Microsoft Solutions Partner Implementation and Consultation Services- Alpyne 365

The Best CRM

What’s the best CRM?

That was one of the first things we searched for, ourselves, when we took our first step towards the big, bright world of the Dynamics platform. What is the best CRM? It should be so simple to answer that question. But you typically find a three-tier offering at the end of an ad-laden article with syndicate links for a little kickback, all but ensuring you’re not getting an honest answer.

Let’s cut the nonsense from the equation — it really shouldn’t be this hard to find “real” information on the subject. We’ve worked with multiple CRM systems and here’s the things we tend to see. We’ll try working on our bias, but the truth is, any option, is a step forward. The only difference is if you want to take tip-toe steps or big, giant moon boot leaps forward. Skip ahead:

Your Key Consideration

The critical piece that will likely make the decision for you is the answer to a three-part question. “What systems are you currently using, do you want to keep using them, and do they need to be integrated into your CRM?” The reason this is such a critical piece is because some business systems don’t necessarily play nice with some CRMs. Either by their design or if there’s a conflicting interest between who owns the platform.

For a quick aside, Dynamics 365 Sales, Microsoft’s CRM solution, has been built to work with just about any cloud-based business system. It can be natively integrated with other Microsoft systems but through their Power Automate and API calls. To be unhelpful, “API” stands for Application Programming Interface. To be helpful, all this means is it’s a process in which two computers/servers exchange data. In our experience, most cloud-based business systems have this functionality ready to tap into. Since your ERP should be the Source System of Record, we would pop on over to Power Automate, create automated processes that make the API call to the business system, map & grab the data, then send it to Dynamics for your team to make use of. Oof, quite the “aside” right? This is really just to illustrate the flexibility that platform provides you with. There are no shortage of “connectors” you’ll find online, as well. There’s nothing inherently wrong with these, they do certainly shorten the time to implement, but they are a recurring expense so, long-term, they’re often not recommended.

Each of the top CRM systems have their strengths, and inevitable weaknesses. Depending on your experience with one or more of these in the past, they are “the best!” or they are “the worst!” Which could be considered fair assessment, from a certain point of view, if you look at it through the lense of that specific experience. Have you ever been to a restaurant and thought “wow, they nailed every piece of this experience.” only to go to a different restaurant next time where they totally fell flat on their face every step of the way? What happened? They’ve got similar tools at their disposal. Same mission, more or less. Now let’s say that those restaurants get bought out and have a new management team put into place and the experiences swap. Now the first sucks and the second rocks. What is going on here?!? The people. That’s what’s going on. Thoughtful care put into each facet of the business. Ensuring processes are in place to take out the guesswork. Automated timers to make the food perfectly prepared every single time. Every piece promising a happy customer who will come back and tell their friends and family to do the same. The list goes on and on, but I’m hungry now so that’s enough of that. The fact is, in this sloppy metaphor of a CRM being like a restaurant, when you craft a solution like a CRM, the thoughtful planning and execution are what’s critical to get nailed down from the start.

“Okay.. so, wow, that’s a lot of words to say without having answered a thing,” I hear you mutter. And you’re right! But it’s all about setting the stage. Like a restaurant, you must choose the right business systems for you. That’s the “problem” with CRM systems and the age-old question of which is best. They mostly all look great from the surface. Shiny branding, fun visuals, limitless possibilities — they’re quite good at their presentation but none of those things really inform you on which is the best choice for you. So you take the next step.

Trying to Understand

A CRM can also be looked at like a build-your-own house kit. A beautiful home can be built, but so can a shack. It all depends on your care of attention and the quality of the people you choose to work with. Either way, it all starts with a conversation.

At this point in the process, one of three things happen. One, you’ve already got a gut feeling or referral. Lucky. Two, you saw your options, said, “nope, I’m not reading all of this,” and filled out a contact form or called a number. Or three (and my typical process), you’ve gleaned about as much as you can from your search results, blog posts, & videos on YouTube. You’ve also probably about reached your limit trying to understand the overwhelming amount of information that’s blasted you in the eyeballs up ’til now.

Regardless of your personal proclivity towards one side of the torture spectrum to the other, you end up in the same place; having to talk to a third-party vendor. Not always our favorite thing, but in this case, absolutely necessary. So you take the next step and reach out.

We won’t judge or name names here, but each platform/vendor has some of the following strategies in place to attempt to gain your business. Just be aware. You and yours are #1 after all.

  • Sell, Sell, Sell Approach
    • Initial love-bombing you with friendly faces, excitement, smiles, and previews of a system with all the bells and whistles.
    • When you ask questions, they tend to provide a weak answer only to redirect the conversation to sign, sign, sign the contract.
    • When you say you need some time to discuss this amongst yourselves, they’ll put some sort of time-sensitive nonsense in place to get you to sign, sign, sign the contract.
    • While you’re considering their offering, or perhaps also navigating alternative vendors you may go with, you’ll receive a disproportionate amount of emails and phone calls to “touch base” or to say how “I can only lock in this price for ‘X amount of time'” in order to push you to… sign, sign, sign the contract.
    • If you do sign, or don’t think to ask the questions earlier, you find out that at least half of what they showed you were add-on services and features that represent a significant increase in operating costs.
    • To this point, you also haven’t really gotten past the initial implementation discussion. What about maintenance? Enhancements?
    • Their outreach is all but dead at this point
    • This method, while often largely effective at the start, doesn’t foster a sense of trust.
  • Ghosting Approach
    • This is kinda like the bizarro world of the above approach where you will likely never hear a peep from them.
    • You may get an email here and there, but not much beyond that.
    • Contact intervals are significant and you feel truly on your own.
    • You pay for the package and do everything yourself. Or it’s open-source and you still do everything yourself
  • Full-Service Approach
    • This is our personal favorite, and one that we subscribe to.
    • They don’t start with the product. They start with you. Who are you? Why are you doing what you do? What are you working towards? How do you accomplish that? Who are you working with? What systems are you currently using? What are some frustrations you’re currently experiencing? What would make your life easier?
    • The win isn’t with the signing of the contract, it’s when they know you’ve taken a step in the right direction for you and your organization. Whether it was from asking the right combination of questions to help you think differently about a specific practice you’ve implemented, perhaps guide you in one aspect of your business or another, or really just mutually learned from each other — that’s how they win.
    • That is the initial approach. They wholeheartedly believe that they provide the best solution for you and certainly hope that by this point, they’ve earned a spot for your consideration.
    • You are shown the out-of-the-box CRM system in order to show you what it’d be like if you rolled this puppy out today, no fake bells and whistles to work through. Even with this preview, they know you’ll be pleased as each piece is worked through because, again, they know it’s the right system for you.
    • If you need time to think things through, you are absolutely welcome to do just that. They work with you to set expectations on outreach or schedule a future meeting, so as to align with your needs.
    • Depending on where you left things, you may also be provided with a recommended plan to consider.
    • When you do decide to move forward with them, you are greeted with enthusiasm, gratitude, and a clear statement of work plan moving forward, ensuring you’re able to work together to make the dream a reality.

    Explore Some Options

    We’ll dip into four options for your consideration. Dynamics 365 Sales, Microsoft 365, Salesforce, and an Open Source solution. The reason we’re going through those options is because this is what we have the most experience with.

    • Dynamics 365 Sales
      • Microsoft is a serious player in this space
      • A highly flexible platform
      • Extremely customizable to fit your specific needs
      • Fully integrated option for those already leveraging Microsoft technologies
      • Works with most non-Microsoft cloud-based business systems
      • Provides you with a mobile app and native Dynamics interface in Outlook
      • Infinitely scalable platform, ready for your bright future
      • Security features to protect your data
      • Extensive materials available online that is constantly updated and relevant
      • Very active support forums that contain brilliant people ready to help
      • Introduces the possibility to automate parts of your sales process
      • Depending on your team’s experience and how you designed the platform, there can be a steep learning curve
      • It can be dangerous, for easily-distracted people, having so much flexibility at your fingertips.
      • If you don’t carefully plan everything out from the beginning, it can be quite time-consuming to make changes later.
      • It can take some time to get used to some less-than-desirable backend interface changes that Microsoft rolls out.
      • It can be tricky to understand all the tools available to you because Microsoft provides so many.
    • Microsoft 365
      • The only reason we wanted to make mention of this is because, if you’re a small operation, it may not quite make sense to pull the trigger on a CRM quite yet.
      • Microsoft 365 has some incredible depth to it to the point that you can run much of a business through it.
      • You can abuse this platform to make it work but eventually:
      • You will outgrow this platform, from a CRM perspective, and it might actually slow your rate of growth.
    • Salesforce
      • Salesforce is a serious player in the tech space
      • A highly flexible platform
      • Extremely customizable to fit your specific needs
      • Provides you with a mobile app
      • Security features to protect your data
      • Extensive materials available online
      • Introduces the possibility to automate parts of your sales process
      • There can be a steep learning curve
      • If you don’t carefully plan everything out from the beginning, it can be quite time-consuming and very expensive to make changes later.
      • Very sales, sales, sales-centric and shareholder-focused organization, so be aware of the mentality when you ask for support
      • Extensive materials available online for support – but in our experience, they need to up their game to only display accurate and up-to-date information
      • It can be tricky to understand all the tools available to you and which ones you have to pay a lot more for
    • Open Source CRM
      • “Free” is always tempting, isn’t it?
      • Open source CRM’s provide you with a mostly independent solution to handle your CRM needs that, technically, has no upfront costs
      • There is often a major level of flexibility to the platform
      • You don’t have to worry about licensing
      • You’re responsible for securing your information
      • You don’t have any direct support
      • You must maintain and update the system
      • It can be quite the costly decision to go this route, long-term
      • Integration support is likely to be very spotty

      It can feel daunting, even looking through this list, on which is the right CRM for you. There’s a whole bunch of other CRM’s you could explore (e.g., Zoho, Hubspot, etc.) at your leisure. As we mentioned earlier, your current systems in use and what you wish to do with them are really key pieces to consider.

      Which should I choose?

      Frankly, most of this is based on “a feeling” at the beginning, unless you’ve already some past experience with a platform you liked. If your organization appears to align with the vendor, that’s a huge win from the start. If your systems are set to be integrated into your vendor’s CRM, even better (assuming you’re looking to keep them).

      If you’re already utilizing any of the Microsoft products (Microsoft 365, an older Office 365 platform, Windows), you have a creative mind on solving things, or love flexible automation you will really benefit in a big way from utilizing Dynamics 365. If you’re in the Google ecosystem, there’s still a large amount of support for integrating with Dynamics, there’s just the whole eternal arm wrestle between Google and Microsoft to contend with. You also have your pick of the litter with regards to developers in the Microsoft Partner Network.

      Microsoft 365 is an unbelievably flexible platform with a LOT of tools to make use of. If your operation is small enough, this is definitely a likely contender to hold you over until you can justify taking the next step. Between the likes of SharePoint, OneDrive, Excel, Microsoft Lists, coupled with Power Automate, you’ve got a lot of powerful tools at your disposal. To be fair, you’d need to build each tool from scratch, so that adds to development and maintenance costs over time.

      Our only issues with Salesforce is their business model and their incessant selling philosophy. It’s an impressive platform, no doubt, but also quite the money sink every step of the way. We haven’t had a positive experience (blech, really bad restaurant) with them and are wary to recommend them as that experience conflicts with our core values. We also recognize our business focuses on Microsoft products, but even prior to starting this company, we preached the same thing.

      We love any platform that empowers an organization so we understand the appeal of an open-source CRM platform. Our major concern with that is simply that it is a very short-sighted solution that will likely create more downstream problems, both logistic and financial.

      Conclusion

      Alpyne’s core mission is to help people and organizations succeed in their mission and execute their strategic vision through the use of Microsoft technologies — just with a more thoughtful approach. We truly believe they are the right answer for you, long-term. We can build something incredible that suits your organization, specifically, and is ready to scale as you grow. Contact us today and take the big, giant moon boot leap forward!