Moving CRM to the Cloud

WARNING: This is a non marketing-oriented post that is going to make your eyes bleed unless you are interested in the techie side of CRM.

Over 10 years ago I built my own CRM system in Microsoft Access. Total geek city, I know. It was perfectly suited to the way I kept track of interactions with people, and it was a snap to export contacts to Google Contacts, different mobile phones, etc. Even today it’s still state of the art.

However, this system is one of the few things keeping me chained to a laptop instead of giving me the freedom to work on a tablet or smartphone. MS Access is a monster program which keeps me on Windows rather than Mac, as well, though I can run it under Parallels on the Mac.  So, being stuck on this CRM system is inconvenient from a couple of perspectives.

I decided I wanted to move the whole setup to the cloud, ideally someplace that would have a great iPad user experience. That would enable me to access my info, contact history and to-dos from anywhere, and to not be chained to specific hardware –  use either a tablet or laptop – and free me to work on any operating system I wanted to – Windows or Mac.

I quickly developed a list of criteria that would probably be suitable for a number of people looking at similar issues:

• CRM Functionality: Leads, Contacts, Accounts
• LinkedIn Connection
• Twitter Connection
• Calendaring Integration
• Google Contacts Sync
• Custom Fields Creation
• Import / Export
• Can Import Past Activity
• Tablet / Mobile Experience
• Base Price
• Extras Price
• Term of Contract / Ease of Migration in Future

After doing some searching around I narrowed my choices down to Salesforce and Zoho. Along the way I stumbled upon some very interesting newer contestants leveraging social media that might be interesting to other people: Base, Nimble, Mingly – these are definitely worth a look.

Salesforce is almost synonymous with CRM and the company has been on an acquisition binge, buying Radian6 and Buddy Media, which makes then even more interesting to work with. They are heavily entrenched in the larger companies.

I had never heard of Zoho before I started this search but I was immediately impressed. It appeared nimble and flexible, oriented towards smaller hi-tech businesses and had something of an Apple design aesthetic.

It immediately became clear I had  a huge data migration challenge ahead of me. To migrate the data you have to get it in a very organized format that will precisely match what you’re loading it into, for Salesforce or Zoho. If you have contact history you’re going to have to get that matched to the IDs of the contact records. If you don’t have a Company database in your setup you’ll have to create one through your upload.  You quickly realize this is going to be a big headache.If the terms I just mentioned confuse you, stick with a simpler solution.

You don’t really know what you’re getting into in working with either of these systems until you dig in and get your hands dirty. I decided I would try some test uploads into both systems to see how it went, and to see what it was like to work with either of them.

I signed up for a Salesforce trial and I’ll tell you one thing, if there product is as good as some of their sales people, they’d be terrific. I dealt with a suburb sales rep named Lucy. Lucy used Salesforce itself to follow up with me frequently, to see where I was on the project and to get me to make decisions. She extended my trial when I got distracted by other projects. I could see the value of their CRM system in action.

I got all my data clean (a huge job in itself) and created my export file. Then I hit some snags. Salesforce import widgets are limited to 500 records and I had 3 times that. I was given temporary access to a tool called the Dataloader to handle my files. But, I found the Dataloader required a company database for the upload. I went a few rounds with Salesforce tech support on it, but the response time on my tiny little account was slow and I was getting unclear answers. And the clock was ticking on my ability to access the Dataloader.

I the meantime, I went back a took a look at Zoho again. I realized I could use the same export file to load it up, so I did. I was able to load the data pretty easily and with Zoho I was always going to be able to access the upload tools – they weren’t going to expire on me. I realized I was going to have a big challenge on either platform to upload 3,000 records of contact history, but I could take my time to do that on Zoho.

Salesforce tech support came back with some clearer answers after about a week, and I was able to upload my data there too. I had been trying to make a quick decision and just go with Salesforce, figuring it would have an added benefit of getting me familiar with a system my clients might be using too, but I ended up in a true head-to-head situation.

The Verdict

Once I had both systems up and running it became very interesting. From a web browser perspective both are similar and excellent. I was able to see a company view of my contacts for the first time, showing all the people and projects from a company point of view rather than a contact point of view. That was remarkable and lead to some helpful insights. However, then I got into some other distinctions. Salesforce can only integrate with Google apps through some add-ons, which is a big gap. Using Google Apps with Zoho is a simple and easy experience – so contacts and events sync seamlessly and easily. In practice that means my iPhone and iPad contacts are always synced with my Zoho account. That is a tremendous benefit and means no more periodic exports to keep my contacts up to date.  The Zoho experience is very solid on the iPad and iPhone even if you’re not using a browser. Zoho looks like it has a real commitment in this area, and as mobile becomes more and more critical, that’s a huge advantage.

Zoho charges month to month and has an a la carte menu to get some of the features I’ve mentioned, like mobile access, but it’s worth every penny. By the time you’ve gotten all the add-ons, the price for both platforms is similar for a small business, maybe about $20 a month, but Salesforce locks you into an annual contract.

I’m still getting my arms around it, but I’m very happy with my decision to go with Zoho. It’s a slick and clean platform that feels like its got a company behind it that is aggressively evolving the tool. It also links into all the other Zoho products should you choose to use them. So now I have my future-proof system available anywhere from many types of devices.

But, I regret letting Lucy down at Salesforce because she was everything a sales rep should be. However, the system was just too cumbersome and my experience with their support and Dataloader made me feel like I was dealing with a big machine, not the nimble tool I needed.

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