Why Salesforce Users defect to NetSuite - The Top 5 Reasons why Salesforce.com Users defect to NetSuite

Reason 1 - Salesforce.com Lacks Key Sales Management Features

• The sales rep cannot create estimates or quotes within the system
• The sales rep cannot create sales orders within the system
• There is no workflow to get managerial approvals for quotes, discounts, etc.
• There is no ability to manage multiple quotes or forecasts
• The system cannot manage volume discounts or pricing schedules
• There are no pre-configured dashboards for business intelligence. In Salesforce.com, users have to create them themselves.
• There is no automated support for cross-selling and up-selling.
• Incentive management (commissions) can only be accommodated through a third party, bolted-on product, adding expense and complexity.
• There is no complete audit trail nor system notes showing all changes made to customer records. Salesforce.com shows only the most recent change.
• Forecast vs. actual reports are unreliable. Salesforce.com does not automatically update actual results when quotes are revised. The sales rep must remember to do it manually.

Reason 2 - Forrester Research Ranks NetSuite Higher in Core Sales Force Automation Categories

NetSuite scored highest overall on Sales Management in Forrester Research’s latest Hosted Sales Force Automation (SFA) Tech Rankings – higher than Salesforce.com. NetSuite scored higher than Salesforce.com on:

• Sales Management
• Functional Breadth
• Dashboards
• Opportunity Management
• Lead Assignment
• Forecasting
• Quota Management
• Quote Generation
• Quote-To-Order Capabilities
• Discount Management
• Customer and Partner Portals
• Sales User Scenario
• Off Line Client
• User Interface
• Look and Feel
• Pricing and Product
• Document Management
• Search Capabilities
• Deployment Options

Reason 3 - Salesforce.com’s “Bolt-Together” Approach Is Much More Expensive & Cumbersome Than an Integrated CRM Solution

As a silo CRM solution with no back office functionality of its own, Salesforce.com forces companies to either leave their CRM system disconnected from accounting/back office applications or try to glue separate applications together.

Salesforce.com integrations with accounting/ERP don’t work well...

• Integration is complex. It’s only simple in marketing collateral. Buyer beware.
• Integration is limited. You can’t see all the back-office information you want. You can’t create consolidated, cross-application reports. Process integration isn’t seamless.
• Integration and maintenance are expensive. Initial costs can be high. And when software changes, re-integration may be required with each new release.
• When integration connectors break — who are you going to call?
• The fact is that only a very small fraction of Salesforce.com customers have integrated Salesforce.com with their accounting/ERP application – even though the vast majority of businesses say they want this kind of integration. We estimate the number is well below 5%. Bottom line, if these accounting integrations worked well, the majority of Salesforce.com customers would use them.

With NetSuite CRM+, you don’t need to integrate with your accounting application to get a true 360° view. Order management is built in, so you can see all the back-office information you need, including full transaction detail. And when you use NetSuite for both CRM and accounting, you can have 100% seamless integration out-of-the-box.

To fill the gaps and extend functionality of its silo CRM solution, Salesforce.com heralds AppExchange as the solution to its shortcomings. Again, buyer beware:

• Many of the core functions that you would expect in a CRM solution are added “bolt-on's” in Salesforce.com. Everyday functions that sales people need to accomplish – like placing orders – require gluing together disparate applications.
• AppExchange offers only simple features and gadgets. For example, AppExchange doesn't’t offer a complete accounting solution. You do not want to get creative with accounting, so don’t try to cobble together an accounting solution.
• Each additional application requires evaluation, purchase, and implementation. In addition to your Salesforce.com seat licenses, you have to pay AppExchange partners extra for what comes standard in NetSuite. Each add-on requires evaluation…and licensing…and implementation…and support…and renewal. This approach to software ownership is overly complicated.
• There is no automated upgrade mechanism for AppExchange software. When that 3rd party upgrades their functionality, they won’t update your account. You will have to de-install and reinstall any new revisions of the gadgets available.
• You can’t manage end-to-end business processes with AppExchange. AppExchange add-ons only provide point-to-point connections. You can’t manage order to cash, order to fulfillment, shipment to tracking, returns, or issue to resolution because these processes rely on back office data.

Reason 4 - Salesforce.com Is Less Customizable than NetSuite

Both Salesforce.com and NetSuite allow easy addition of new fields, forms, and database tables. However, there are many other more significant areas that require customization for a business. It is imperative that customers avoid being locked into business processes that do not support their business models.

• NetSuite provides role-based Dashboards that are more productive to users than those of Salesforce.com. NetSuite’s real-time Dashboards come with 15 prepackaged roles, point-and-click content selection, and unique drag-and-drop layout capabilities, giving each employee within your company access to just the right information and tools. Salesforce.com’s dashboards have limited visibility, aren’t role-based, and are locked down thus preventing personalization and limiting productivity of users. Salesforce.com has a tab called “dashboard” that is solely a page of drill-able graphical reports. It basically refreshes reports created through “saved search.” It is not the home destination page for the user, and has nothing beyond graphics from saved searches. The Salesforce.com dashboards have to be created from scratch. The administrator has to create all the item areas on the Salesforce.com dashboard. Any customization or even simple personalization can only be done with permission.
• NetSuite provides customization of business processes with the SuiteScript toolkit. There is no similar capability in Salesforce.com. SuiteScript, a toolset that supports business process customization, lets customers run their businesses the way they want to, by allowing them to customize their business processes to meet their particular needs. Built on industry standard JavaScript, SuiteScript provides customization of even the most complex processes. And, critical to businesses, SuiteScript customizations are automatically maintained when the application is upgraded.
• NetSuite includes all custom fields, forms, and tables in search criteria. Salesforce.com custom tables are invisible to search and reporting tools thus blinding you to critical data and limiting access for business intelligence.

Reason 5 - As a “Silo” Application for CRM, Salesforce.com Cannot Run Your Whole Business

To be effective, a CRM system can’t stand alone from a company’s key business processes and systems. A business is managed as a network of business processes: lead to order, order to cash, order to delivery, issue to resolution, and many more — with accounting as the backbone throughout. Unlike Salesforce.com, NetSuite has been built from the ground up as a process-centric suite of applications to run the core of any business: customer relationship management, back office accounting and operations, and ecommerce.

• Salesforce.com does not support a 360° view of the customer. Because sales and service reps can’t see invoices, order status, package tracking, etc., and have no visibility into ecommerce transactions, Salesforce.com gives you far less than a 360° view of the customer. NetSuite provides a true 360° view of all customer data and customer interactions across sales, marketing and support…throughout the back office and online with complete visibility into ecommerce. All this in one system, out-of-the-box.
• Salesforce.com has major shortcomings for companies that sell products. Salesforce.com is severely limited for product companies. It fails to provide reps with inventory visibility/available-to-promise, discount management, volume pricing, order commitment, sales tax and landed cost, order status, backorders, shipment tracking, returns management, issue management, or upsell/cross-sell automation. NetSuite, with seamless back-office integration, provides real-time visibility and end-to-end business processes critical to product companies.
• Salesforce.com has major drawbacks for companies that sell services. Salesforce.com fails to provide core functionality for service companies: project assignment, project status, time tracking, issue management, project staffing, billing and account management. Without a service history, Salesforce.com lacks information critical to the lifeblood of services companies: selling additional services. NetSuite manages the entire client relationship lifecycle from campaign through service delivery. This is critical for service-providing companies because the true relationship with the customer begins after the deal is closed.
• Salesforce.com lacks back office functionality. Because Salesforce.com has no accounting, inventory management, or order fulfillment functionality, Salesforce.com cannot run your entire business. NetSuite includes complete back office functionality without the need to integrate with any other applications.
• Salesforce.com lacks ecommerce functionality. The internet has become customers’ channel of choice — so that true 360° view of the customer must also extend online. Salesforce.com does not provide website or web store functionality. Over 2,000 companies run their web store or website on NetSuite.

To summarise, NetSuite has the edge in that it...

• Provides a true 360 degree view of all customer data and customer interactions, including complete visibility into all financial transactions and website interactions without any integration required. Now a single view of customer information is available to everyone in your company who needs it.
• Allows you to sell to both prospects and current customers equally effectively. Other CRM solutions focus on managing prospects, and do not have enough integrated information or tools to manage and upsell existing customers.
• Automates the entire customer lifecycle, from a "suspect" browsing a business' Web site, to an interested lead, to a qualified prospect, to a customer who has actually placed an order, to servicing that customer and finally, to guiding that customer to re-purchase.
• Allows salespeople to take real orders from customers, with an integrated Order Management system.
• Shows full purchase histories for your customers without requiring complex integrations with your accounting/ERP system.
• Includes powerful, automatic upsell and cross-sell capabilities, helping you to help you sell more—and more effectively—to your existing customers.
• Includes complete Partner Relationship Management. Now you can treat your channel partners as an extension of your direct sales team—seamlessly.
• Tracks commissions automatically and accurately, without requiring you or your salespeople to use spreadsheets.
• Fully encompasses the Web and e-mail marketing into the CRM solution. NetSuite CRM+ incorporates your Web site into the selling process, by tracking all customer interactions on the Web and by providing a comprehensive self-service customer portal.
• Provides better, more accurate forecasts. Because booked orders can be finally seen in forecasts, your forecasts have greatly increased reliability, predictability and accuracy. And the "actuals" information in forecast vs. actual reports is now based on real sales data.
• Shows you true marketing effectiveness and ROI. Because other CRM systems do not capture the details of what a customer has purchased, they frequently provide incomplete and incorrect results for marketing and sales campaigns. With no record of what or how much has been ordered by each customer, marketing has no way to know if the leads generated are actually converting to customers.