If you’re in the market for a CRM, you may be wondering which type is right for your business. With so many options on the market, it can be tough to decide. That’s why we’ve put together this handy CRM comparison chart.

CRM Comparison Chart: What You Should Look For in CRM Software

CRM software is a tool that helps businesses keep track of their customer interactions and relationships. By tracking this data, businesses can better understand their customers’ needs and preferences.

Additionally, CRM software can help businesses automate and streamline their customer-related processes.

In this article, you will see a CRM comparison chart that provides a side-by-side view of different CRM software programs so you can weigh the features and benefits of each CRM system.

Why CRM Software is Essential

Your CRM system is the hub of your customer’s journey, from their first interaction with your brand to closing a sale, and on to their next engagement with you.

Small business owners might use spreadsheets to try and mimic what a CRM system can do.

While a homemade solution is cheap, it will only deliver a fraction of the features that a CRM system offers. Plus, it’s too clunky to use once your list gets larger than 100 contacts.

A quality CRM system will not only help you store your contacts but also manage them.

They not only automatically create appointments, but also prioritize your sales pipelines, identify new opportunities, and remind you of upcoming meetings.

This information is a goldmine of opportunity.

The ability to rank opportunities by likelihood of success is made possible by integrating CRM with other customer data. This information can be used to target new marketing efforts, upsell or cross-sell to existing customers, or track invoices.

Having this data readily available can help improve your team’s collaboration and productivity while also increasing sales.

Revenue Impact of AI Adoption in CRM

Artificial intelligence (AI) is quickly becoming a key area of focus for CRM systems. Leading vendors like Microsoft and Salesforce are investing heavily in adding their proprietary AI technologies to their systems.

Other companies are working with companies like IBM to incorporate artificial intelligence into their services.

These new features will greatly improve any CRM system’s ability to analyze and process customer data.

CRM software helps businesses manage their customer relationships. It provides a quick way to reach out to current customers and keep track of interactions with your company. This can help you improve customer satisfaction and loyalty.

Let’s take a closer look at some of the important elements.

Case management software helps you keep track, manage, close, and reopen any case. It also allows you to safely store any confidential data.

Each customer is different, so you must treat them as such. By managing your cases on an individual basis, you can ensure that you treat each prospect with the level of attention that they deserve.

Online case management software keeps customer information safe by making sure it’s stored remotely, away from the chance of any hackers.

A data breach can be devastating to a business, and no one wants to deal with that.

CRM software is designed to give you a complete view of your customers, their orders, and their activities. With these tools, you can track every aspect of your customer relationships, so you never have to be in the dark about what’s going on.

CRM software provides you with detailed views of what actions your contacts are taking, as well as revisiting previous data to track a customer’s experience.

CRM software can also help you re-align your strategies to better meet customer needs.

All CRM systems come with a built-in contacts manager, which is a fundamental part of most systems, along with features such as lead generation, sales automation, and marketing campaign tracking.

An all-in-one solution helps you manage your company’s contacts, including your prospects, your leads, and your customers.

CRM software is designed to give businesses an overview of every interaction made with their customers. This helps to improve sales, marketing, and customer service by uniting these departments. 

There are several tools available to help you track your customer journey, and these CRMs allow you to see a detailed and complete picture of every customer.

CRM software is a great way to improve your understanding of your customer base and structure the process of dividing them into groups. CRM solutions allow you to group customers based on their current pipeline stage, purchase history, location, responses, interests, and lead score.

By grouping your contact lists, you can analyze the data you have on your prospects and customers. This can help you create more effective marketing campaigns by targeting the right audience.

All information related to sales can be easily collected and managed by CRM software. The software gathers data from a variety of sources such as customer accounts, invoices, purchase orders, and previous purchases.

This increases efficiency for sales managers and saves them money.

Most CRM systems come with simple integrations. Some popular apps that integrate with your customer relationship management (CRM) system include Paypal and Stripe. These can help you keep track of customers’ payments.

Tracking client interactions is essential for any successful sales operation. A few products really stand out from the rest when it comes to this feature.

Joforce CRM

Joforce is one of the fastest-growing CRM software platforms on the market today. Its simple design and easy-to-use interface make it perfect for beginners, startups, and businesses with limited budgets.

With Joforce, you can track and manage your contacts and their recent activities.

Organize your contacts, and view your sales pipeline, all with their clean and simple dashboard.

In addition to managing contacts, Joforce includes email scheduling, live chat, project management, ticket tracking, marketing automation, and customer support.

Suite CRM

SuiteCRM is designed to be simple and user-friendly. It comes with features such as pipeline management, email integration, sales reporting, and sales forecasting.

Compared to all the other CRM systems listed here, Suite CRM is not as robust in features. It doesn’t provide a distinction between new leads and contacts.

Vtiger

Vtiger is a complete CRM software that allows you to manage all of your customer interactions, including email, social, and phone, from one centralized location.

Vtiger software is not the easiest to use because of all the features it offers. There is a learning curve you should be aware of before purchasing it.

Zoho CRM

Zoho CRM is a great way to keep track of customer feedback on social media. You can easily integrate it with G-Suite, Slack, MailChimp, Facebook, and GetResponse.

Different pricing options offered by Zoho CRM make it a good choice for businesses of all sizes. The free version offers features for up to 3 users but cannot store information for all of your prospects, leads, and customers.

What Should You Look for in a CRM Software?

Here are the 10 most important things to look out for when choosing a CRM system.

1. Sales and Lead Management

Your CRM should be able to generate leads from a variety of sources, including inbound marketing, sales calls, email sign-ups, and more. Look for preset tasks that you can follow up with leads in less time.

Your CRM system should track and nurture your lead from initial contact to close.

2. Marketing

When looking for CRM software, you should look for features that can help with marketing and sales alignment. Built-in marketing tools like email pipelines, databases, and social media integrations can be helpful in this regard.

3. Integration

CRM systems should be able to integrate with other business software tools such as email marketing, data visualization, and ad networks.

4. Tracking Analytics

Most CRM systems have a built-in report builder and predesigned reports that you can customize. Check to see if your platform has dynamic and live reporting that updates in real time.

5. Product Mobility

It is important to consider CRM software that offers mobility for sales teams. This way, you can be sure that the CRM can be used not only on computers but also on mobile devices and tablets.

6. Implementation

When looking for CRM software, you should look for a product with a relatively quick implementation period that is low cost and error-free. You should also ask your support engineer how long the timeline is and what resources are required from your team.

7. Project Management Workflow

A task management system and checklists are useful tools for helping your sales team manage its daily workload.

8. Privacy

When selecting a CRM platform, file storage and platform security should be given top priority. Since CRMs contain such sensitive data, security features must be top-notch.

9. User Experience

Make sure that your CRM is easy to use and has a short learning curve. This way, your team will be comfortable using the tool for the long term. 

10. API Calls

When looking for CRM software, you should look for a platform with a robust, extensible, and open architecture. This will allow you to easily integrate your custom data into the system.

Best CRM Software Tools in 2022

Regardless of your industry, a CRM is a must for organizing and tracking your interactions with clients and potential clients.

Zoho CRM

The Zoho CRM helps businesses manage their customers, their sales, and their team. Its built-in artificial intelligence makes this CRM smarter than other tools. The Zoho support center is available via phone, chat, social media, and in person.

Native Mobile App: The mobile app for Zoho allows reps to manage their schedule, track their communication, and view their visit history. It also allows them to create tasks, and make changes.

Ecosystem: With over 45 different apps and services, the Zoho Business Suite provides a wide range of features to help your business succeed. The suite integrates seamlessly with each of the other apps, ensuring a productive and collaborative work environment.

Integrations: You can track and analyze your advertising campaigns through Google AdWord integration. The Shopify app helps you manage customers, orders, and product data. The Woocommerce add-on keeps your order and customer information in sync.

Zia Recommendation: This artificial intelligence (AI) driven, self-learning platform provides suggestions for upselling, cross-selling, retaining, and renewing your clients and customers.

Appointment Scheduling: Include a link to your online appointment scheduler in your emails so that customers can choose the most convenient time for them.

Canned Responses: Using predefined responses, support representatives can answer common questions without wasting time typing out emails.

Salesforce Sales Cloud

Designed to help companies manage their marketing and sales processes, the cloud-based solution Salesforce supports all phases of the customer lifecycle. It is suitable for businesses of different sizes across industries like financial services, healthcare, retail, media, manufacturing, and hospitality.

Extensive Customer Support: The Salesforce Community is a valuable resource for answering questions, getting help, and accessing training. You can also access resources like reports and blog articles, as well as receive online training courses through the company’s learning platform called Trailhead.

Efficient Opportunity Management: With 360° views of your deals, sales reps can respond to customers or competitors quickly and track all related actions. They can get an overview of all activities and events related to a deal, including email, calendar, and social interactions.

Enhanced Customer Engagement: You can improve customer engagement through personalization. You can understand customer interest through a detailed history of their activity, track your campaigns through interactive graphs and reach out to them quickly through timely notifications.

Email Scheduling: Send out your emails at specific dates and times, or select from preset times and custom periods. You can edit your scheduled email before delivery in the Lighting Experience.

API Usage Dashboard: By tracking a company’s account APIs, you can get information on consumer access patterns, what devices they use, and which methods are most popular.

Embed Chart: You can embed customized reports to third-party dashboards using unique codes.

HubSpot Sales Hub

The Sales Hub is a brand new tool from HubSpot that’s built right on top of the existing marketing, sales, and services platforms. This CRM offers unparalleled convenience for salespeople. You can manage your contacts, make sales, track tasks, log meetings and view your territory.

Free Version: You have access to a free suite of integrated tools that cover sales, service, marketing, and customer relationship management. Other key features include lead and opportunity tracking, email marketing campaigns, online chat, tasks and activities, and account and contact lists.

Advance Analytics: Find out which pages, emails, and offers are converting the most. This will allow you to identify trends and patterns based on what your visitors are clicking on.

Vast Integrations: The HubSpot Sales Hub comes with more than 300 integrations, including popular platforms such as WooCommerce, Shopify, Magento, Square, and BigCommerce.

Built-in Caller: Easily make calls from within the app by clicking the built-in telephonic caller.

Mass Email: You can send emails to members of your campaigns, or contacts on your lists.

Custom Reports: Create customized reports and graphs with tables and charts that are simple to drag and drop and gain insights by analyzing data and applying filters.

Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Sales

Microsoft Dynamics 365 for sales, built on the common data services (CDS), helps provide insights to business users, enabling them to improve customer relationships and close more deals with customers. It also helps in managing partners, automating the field service, and improving business operations.

The solution is available in the cloud or on-premise and can be tailored to the needs of any business, regardless of industry.

Prescriptive Insights: Adaptive intelligence helps you make smarter decisions, understand trends, ensure personalization, and encourage sales to act. It unifies your data, finds new audiences, and automates your workflow.

End-to-End Lead Management: Use lead and opportunity scoring to improve conversion rates. With this feature, sales reps can score, qualify and disqualify leads to better connect with customers.

Actionable Sales Insights: Be punctual when it comes to taking important actions and accessing information. You can receive alerts for expiring opportunities and upcoming events, as well as identify when emails are opened and when accounts are idle.

Document Repository: Store all of your sales documents, presentations, and contracts in one central place, where each team member can access them based on their role and permissions.

Automatic Lead Distribution: You can assign a sales rep to a lead based on certain rules, such as the product the lead is interested in, the rep’s location, their sales territory, their lead scoring, and the source of the lead. You can also set up a round-robin queue to evenly distribute leads to your reps.

Opportunity Management: The lead management feature allows you to manage the flow of your leads to different stages, and convert the lead to an opportunity.

SAP Sales Cloud

A cloud-based sales management solution, the SAP HANA-powered software enables sales reps to monitor their customers’ activities and provide guidance through contracts and proposals. It’s designed for businesses of all sizes, from small to medium enterprises to large corporations.

Accurate Sales Execution: You can turn those new selling techniques into actual actions, cut down on your tedious and error-prone spreadsheets, improve your commissions and realign your sales regions with your goals through effective quota planning and territory management. You can also maintain optimal operations through prescriptive analytics.

Advanced Integrations: Sales reps can integrate with their email, CRM, and ERP systems, ensuring a smooth workflow between these systems. Additionally, the solution allows seamless transition of customer and order information between the front and back office.

Predictive Analytics: You can augment your revenues with predictive analysis. It provides you with a complete analytics package to help you track your key performance indicators and deadlines. You can also use custom reporting tools to create unique reports that combine data from multiple tools.

SMS Interaction and Templates: You can create text messages and send them automatically to your prospects and customers with saved customer data. This platform has the highest score for text-messaging capabilities.

Custom Branding: Be sure to incorporate your company’s logo, information, and color scheme into all of your customer-facing communications. This includes email, chat, and landing page templates. You can also automate the welcome and support emails sent to customers who contact you.

Contract Creation and Management: Contract Management allows you to enter, view, amend and cancel contracts with customers. You can upload copies of your documents, and you can even attach them to relevant opportunities and orders.

What Is The Best CRM in the Market?

The market for CRM tools is vast, with options ranging from big names like Salesforce, Zoho, and Microsoft Dynamics to more upstarts like Agile, Freshsales, Sage, and Streak.

What Are The Four Types of CRM?

The four types of CRM are operational, analytical, collaborative, and engagement.

Operational CRM focuses on automating and streamlining business processes.

Analytical CRM uses data from operational CRM to help make decisions about marketing, sales, and customer service strategies.

Collaborative CRM involves using technology to improve communication and collaboration between employees, customers, and partners.

Engagement CRM is focused on creating a personalized experience for customers through the use of data and analytics.

Conclusion

From this CRM comparison chart, you can decide which software is right for your business. If you are still unsure, consult with a professional who can guide you through the process.