Thursday, March 25, 2021

The Cloud CRM Systems Battle: Salesforce vs Oracle

Recent times have borne clear witness to the surge in demand for cloud computing technologies. As companies progressively invest in cloud computing technologies, it has explicitly been made evident that the demand for cloud computing skills and services will keep rising.

Salesforce and Oracle are two such companies that have become the epitome of computing solutions. These companies have been dynamically innovating the sphere of cloud computing to allow multiple businesses to function and expand.

It is due to CRM developments that companies are able to effectively manage their interactions with current and future customers, thus paving the way for an effective relationship with potential customers. The two CRM giants, Salesforce and Oracle, are competing against each other to capture the market.

Salesforce vs Oracle: CRM

Here are some factors behind the Oracle vs Salesforce com case analysis

1) Implementation

When it comes to implementation, it is easier to get started with B2B commerce Salesforce than Oracle. It is also easier to configure due to its low-code needs.

When we speak of the benefits of Oracle compared to Salesforce, fewer integrations are needed. This is one of the winning points.

Let us discuss the same in brief. Both platforms have a steep learning curve, delivering business outcomes.

Salesforce allows first use right after signing up, whereas with Oracle, you will need to first consult the sales representative.

Again, Oracle products share a common codebase. This allows the reuse of code for different customizations as well as in-house integrations.

2) Pricing

We would like to say and prove that the pricing is better when it comes to Salesforce. Here it is both transparent as well as friendlier, though at a glance.

Opposite to this, with Oracle, there can be only some room for negotiation with rigid editions from the Salesforce B2B commerce cloud.

Oracle does not share its prices/costs publicly. But it is inclined toward negotiating overall pricing while giving key business outcomes.

With Salesforce, you have to make a payment on each add-on; however, there is friendliness to start with and also to scale. The prices can be found on their website, except for Marketing Cloud, which is then quotable on request.

3) Data Integration

When it comes to data integration and buyer journey mapping, both CRM systems are quite apt when integrating with almost any system, whether an internal one or third-party.

Oracle’s databases give integration possibilities on their own; while Salesforce provides extreme flexibility with any data source that could be both cloud-based as well as on-premises.

Both the customer-experience suites are ideal for breaking corporate silos. That’s because they let data flow from different clouds to single dashboards.

You can integrate Oracle CX with Salesforce, SAP and Oracle’s cloud applications. These applications include E-Business Suite, ERP, JD Edwards Enterprise One, and more.

Salesforce, a B2B eCommerce platform, is criticized for relying too much upon third-party data sources while giving desired business outcomes.

But it makes up for this disadvantage by making it easy to integrate the platform with virtually any source, including legacy systems.

4) Artificial Intelligence

Salesforce’s global strategic partner launched its AI platform before Oracle. But still, Oracle is following it closely, keeping its rival on an alert.

Currently, Oracle has Artificial Intelligence embedded in only two of its clouds, the Sales Cloud and Marketing Cloud. Meanwhile, Salesforce extended Artificial Intelligence to all its clouds.

It is interesting to know that community partner Salesforce does not have a standalone Artificial Intelligence tool. It has instead embedded Artificial Intelligence into all of its products as well as add-ons, naming it Salesforce Einstein.

So now users can use AI even by default just by doing the routine tasks without the need for any data science degree.

It was in the year 2016 that Einstein was launched and Salesforce has been putting lots of effort into enhancing as well as extending the functions.

Oracle, however, has not yet entered the AI competition within the CRM industry. But, to make some headway, Oracle announced a suite of tools driven by AI two years ago.

5) Learning resources

When it comes to certification and learning, both Oracle and Salesforce shine.
However, in comparison with Oracle, Salesforce is known to provide more free resources to beginners to facilitate the early stages of platform adoption.

Both companies offer an extensive number of learning resources. Oracle has an entire University and anyone can get paid access to training, categorized by software/hardware technologies and products.

Whereas in the case of Salesforce, the name of the training centre is Trailhead. This has free gamified courses with most of them being for beginners.

Salesforce CRM vs. Competitors

The increase in the popularity of the Salesforce customer relationship tool gave birth to a multitude of other competitors, such as Oracle, Zoho, Pipedrive, and Freshsales.

As these companies rose, they brought their own CRM tools in the market to compete with Salesforce.

As they grew, these competitors also gained a following of their own. In spite of this, Salesforce still dominates the market with its CRM tool. There are various reasons for this, a few of which are given below:

1) User Satisfaction

User satisfaction is the first metric that approaches a person’s mind when a company develops a product that is meant to be used widely.

In the case of CRMs as well, user satisfaction plays a pivotal role. Numerous tests showed that over 99% of customers chose Salesforce as their preferred CRM.

On the other hand, 95% of customers preferred Fresh sales while even fewer customers preferred Zoho CRM.

2) Pricing

All CRM solutions mentioned here have been priced according to the features provided by individual tools. In this category, Salesforce CRM charges a monthly rate of $25, while the competitors charge $12.

Even though Salesforce is more expensive, it is still preferred due to the features that it provides. Zoho, Pipedrive, Freshsales are incapable of providing such features even at higher prices.

3) Language Support

In order for any tool to be accepted far and wide, it is important for CRM service providers to develop tools that support a variety of languages.

Salesforce is still the dominating choice for CRM, as it has understood this concern and has provided support for over 7 languages that include English, French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Russian, and Swedish.

On the other hand, competitors such as Pipedrive provide support only for one single language.

4) Extensibility

Being designed with a methodology that allows the CRM to be extensible, Salesforce is a tool that can be used by a substantial part of the industry.

It can be easily implemented by all sorts of organizations, be it small businesses, large businesses, medium businesses, or freelancers. Freshsales, on the other hand, does not provide support for freelancers while Pipedrive lacks the support required by large enterprises.

Conclusion

As company operations become more and more complex, handling them becomes more cumbersome. However, all these processes can be handled in a simple manner with the help of Salesforce and Oracle, enabling companies to handle these operations better and become more productive.

A CRM solution allows companies to execute processes on various different levels, allowing them to elevate their sales rates and experience growth in revenue. One may say that this is for Salesforce, but its formidable CRM players too can claim the position, with Oracle included.


Source: Salesforce vs Oracle

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