Features: SaaS products you should know about

CRM

Deciding on a CRM (customer relationship management) package can be quite a personal choice. SMBs used to have little option but to go with one on-premise vendor after a short demo with test data rather than their own. Now SaaS CRM can be trialled online with live company data which gives SMBs a better chance at finding the one that fits best. The likelihood is that many SMBs are using a combination of Outlook and Excel to manage their sales pipeline. Moving to a proper CRM could help a business become more aware of the sales cycle and encourage better monitoring of incoming cash flow and potential deals.

SalesForce.com

The number one SaaS CRM application keeps growing. It’s not just the features which keep popping up in the SalesForce Sales Cloud but the expanding ecosystem of products. SalesForce has acquired Heroku, a platform for building apps on Ruby and Java, and Database.com, a cloud-native database. And then there’s Chatter, a private social media network for businesses that is integrated into SalesForce itself.

SalesForce’s Force.com has become a favoured platform for designing applications for enterprise. All these projects increase the value of choosing SalesForce.com as your CRM.

Microsoft CRM Dynamics Online

It will be interesting to see how hard Microsoft pushes Dynamics Online. In Australia, at least, it feels like the thunder has been stolen by Office 365.

The Dynamics Online website shows that Microsoft will be aiming for market share. In the centre of the page is a competitive-price calculator displaying the savings in choosing Dynamics over SalesForce. com or Oracle. Dynamics retails for US$44 per user per month.

BatchBook and High Rise

These two CRM packages have been making a name for themselves in small business circles. The relatively high prices charged by SalesForce. com have opened up a market for SMBs looking for a cloud solution that is easy to use and robust.

REMOTE MANAGEMENT

This is an odd one to slip in with SaaS as it bends the definitions slightly. However, Microsoft is keen to include the category as part of its online services and the tools have been rewritten to scale in much the same way as SaaS.

Microsoft Windows InTune

Microsoft labels InTune as SaaS even though it relies on an agent downloaded to the PC.

InTune is a Kaseya competitor which monitors the health of PCs in a business network, takes a running inventory of hardware and software, and provides anti-virus and malware protection. It also comes with a Windows 7 Enterprise subscription.

Savvy cloud resellers are bundling this with Office 365 because it gives them visibility of the customers’ networks, opening the door to more sales opportunities, and reduces the number of support calls because all machines are running on the latest operating system.

ERP

Given the complexity of ERP (enterprise resource planning) software it’s a little surprising to hear that it actually works in the cloud. It definitely does, though the bugbear of customisation and long install times make this a tougher sell than other SaaS products.

There is a lot of opportunity in this space as some vendors have been slow to move beyond on- premise systems (hi SAP) as have their partners.

NetSuite

NetSuite announced at its partner and customer conference earlier in the year that it would be looking further up the chain, beyond mid-market.

The vendor is confident that it has what the resosurces to take on SAP and Oracle.

The fastest growing financial management system in the US for the past three years, NetSuite has impressed with its levels of automation, the breadth of applications within the suite and the speed of implementation.

SAP Business By Design

The biggest name in ERP has finally cast its hat into the SaaS ring after several false starts. SAP is so heavily identified with large-scale, costly and complex on-premise deployments that it will be a real coup if it can deliver a lightweight yet powerful SaaS for SMBs.

Until there’s tangible sign of success, the jury is still out.