that every employee can access. This kind of information can be an invaluable tool in growing your business.
Additionally, your team can share the most up-to-date versions of customer or product documents in real time. This information can live on the cloud in a custom site created to store documents specific to that group so all team members can access them as needed. Distributed teams can use the wiki sites tool to create a brainstorm in cyberspace, and members can conjure up new sales ideas and opportunities, anywhere, anytime.
In reviewing Salesforce's subscription structure, it is immediately obvious that what Salesforce considers their "complete" CRM is currently priced three times that of BambooCRM's full featured solution. Salesforce's "most popular" edition is four times that of BambooCRM. And, if you take a quick look at their product support offerings, you see the starting price point is three times that of Bamboo Support. This adds up to some pretty steep monthly subscriptions; especially if you begin to customize the solution via AppExchange add-ons.
Compare this to BambooCRM and BambooSupport. These highly customizable applications work seamlessly together. They are really easy for an end user to understand and work in, and require no additional fees or drain on IT to implement. The hosted SharePoint features are available to every subscriber, regardless of how many subscriptions he or she purchases.
At $39.99 for the full-featured BambooCRM and BambooSupport bundle, it is clear that dollar for dollar, the Bamboo Cloud will give you the best value and most innovative technology. This translates to greater sales and better customer service, and in the end the competitive advantage gained here means increased profitability.
One last feature we'll highlight that BambooCRM and BambooSupport offer is free consultation with one of our tech specialists when you sign up for BambooCRM and Bamboo Support. We'll help you make sure you maximize the potential of your new software solutions, answer your questions, and ensure that you're getting the most out of your CRM and Support, and the most value for your dollar.
Stay tuned in the coming weeks as we continue this comparison series. Questions about the Bamboo Cloud? Email us at cloudapplications@bamboosolutions.com or follow us on Twitter @BambooCloud. You can also find us on Facebook at BambooCloud Applications. We'd love to discuss our products with you. Or, if you'd like to start your 15-day free trial, visit bamboosolutions.com.
Posted
Mar 29 2011, 04:45 PM
by
Marc O'Brien