Written by Once a company decides to purchase CRM software, it 
actually looks for automating the business processes, to cut-off the overheads, to make big saving which results revenue earning and last but not the least making the customer happy.
Few years back CRM purchasing process was a very confusing process for an organization and companies were buying CRM solutions focus on features and prices instead of focusing on actual business gains to be expected from the CRM software purchased. Now we have few good well established CRM packages in market with well defined feature and implementation history to make choices.
We may look for following features while comparing the CRM packages.
Feature Rich CRM: CRM says it has all features which you want but make sure are you getting all feature in one application or what all need to purchase other application or modules. Siebel has lots of features but it requires licenses for o all those feature to integrate with your application as per your need.
CRM customization: How comfortable and adaptable is this CRM while customizing your requirement, any limitations on customization and time frame to make the customization up and running.
Simple CRM Integration: One of major criteria is how easy we can integrate with existing software platforms. Easy integration is essential to achieve the best CRM Software solution possible. Siebel UAN has provided an edge to Oracle on this front. Other points to be consider is industry standard integration capability and support of future integration technologies like SOA etc. Current CRM might have easy integration capability but may not be able to cope up with the future technologies. Also need to look for the pre-build integration adapters available to minimize the customization and maintenance efforts
Cost: Money always matters!!! Organizations are looking forward for big saving in implementation as well maintenance and operational front of the CRM application. Implementation cost (customization and Integration), System upgrade cost, User Licenses fees and Maintenance contract fees. I have come across various cost comparison activities between these CRM. I am sharing the example data for better understanding.
TCO : Total cost of ownership is one of the factor while deciding CRM, many time it happens that initial cost of the CRM might be low but subsequent cost might be high e.g. yearly support cost, consultancy fee might be higher, availability of the resources and skills in the market etc
PS: Please correct if we have missed something here 🙂
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