Salesforce and CiviCRM

Submitted by mpm on
This morning, I looked at both Salesforce.com, with the second nonprofit template, and CiviCRM with a small group of colleagues. All of us implement, or have used, one or both of the systems. But each of us has expertise in only one of the systems.(I'm one of the CiviCRM folks). It's pretty interesting to compare them. The nonprofit template has certainly helped to make it easier for nonprofits to do the brain surgery required to use a for-profit sales tool for nonprofit CRM purposes. Salesforce.com is, of course, much more sleek and polished. And the power behind the application is pretty unassailable. And, there is a huge ecosystem of add-ons available for Salesforce.com that doesn't exist yet for CiviCRM. But there are significant modifications, both in the way nonprofits think about data, as well as the way data is manipulated, that have to take place in order for organizations to use Salesforce.com. CiviCRM is really intuitive for organizations to use out of the box. Donation pages, and event registration are built in to CiviCRM, but have to be added into Salesforce.com. It's way easier to create relationships in CiviCRM - you can create any kinds of relationships you want. Can create groups and smart groups easily in CiviCRM. This is harder in Salesforce.com, and smart groups don't exist in Salesforce.com. Anyway, there's lots more, and you'll be hearing lots more about both of these tools from me in the coming months.

Comments

Hi there, I think sessions

Submitted by Michael McAndrew (not verified) on

Hi there,

I think sessions like this are a great breeding ground for ideas that can improve complex systems like CiviCRM and salesforce. You get the kind of insights that are much harder to come by when your head tends to think within a single CRM paradigm.

Comparing how these systems faciliate a particular simple non profit task like sending a mailing, administering an event, or writing a report sounds like it would be fun and very useful.

I'm a CiviCRM implementor/developer so am particularly receptive to ideas for improving the Civi approach.

I believe that I was in the

Submitted by JuliaKM (not verified) on

I believe that I was in the same CiviCRM bof session as you at Drupalcon. :) At the nonprofit where I work, we're struggling with the same question. I would really like to go with CiviCRM to help foster the community but the level of customization we need may be out of our budget (we previously got burned by another CRM vendor).

It would be great if you could add your thoughts to the thread I started on the CiviCRM forum and Salesforce vs. CiviCRM:
http://forum.civicrm.org/index.php?topic=7004.0

This is a much needed

Submitted by Ehren (not verified) on

This is a much needed comparison. I'm more in the SalesForce universe at the moment, but came to it through SugarCRM and like the semi-open source approach. I also know there are certain things you can do when you host yourself that you can't do with SalesForce (cue an argument about The Cloud...)

In my experience, SalesForce is probably the best tool if your organization's model doesn't quite fit a common paradigm. E.g. if you have members but are more akin go a professional association. Or if you get your funding through the sale of products rather than donations. Or if you're really a lender like Kiva... SF is a general purpose organizational software engine more than it is CRM.

I'd love to see a report on how much it costs various orgs to use SalesForce - how many users, what their discounts are, what training they pay for, etc.

I worked as a GoldmineCRM

Submitted by Zachary Krebs (not verified) on

I worked as a GoldmineCRM consultant for 4 years but have recently switched to using CRM tools like CiviCRM, SugarCRM, Info@Hand, RedHorseCRM. CiviCRM's main advantage over other CRM tools for non-profits is its workflow and the terminology it uses to describe things. A donor is not an account, and a donation/contribution is not a sale. The other obvious thing that CiviCRM does that other CRM tools don't do a very good job at is integrate with the website. For example, CiviCRM running on Drupal is able to make contact information public and private on the site, and utilizes powerful extensions like CCK and Views to accomplish great things. The value of CiviCRM is how it integrates to the Web/CMS/Social Network, which "traditional CRM tools" are only starting to figure out about.

I have to agree.

Submitted by chris holt (not verified) on

I have to agree. Salesforce.com is great but it is also complicated and intimidating to less than the geeks. I have assisted one non-profit to use salesforce after they found Kintera to be too difficult and they love salesforce. I've tried to get another non-profit to use salesforce and am having difficulty with buy in. CivivCRM, which I haven't used, but which I have looked at seems much more intuitive.

I head a 501c3 non-profit

Submitted by Mike (not verified) on

I head a 501c3 non-profit with a Drupal Site. We want to integrate a new CRM and internal staff operations solutions (such as online collaboration, group calendars, central file repository, project management – basically most stuff to run our internal operations).
We’ve started off looking at CiviCRM, but have heard it is very difficult to customize, so might not be great long-term solution.
My bro is longtime Salesforce employee and strongly suggests we use Salesforce as our CRM and internal ops solution. His biggest question is the Drupal-Salesforce integration. You seem the guy who knows more than anyone about this. My question is if you think it remains a big hurdle or not. I want to have as seamless a connection between my site and CRM (and other apps) as possible.

Also whether your Salesforce module for Drupal will be supported/maintained going forward. I’m not clear on the level of demand for it.

So big picture, my question is whether to go with easy, seamless integration of CiviCRM, but not get as robust and extensible of functionality. Or to go with Salesforce, and risk integration headaches forevermore. Or do you even agree Salesforce is superior?
I’d be grateful for any insight.

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