Strengths and Weaknesses of Leading CRM Products

This article would give you a brief comparision of CRM products available.
Hope this is informative.

SAP CRM

Strengths
SAP CRM is stronger than Siebel in terms of tighter integration with its back-end ERP system. Tighter integration in sales, service and logistics is also an inherent strength of SAP CRM with SAP ERP. SAP has a deep knowledge of manufacturing and engineer industry verticals. In addition,SAP's BI application integrates seamlessly with SAP ERP and SAP CRM, while comprehensive reporting is almost out-of-box. SAP CRM also has the obvious strength when it comes to customers who are already running SAP shop.

Weaknesses
SAP has not made significant in roads into the non-SAP ERP customer base. SAP CRM customers are mostly clients who have the SAP ERP installed base. SAP also has to strengthen vertical industry solutions.

Siebel CRM

Strengths
Siebel CRM has the upper hand in the depth and breadth of their CRM applications. Siebel has a large install base of customers compared to SAP CRM. In addition, Siebel industry-specific applications are stronger than those by SAP CRM.

Weaknesses
Siebel does not have a traditional ERP product. The integration costs to back-end ERP systems are very high. However, this may no longer be a factor if Siebel demonstrates seamless integration with Oracle back-end applications.

Microsoft Dynamics CRM
Strengths

Provides accessibility for Microsoft Outlook clients.Integration with the Microsoft technology stack assets…Microsoft SharePoint for collaboration and content management, Microsoft Lync for Presence and Instant Messaging and Microsoft Visual Studio for extended customization.
Power View is an extension of Microsoft SharePoint Server ;contains good reporting capabilities, specifically data visualization and presentation.

Weaknesses

Relies on solution providers to furnish a complete solution (e.g., incentive compensation, sales configuration and pricing management); users need to do their own vetting of providers.Although Microsoft provides a native Outlook Client for Microsoft Dynamics CRM, for direct server-to-server integration, customers must use partner solutions for Microsoft Exchange Server to Microsoft Dynamics CRM server synchronization to handle tasks, calendar appointments and contacts.New Multidevice Mobile Solution is a cloud service only and has an incremental list price cost of $30 per user; if a sales organizations wants to have a multidevice solution on-premises, it will require a partner solution.

Salesforce CRM
Strengths

Offers a proven infrastructure and reliability.Continues to push innovation by increasing the breadth and capabilities available for social media technology, Chatter and mobile offerings, such as the iPad.Offers improved application agility, due to the ease of use of the Force.com platform, which is usable by technically sophisticated business analysts.

Weaknesses

Unlimited Edition is expensive.Social Enterprise License agreement represents an opportunity for customers who will experience large subscriber growth and leverage the entire salesforce.com suite; however, companies should be careful not to overbuy subscriptions and functionality they will not need.
Relies heavily on AppExchange vendors to provide a complete solution (e.g., lead management, incentive compensation, sales configuration and pricing management); users need to do their own analyses of AppExchange providers, and should not assume that salesforce.com has vetted them.

Now lets graphically analyze where these CRM stands in market with other Niche CRM's depending on the ability to execute and vision.

Graph:

Thanks for the read..

Satya Prakash

Article Source: Sufian Khan, employee of TCS