Competition has sure made a difference in the CRM software sector just like every other industry today. Of course it’s great for the consumer, but it can wreak havoc on a manufacturer or solution provider. This appears to be the case for CRM industry leader Salesforce.com who paved the way into the world of cloud based computing, but who today is struggling to retain their price points against strong industry competitors like Microsoft and lesser known Commence Corporation.

While Salesforce.com was an early entrant into the online CRM sector,  other firms have caught up with CRM products that are now quite mature, easier to use and much less expensive. This has forced Salesforce to modify their pricing structure several times over the past 24 months, each time lowering their prices to battle the competition.

Salesforce.com is a very good company with a good product, but it was not designed for small to mid-size businesses.  It’s simply too cumbersome and expensive for this market sector. In addition, there are numerous limitations in the lower cost editions that basically force you to upgrade to higher priced versions to obtain features that are standard in competitive products.

One of the companies that have been causing some difficulty for Salesforce.com is Commence Corporation, makers of Commence CRM. Commence is a much smaller company that does not have the marketing clout of the industry giants. But what Commence does have is a track record of delivering quality CRM software solutions to the SMB sector for more than twenty years. Commence CRM is used by several thousand companies around the world and is viewed as a solid alternative to Salesforce.com for the SMB sector.

“We are not going to out-market or out-feature industry giants like Salesforce” states Larry Caretsky, president of Commence Corporation, “but we have demonstrated that we are a better alternative for small to mid-size businesses in several ways.  We know these customers need affordable business solutions that are easy to use, coupled with an array of value added services that they desperately need within their organization.”

These services (which include assistance with business process automation, workflow management, sales methodology training, assistance with marketing campaign management, and customer support) are what differentiate Commence CRM from alternative CRM solutions targeted at the small to mid-size sector. Most competitive offerings do not have the resources to provide this level of value added service. Salesforce does, but at a cost that’s not affordable for this sector.

“We have found that SMBs that select Salesforce.com rethink their decision once the annual renewal invoice comes up. They realize that they may not have utilized the functionality they purchased and that they can get a product with similar features at a significantly reduced cost. They are contacting us” says Caretsky, “and we are happy to earn their business.”

A detailed review of Commence CRM versus Salesforce.com is available on the Commence website.

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