Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is essential for businesses to store prospect and customer data, monitor customer interactions, and provide this information to other stakeholders. This helps businesses to manage customers and relationships, enabling the organization to grow.

Microsoft Dynamics 365 and Salesforce are popular CRM platforms providing sales support and customer relationship monitoring, with features that make them the leading CRM platforms in the market.

Read ahead as we outline and compare various aspects of both the CRMs, to help you decide which one settles well with your business.

Features

Microsoft Dynamics 365

• With its Customer Voice feature, Dynamic 365 can get better insights into how its customers feel.
• Provides AI-driven insights to track customer trends and emerging markets.
• In the Field Service sector, Dynamics 365 is more advanced, developed, and well-integrated with the CRM.

Salesforce

• Provides territory management.
• Its Einstein AI is thought to be better than that built into Dynamics 365’s CRM.
• Its marketing features were created a lot earlier and are more advanced and well-adapted to the CRM landscape.

AI Capabilities

Microsoft Dynamics 365

• Gives sales predictions.
• Monitors customer needs and upcoming market trends.
• Gives relationship health updates enabling quick flagging of at-risk deals.
• Considers older sales interactions to propose talking points and the next best action.
• Provides contextual guidance throughout the sales cycle.

Salesforce

• Presents answers to all customer questions.
• Has highly developed AI learning algorithms to determine every company’s different selling habits and suggest improvements accordingly.
• Provides effective tactics and marketing strategies.

Pricing

Microsoft Dynamics 365

• You can either purchase a separate standalone app or license several apps to license these CRM solutions.
• While Dynamics 365’s pricing is available to all, you can negotiate a good deal with vendors who give discounts or custom pricing when licensing several products.
• This plan includes both CRM and ERP apps so users can access all the suite’s models. The Customer Engagement Plan includes CRM functions and not the primary ERP apps. Microsoft aligns Retail, an e-commerce app, with ERP, even though it classifies as CRM and ERP solutions. As a result, it is not included in the Customer Engagement Plan.

Salesforce

• If you are a business that wants to license multiple modules together, you can get personalized pricing after looking at it properly with the help of the vendor.
• The Salesforce price can be difficult to understand since there are many licensing levels, apps, and add-ons that you have to consider in potential costing with market-leading vendors who deal with several products.
• Salesforce doesn’t reveal its pricing details for Commerce Cloud or Marketing Cloud, but you can determine the tentative per-user prices from its other apps pricing models.

Microsoft Dynamics Pros And Cons

Pros

• It is accessible and cost-effective for small businesses since Dynamics 365 has a flexible licensing model and is competitively priced.
• It strives to provide 99.9% uptime with its Service Level Agreement which can only be requested and then negotiated in Salesforce.
• It has integration with Microsoft products like Outlook, Office 365, and Power BI. This synchronization of platforms enhances productivity, and the familiar Microsoft interface gives a highly positive user experience.

Cons

• Since it is a relatively new platform, some businesses are hesitant in investing in the product even with its growing popularity.
• While it can be customized, businesses can find the process challenging if they lack development knowledge. Furthermore, it supports little third-party integration as compared to Salesforce.

Salesforce Pros And Cons

Pros

• Salesforce’s AppExchange counts as one of the industry’s biggest B2B stores, allowing businesses to benefit more from the platform with several third-party integrations.
• It features powerful e-commerce facilities that will improve further with Salesforce acquirement of Demandware.
• Salesforces’ Pardot and Marketing Cloud are developed and ready for use, unlike Dynamics 365 that has to face some initial bumps.
• This platform is all about the customers, with in-house customer orientation management. Its education network, Trailhead, is one of its most recognized assets.

Cons

• Salesforce may seem pricier to smaller and mid-market companies as contractual obligations and costs rise.
• It is an individual CRM software, and to share data with more business software; you need connector installations. Furthermore, if you use several other software, the integration costs will rise.
• Its Field Service Lighting isn’t as satisfactory to all customers as compared to Dynamics’ field service management module, Field Service app.

Conclusion

CRM platforms strive to change the customer relationship landscape through features to support customers. Dynamics 365 and Salesforce are leading names in the industry, with primary differences in their purchasing models. Depending on your budget and the features your business requires, you can opt for the best CRM.

Head over to Definity First to see what makes Microsoft Dynamics 365 and Salesforce different from other CRM platforms in the market, providing greater functionality.