Microsoft Dynamics 365 and Salesforce are both changing the game in terms of productivity, offering advanced CRMs that can transform your business efficiency, agility, and customer experiences. Both are competing to stay at the bleeding edge of innovation, with both businesses recently launching AI agents that can autonomously work alongside your team members as a specialist in a certain field, helping to increase team output and increase sales. But which one is best for your business? While at first glance, the two solutions may seem pretty similar, they do offer differing capabilities, benefits and architecture that set them apart. Keep reading as we explore each system to help you decide which is best for your business needs and systems.
What is Microsoft Dynamics 365?
Microsoft Dynamics 365 is a versatile suite of business applications that offers advanced CRM and ERP capabilities. The platform has the ability to connect teams and data across a business, offering real-time and intelligent insights to boost productivity, decision making and overall business performance. In terms of its CRM, businesses can look to its Dynamics 365 Sales, Customer Service, Field Service, Remote Assist and Customer Insights and Commerce applications, to improve team connectivity, training and access to insights and information to ultimately boost customer experiences and quality of service at every touchpoint.
The solutions can also be combined with Microsoft’s AI personal assistant, Copilot for Dynamics 365, offering a range of capabilities including:
- Deeper, detailed reporting and analysis – not only does Dynamics 365 connect your files and data, but its dashboards also offer real-time insights that will improve decision making and forecasting, while its AI capabilities can use historic data to offer accurate data predictions, insights and suggestions to inform your sales and marketing activity. With all of this, teams can segment their CRM in more detail to offer personalised customer experiences.
- Pipeline prioritisation – Dynamics 365 dives into prospect data and ranks leads in terms of priority, so teams are always working on sales that are most likely to close.
- Employee training – Dynamics 365 works with Copilot to improve a team’s quality of service with on-the-job training. It can listen to sales calls in real-time and provide feedback at the end. Plus, it’ll create a log of how customer service teams respond to queries, so all other agents know the best way to tackle it in the future.
- Remote connectivity - Microsoft 365 offers better connectivity and visibility of field workers. With remote access to your systems, they’ll be able to access relevant customer information and manuals to help with their call out job, while the team back at base can see their progress and easily manage their day.
- Sales and marketing automation – the platform’s clever automation can support teams across campaign creation and reporting. Not only can it suggest follow-up actions after a sales call, but it can also help create a campaign report, boosting productivity and saving employee time spent on admin.
What is Salesforce?
Run in the cloud, Salesforce is an advanced CRM solution that’s been expanding its broad range of capabilities since its creation in 1999. Similar to Microsoft Dynamics 365, the solution offers a range of capabilities that cover sales, customer service, marketing, commerce and community, offering a detailed view of customer profiles.
Its specialised capabilities include:
- Pipeline management - with all the tools and automation to track net-new opportunities, nurture and track sales leads, and forecast sales, sales teams will have no problems managing and closing leads.
- Advanced insights – the system offers detailed insights of customer behaviour, making it easier to segment profiles and setup personalised campaigns.
- Personalised shopping experiences – Salesforce supports the creation of customer loyalty programmes and the use of product recommendations to help users generate personalised shopping experiences.
How do Dynamics 365 and Salesforce differ?
As you can see from their capabilities, there isn’t a lot, feature-wise, that sets the two apart. However, it’s their infrastructure, user experience and integration capabilities that hold the power to sway you one way or the other. Ultimately, it’s just about which one will work better for your current processes and systems. Take a look…
Architecture
As previously mentioned, Dynamics 365 offers a suite of business applications that covers both CRM and ERP capabilities, which can be deployed in the cloud or on-premises depending on your needs. One of its biggest benefits, is its modular framework, which allows businesses to choose and pay for the apps that they need – and add-on other capabilities as they scale – meaning you only ever have to pay for what you need.
Meanwhile, Salesforce is solely a CRM platform that runs on a multi-tenant cloud infrastructure, meaning businesses share resources with other Salesforce customers, and are limited to the level of customisation they can benefit from.
Winner: Dynamics 365
The flexibility and customisation available make Dynamics 365 perfect for businesses of all sizes. Its modular architecture means smaller companies can access pipeline management capabilities, without paying the hefty price tag for a complete system offering advanced features that they’re not ready for, while large corporations can take advantage of the solution’s advanced customisation capabilities that can be shaped around current processes.
Integration
Part of Microsoft’s network, Dynamics 365 seamlessly integrates with other Microsoft apps to extend its capabilities, including Microsoft 365, PowerBI and Azure, while also supporting external integrations.
Salesforce, on the other hand, supports a wide range of third-party integrations, in particular, the Einstein AI platform that offers a range of AI capabilities.
Winner: Dynamics 365
While both have great integration capabilities, in our eyes, Microsoft takes the edge for businesses that already use their products, since it offers seamless in-app integration with the tools you already use.
User experience
Already using Microsoft’s products? With Dynamics 365 you’ll feel right at home. It’s purposefully built with a similar, easy-to-follow design, making it simple for anyone to adopt - but existing Microsoft users particularly will have no problem finding their way around.
While Salesforce may not be familiar to users, it doesn’t mean that its user experience isn’t great! If anything, it means it has had to work twice as hard to make sure it’s easy to navigate to be able to compete with Microsoft.
Winner: Draw
This one is just down to preference. Ultimately, they both have great user interfaces and are easy to navigate. Microsoft might just take the biscuit for those that are already comfortable, and like, its familiar interface.
Community support
Dynamics 365 and Salesforce both offer a range of support and tutorials to help users get the most out of the platform, however Salesforce has a much larger user base and support hub, meaning users of the tool will probably be able to find answers to wider range of queries, faster.
Winner: Salesforce
While both offer amazing user support, time is money in the sales world, and Salesforce has built an expansive hub that could make answering a user query much quicker.
Cost
There is a significant cost difference between the Microsoft and Salesforce CRM systems. Dynamics 365 apps can be bought in bundles or individually, with pricing for the popular Dynamics 365 Sales Enterprise Edition bundle starting at £86.30 per user, per month. In comparison, the cost for Salesforce’s Sales Cloud Enterprise bundle is £132 per user, per month.
Winner: Dynamics 365
The modular framework that Dynamics 365 uses makes the pricing of the platform far more accessible for businesses in comparison to Salesforce.
Why Dynamics 365 is our CRM recommendation
It’s the flexibility and customisation available with Dynamics 365 that makes the platform our top recommendation for businesses looking to invest in a high-quality CRM. Whether you’re an SME or global corporation, you can pick the applications you need to start and scale with add-ons at any time, making it a future-proof investment that will stay with you as you grow. As it’s a Microsoft product, you can rely on the platform’s security, and stay on the cutting-edge with its innovative capabilities thanks its automatic updates. While it’s suitable for all businesses, no matter the applications use, for those businesses that have businesses uses, or is looking to download, Microsoft apps, this platform will be your best option in terms of integration and usability.
Start your CRM journey with Dynamics 365
Has this article given you food for thought? Get in touch with a member of our team to find out whether Dynamics 365 is the right move for your business. We can work with you to identify your current business challenges and growth needs to build a Dynamics 365 package that’s suited to you.
