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California-based software-as-service and hosted CRM provider Zoho launched a campaign aimed directly at its competitor’s (Salesforce.com) clients. According to Zoho, in the framework of its Zwitch program, Salesforce clients can move very easily and flawlessly to Zoho’s platform, getting all the functionality they used to get from Salesforce, and save 80%+ of their CRM costs on the way.
Although the CRM sector, and, hosted CRM services are reported to grow for the fifth consecutive years, despite all financial difficulties elsewhere (well, almost everywhere), competition amongst CRM service providers appear to get harsher and harsher as time goes by.
The above is especially true for smaller companies, as they need rather aggressive marketing (dynamic, and to the point as they usually put it), to stay in the ring. With its latest, Zwitch campaign, Zoho appears to be a poster child of aggressively expanding and rapidly growing companies, albeit Zoho is not so tiny anymore: its office suit has reached its landmark one millionth user more than a year ago.
Although Zoho might not be a newbie with its office suite applications, its ~380k unique visitors in May, 2009 make Salesforce look like a real CRM behemoth with its ~1.1m uniques (both figures are based on compete.com data). Especially considering that, CRM is just a very tiny part of Zoho’s application package, which includes a project manager, a calendar, an email, a wiki interface and many other features.
Okay, so, what’s the juicy offer Zoho is trying to lure Salesforce clients with?
- Free, no-obligation assessment with a Zoho CRM specialist to evaluate needs and confirm Zoho CRM will provide benefits and functionality that are equal, or superior, to what they currently have with Salesforce.com;
- Free data migration services;
- A free, no-commitment, 15-day trial period for new users to try Zoho CRM with the data migrated from Salesforce.com, in order to confirm their decision to switch to Zoho CRM; and
- Once a customer decides to switch to Zoho, a credit on their account for their time remaining on the Salesforce.com contract (up to six months).
A free data migration service seems pretty basic when you plan to lay your hands on your competitors’ clients: other than that there’s not much plus to it: services are equal, a trial period is usually offered to new customers as well (Salesforce, for that matter is offering a 30-day free trial for all new members), and offsetting the costs for the remainder of the Salesforce.com contract is also a minimum requirement if you are so directly targeting someone else’s loyal customers.
So finally, it all boils down to the question of price.
80%+ Savings of your CRM expenses, Zoho claims.
Which is true. Well, almost precisely.
It is pretty clear that, Zoho is a lot cheaper than Salesforce is. The 80% calculation is based on comparing two (almost random) packages: The cheaper package of Zoho ($12 per user per month) and the second chepest (Professional) package of Salesforce ($65 per user per month).
While Salesforce’s costs can be much higher than that (its Unlimited package costs $250 per user per month), and Zoho’s Enterprise Edition costs also twice as much as the one in the example, it is really difficult to match the exact functionality that are included in these packages to see the real difference in pricing.
And, another question remains: all CRM providers claim that the investment in their CRM applications, systems and strategies will pay off if used correctly. I was wondering that if this is the case, it may be worth investing a little more.
What do you think? Please share your thoughts in the comments!
Website: http://www.salesforce.com
Launched: 1999
Founder(s): Marc Benioff
Location: San Francisco, California
Salesforce is a listed (NYSE:CRM) on-demand Customer Relationship Management (CRM) solution vendor...
Website: http://crm.zoho.com
Launched: 2005
Location: Pleasanton, California
Zoho CRM is the online hosted CRM solution of Zoho Corp (previously AdventNet), based in Pleasanton, California...
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