About CRM Archives - Page 2 of 2

Will Microsoft take over Salesforce ?

By TechOneStop

Salesforce acquisition - Microsoft takes over

In our previous article (

Salesforce For Sale

), we told you that recently Bloomberg has published a report saying Salesforce has hired financial advisers to assess different takeover offers from potential buyers. Though Salesforce didn’t say anything on acquisition but if it happens, it will be the largest takeover in Software industry. Right now Salesforce has around $49 billion market value and it is also expected that shareholders would demand a premium over its stock price that the buyer needs to bear. This confirms one thing that the potential buyer needs an extraordinary deep pocket to afford the cost.

Several analysts have kept Oracle, Microsoft, Google, IBM and SAP as potential buyers list. But recently SAP has denied the idea of buying Salesforce. Spokesperson from SAP has confirmed that SAP has no intention to take over this cloud based CRM Company. Oracle Corporation also has showed disinterest in acquiring Salesforce. Safra Catz, one of Oracle’s two CEOs, has said that “If it’s acquired by someone else, it’s probably good for us.” IBM could be a potential buyer but the current market value of Salesforce.com is surely a big challenge for them. All these facts are supporting only one company and that is Microsoft.

Already Microsoft and Salesforce have an agreement to promote each other’s products. Also over the last few years, Microsoft has showed its interest in CRM and now by acquiring Salesforce, it could try to extend its presence in CRM business, mainly on cloud. Recently Marc Benioff, Salesforce’s CEO has offered a tweet that shows Microsoft and Salesforce, both are looking for closer relationship. Recently Microsoft’s CEO Satya Nadella told that the company aims of $20 billion annual revenue from cloud business by 2018 and Salesforce acquisition will definitely help to meet the target.

So…
SAP has already answered negative
Oracle has showed disinterest
IBM would not go for it because of high market value
and all other facts point to software giant Microsoft only

Till now neither Microsoft nor Salesforce has opened up their mouth but won’t get surprise if one fine morning you read ‘Microsoft has acquired Salesforce‘.

We are still waiting for more details, keep follow us for further updates.

***Latest update: It seems, Microsoft is also not interested to take over Salesforce because of its huge market value. We have to wait few more days for next story!

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<< Is Salesforce For Sale ?

Is Salesforce For Sale ?

By TechOneStop

Salesforce for Sale

– according to Bloomberg recent report. It is still not decided who is going to take over Salesforce but if it happens, this will be the largest accusation in the software industry.

Salesforce, the giant cloud based CRM software provider, was established by Marc Benioff in 1999 after a career in Oracle. According to Gartner, it has more that 16% CRM market share with stock market capitalization of almost $49 billion after an 11 percent surge on the news.

According to Bloomberg report, Salesforce has hired financial advisers to look at takeover offers. Though it is still not clear who will win the race but it seems, buyer list is not large – potential buyers are Microsoft, Google, Oracle, SAP (Germany), Tencent (China) or Softbank (Japan). But whoever is the buyer, it needs extraordinary deep pocket. Considering Salesforce’s growth, it is expected that shareholders would demand a premium over its stock price that the buyer has to afford.

According to Bloomberg, even if there is no extra cost, it will be the biggest deal in software business. In 2008, Microsoft tried to acquire Yahoo for close to $45 billion but it failed.

Though Benioff, Salesforce’s CEO, didn’t comment anything on potential buyers but it seems, he is more inclined to see Microsoft Salesforce deal. Recently he has offered a tweet that makes this rumor more strong.

Only time can tell us that Salesforce is really for Sale or just speculation. But if the deal is done, buyer will have biggest CRM market share over night.

If Salesforce is acquired by Oracle, will it see the same fate like Siebel? We will discuss this in our next article.

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Will Microsoft take over Salesforce >>

5 Best Cloud Based Free CRM Software For Small And Medium Business

By TechOneStop

5 Best Cloud Based Free CRM Software For Small And Medium Business

A company without CRM is like fish out of water – continuous growing competition, high customer attrition rate and frequent change in customers’ buying trends are most common challenges for an organization to sustain and grow further.
CRM is the only solution for an organization to nurture existing contacts properly and capture new customers. But it is really tough for a small or medium organization to spend a good amount to setup CRM application.

So what is the best solution?

Best solution is, choose free open source CRM to solve these business challenges. But there are lots of free open source CRM software with rich functionalities and number of such free CRM applications is continuously growing which is bit confusing for an organization to choose the right CRM for business. You could read our article on how to choose the best CRM for your organization.

Here we will discuss best 5 cloud based free CRM applications which could be life saver for a small or medium organization.

There are many open source CRM applications available in the market but not all of them are cloud based free CRM, for example Vtiger is free when it is installed locally but cloud version is paid. But we know, time and infrastructure, both matter for an organization, especially if it is SME. In case of cloud based CRM software, an enterprise does not need to spend any money for infrastructure, also application customization is real quick and easy task. There are many other benefits for cloud based CRM over on premise CRM but these are the main two reasons for which we suggest a SME to go for cloud based free CRM software.

Top 5 Cloud Based Free CRM :

Bitrix24

Most of the CRM applications with free basic plan allow only couple of users to have free account but Bitrix24 allows 12 users to create free account with 5 GB space. That is likely enough for a small or medium business to get start.

Free Bitrix24 account comes with unbelievable features–
– CRM includes almost all major business requirements like sales automation, contact management, quote management, business rules automation, invoicing, reports and sales funnel, direct email or call to clients from dashboard, integration with third party applications. It has mobile app for iOS and android to browse client records, create quotes, verify product catalog.
– It provides inter company social networking with ‘Like’ button, instant chat facility, computer telephony integration, photo and video sharing capability. It also includes employee motivational tools like badges, awards to show appreciation towards co-workers.
– It provides 5 GB free space for online file storage and document collaboration. There is no other CRM right now that provides 5 GB space with free plan. Also users can create or edit documents in Bitirx24 without any office suite.
– It has built in task and project management capability as well. Task can be created for oneself or assigned to colleagues, task report helps upper management to understand how much time an employee spends on a particular task.
Overall Bitrix24 is an application that helps an organization to run from one place.

Free account limitations:
12 users
5 GB storage
No record limit

Zoho CRM

Zoho is well-known CRM application with great features. It has web apps for almost everything that a SME needs like CRM, email integration, file sharing, social networking. It’s free edition allows an organization to create 10 free accounts with 1 GB space and limited functionalities but all these are sufficient for a small or medium company to generate leads, manage contacts and increase revenue.

Here are the few important features that Zoho CRM free edition provides:
– CRM includes almost all important features that an enterprise needs like sales force automation, marketing automation, lead management, contact management, quote management, live chat and email, tasks and activities handling, business rules and workflow management.
– It provides 1 GB space to an organization as document library. It can be used for file/folder sharing and documents attachment with file versioning capability.
– Zoho can be easily integrated with social networking sites like Twitter / Facebook or other Zoho apps like Zoho Projects, Zoho SalesIQ. It can be synchronized with various Google apps as well like Google calendar, Google contacts. Also it provides web to lead and web to contact form facilities to capture leads or contacts in web forms.

Free account limitations:
10 Users
1 GB space
No record limit

Insightly

Insightly CRM free edition grants 2 free accounts per organization with 200 MB storage. It includes almost all basic CRM features like Contact Management, Project Management, Task/Event/Calendar Management, Opportunity Management, Social Networking, Reporting, Email Integration. It provides the capability to import contacts from Gmail or Outlook or a simple spreadsheet.

Main drawbacks of Insightly CRM Free plan – it limits to store only 2500 records and allows to create 8 custom fields. Also its free plan does not include email marketing. But if these limitations are acceptable and want a simple way to start CRM, it is worth to give a try.

Free account limitations:
2 Free users
2500 records
200 MB free storage

Capsule

Capsule CRM is another lightweight and user friendly CRM application. Its free version provides very basic CRM functionalities with 2 free user accounts and 10 MB file storage. Beside CRM functionalities like contact management, opportunity management or task management, it has an unique feature called List. List uses filtering criteria based upon any possible options in CRM like name, updated on, type or status to group similar kind of contacts or opportunities or cases. With CRM object navigation bar at the top, there is a text link bar as well to bookmark contacts, cases or opportunities that you have accessed recently. Though it has good integration capability with other third party applications, free version has very limited integration features. Another drawback with free plan is that it allows to store only 250 contacts with unlimited opportunities and unlimited cases.

Free account limitations:
2 free users
10 MB storage
250 contacts with unlimited opportunities and cases

Really Simple Systems

Really Simple Systems CRM is really simple application with great functionalities like Sales automation, Contact Management, Opportunity Management, Task and Activities handling, Reporting. It’s free edition allows 2 users to have free account and 100 MB file storage. It also includes integration with KashFlow and SageOne accounting applications, custom reports, custom fields on all objects.
Drawbacks: Free plan supports only sales automation, not marketing automation or customer service management. Also it limits to create only 100 accounts with unlimited contacts, tasks and opportunities.

Free account limitations:
2 Free users
100 MB storage
100 accounts with unlimited contacts, activities and opportunities

Conclusion

There are many other cloud based free CRM applications as well like Podio, Clevertim, Raynet, Highrise, FreeCRM. But free edition of these CRM applications have more limited features like Podio does not include user management facility, Clevertim has no file storage and FreeCRM is free for 1 year only.
CRM market is ever changing and highly competitive place, so it is really tough to tell which one is best cloud based FREE CRM. But we can easily decide best CRM application for an organization.

Though we have listed down 5 cloud based free CRM applications here, we highly recommend an organization to try Bitrix24 and Zoho CRM.
If you want to know which FREE CRM suites for your business most, please contact us to get free quote.

Did we miss to mention any other great free CRM application here? Please write it below.

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<< How to choose best CRM software for your business

Where can I get training on Microsoft Dynamics CRM (MS CRM) ?

By TechOneStop

Question posted by Sameer Ab:
“I have 2 years of experience as a test engineer. How could I become a Microsoft CRM tech consultant. Also i am looking for internship or entry level job in ms crm in bangalore/Hyderabad. Please please help me.”

Answer (by TechOneStop):
It is great to see that you are interested to learn Microsoft CRM (also called as Microsoft Dynamics CRM or MS CRM).
1. First I would suggest you to watch few videos on Microsoft Dynamics, visit Microsoft Virtual Academy. You could watch YouTube videos as well. It will give you overall idea about MS CRM.
2. Microsoft gives 30 days free trial period to do hands on Dynamics CRM, just register yourself and do some basic configurations like create organization, position, users.
3. If you are interested to explore more, join any classroom training. There are many institutes who provide training on MS CRM.
To download user guide and training documents on Dynamics, click here.

Wish you all the best!! Please let us know if this was helpful for you. Also I would like to ask our readers to share their answers on this question.

Siebel Open UI Roadmap 2014-2020

By TechOneStop

Siebel Open UI Roadmap 2014, probably this is the most required article in our current business scenario. Is Siebel going to die!! has it any future!! Siebel crm or other crm softwares!! Shall I build my career in Siebel or some other technology!! and many more. I heard such questions a lot and when this rumor goes to new siebel consultants, they become unsafe and unclear about their career path. Yes, this is a RUMOR that Siebel is no more alive. It is very much alive and Oracle has given a clear roadmap upto 2020+.
Before going through siebel roadmap, I would like to recap siebel achievements so far once Oracle acquired Siebel.
•    Almost 20 year history of delivering best CRM solutions
•    21+ Industry specific capabilities and 22 languages supported in a single repository
•    Thousands of Customers and Users worldwide
•    7 Releases delivered since Oracle has acquired Siebel CRM
•    More than 90% of customers are on the latest 8.1/8.2 releases

Siebel Roadmap:

Siebel Open UI Roadmap - techonestop.com

In snapshot you can see, 1st half of each year will have Fix Pack delivery where Oracle will provide bug fixes and 2nd half of each year will have Innovation pack which provides innovations and enhancements.

Investment Strategy by Oracle:
Oracle is mainly focusing on
1)    Customer Experience
2)    Industry Innovation
3)    Lower implementation and maintenance cost
Customer Experience
We all know that Siebel was not very good in term of Customer Experience but with Open UI, Oracle has enhanced users experience and productivity a lot.

Open UI supports any standard browser and any device
Supports user specific look and feel UI
Coexists with existing siebel architecture and investment
Enhanced mobile application
Online/Offline support
Device reorganization and signature capture
Redesign siebel ‘Out-of-box’ user interfaces like Dispatch board, chat, eservice
Map integration, camera support, multi tab support
Integration with social profile, supports ‘Big Data’
Improved loyalty management

Industry Innovation

Open UI has specialized line-of business applications
Improved mobile application for financial services
Redesigned eService application in Open UI to incorporate enhanced self service capabilities, reduce clicks, drill downs

Lower implementation and maintenance cost
Open UI supports existing Siebel architecture, also Oracle has introduced Incremental Repository Merge which reduces the Upgradation cost. It reduces the initial install size and time by 50%.
Siebel Upgrade Momentum:

Almost 90% customers are using Siebel 8.0 or higher version. Also all top brands from various verticals are using Siebel to run their business and number is still growing. Here is a snapshot below of siebel customers.

Siebel Open UI customers- techonestop.com

So come out from the rumor that Siebel is not alive anymore and keep learning. Oracle has a strong and rich product roadmap upto 2020+.

To know more, watch our YouTube video:

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We have Siebel Open UI training series also, you may like it. Click here to start from our first article What is Siebel Open UI, Its Features and benefits or watch our YouTube videos.