Salesforce.com Hidden Costs
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Counting the Hidden Costs of Salesforce.com
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Organizations evaluating CRM solutions should be aware of the hidden costs of Salesforce.com’s licensing structure. This
document was created to 1) help organizations to understand the areas where hidden costs exist, 2) ask the right
questions of the CRM vendors they have chosen to investigate, and 3) make informed CRM investment decisions.
For organizations considering Salesforce.com, common misconceptions or surprises include the following:
HYPER-PREMIUM PRICING. Salesforce.com Professional Edition (list price USD $65/user/month) has a very
limited set of functionality that meets few businesses’ needs. As a result, Salesforce.com upsells companies to its
Enterprise Edition, which they state is their most popular edition at a list price USD $125/user/month. Surprisingly,
even this version is incomplete. In contrast, Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online is a complete CRM solution and
available for USD $44/user/month.
ADD-ON CHARGES. Salesforce.com sells add-on functionality at an additional cost. Additional costs include
items like mobile (USD $50/user/month), knowledge base (USD $50/user/month), offline access (USD
$25/user/month), visual workflow, partner and community portals, and more. In contrast, many of these
capabilities are included with Microsoft Dynamics CRM, or available at a lower additional cost.
EXORBITANT STORAGE COSTS. Organizations that need more storage capacity are subject to Salesforce.com’s
additional storage costs which can be as much as USD $250/gigabyte/month. In contrast, additional storage in
Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online is $9.99/gigabyte/month.
MISSING FUNCTIONALITY. While Salesforce.com has invested in numerous acquisitions to build its
collaboration and Platform-as-a-Service products, relatively less investment has gone into its CRM product line.
In contrast, Microsoft Dynamics CRM is recognized as a leader by leading analyst firms, and is committed
to innovating its CRM products.
FRAGMENTED MOBILE SUPPORT. While Salesforce.com claims to differentiate on its mobile capabilities, it has
gaps in device support (e.g., Android, Windows Phone). Additionally, there is no continuity between the Sales
Cloud, Service Cloud, and Chatter. In contrast, Microsoft Dynamics CRM provides options for organizations
to obtain a consistent experience across devices for a reasonable cost.
The remainder of this whitepaper provides a cost comparison to Microsoft technologies, while providing detailed insight
into Salesforce.com’s hidden costs. Additionally, it provides specific guidance on what topics to discuss with
Salesforce.com prior to signing a contract.
If you would like additional information, please visit our website at http://crm.dynamics.com.
Salesforce.com Hidden Costs
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Counting the Hidden Costs of Salesforce.com
Contents Pay More and Get Less with Salesforce.com .......................................................................................................................... 3
User Productivity Costs ........................................................................................................................................................... 6
Deployment Costs ................................................................................................................................................................. 11
Application Support Costs ..................................................................................................................................................... 13
How to Avoid Salesforce.com’s Hidden Costs ...................................................................................................................... 15
Select Microsoft Dynamics CRM Customers ......................................................................................................................... 16
Salesforce.com Hidden Costs
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Pay More and Get Less with Salesforce.com
Cloud-based customer relationship management (CRM) vendors such as Salesforce.com have made it relatively easy to
evaluate, compare, try, and subscribe to its CRM solutions. However, some customers have found that the projected versus
actual costs of using Salesforce.com increases their total cost of ownership far more than their published subscription
fees.1
Salesforce.com is missing critical functionality that you get with Microsoft products. Organizations that need to add
additional features or third party products can find themselves paying unexpected, and significant, extra charges in terms
of deployment, application support, and user productivity.
This paper illustrates that Salesforce.com offers a ―pay more, get less‖ value proposition, and also provides insight into
areas where functionality gaps may result in additional costs.
PAY MORE
a
Estimates are based on a common arrangement for a 50-user deployment. Costs are in U.S. dollars. b
Microsoft subscription costs include Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online, Microsoft Office 365, CWR Mobility, and 2 GB of additional storage. c
Deployment costs in this chart exclude implementation and resource costs associated with configuration, customization, integration, development, and data migration.
As the preceding chart depicts, organizations should be aware of additional costs that might be required to deliver
needed functionality and support through Salesforce.com.
Many Salesforce.com customers find out when it is too late—after a two or three year contract has already been signed—
that additional costs apply. For example, Salesforce.com customers face a hidden cost to user productivity and
subscription costs if important functionality such as workflow, beyond a simplistic version of it, is required.
Despite its premium priced offerings2, Salesforce.com often charges a premium for application support, application
administration, and data archiving and restoration. Additional costs can also apply for things like CRM data migration,
data de-duplication, Microsoft Outlook interoperability, mobile access, and offline usage.
1 See appendix, ―Customer Switchers: Salesforce.com to Microsoft Dynamics CRM‖
2 See Salesforce.com’s pricing information
List priceb:
$113/user/month
List price:
$659/user/month
!
List price:
$699/user/month
!
c
a
Salesforce.com Hidden Costs
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For these reasons, organizations evaluating Salesforce.com should understand the cost implications, and also understand
alternatives like Microsoft Dynamics CRM business software—one of the leading CRM solutions in the industry.
GET LESS
To help illustrate where Salesforce.com functionality limitations exist, consider the following comparisons of Microsoft and
Salesforce.com.
It is readily apparent that Salesforce.com provides a subset of the functionality that Microsoft provides—but at a premium
price. Each of the Salesforce.com limitations represents a subset of the hidden costs that can creep up with
Salesforce.com.
For organizations looking to leverage their existing Microsoft investments, Microsoft offers a more complete feature set.
Additionally, many Microsoft Dynamics CRM capabilities are included and interoperable with Microsoft Office 365,
Microsoft SharePoint Server, Windows Azure technology platform, Microsoft SQL Server database software, Microsoft
Exchange Server, or other Microsoft technologies – right out of the box. Organizations that select Microsoft Dynamics
CRM can derive even more value from investments that it has already made in Microsoft products.
A BETTER OPTION AND VALUE
Contrary to the Salesforce.com ―pay more, get less‖ approach is a better value proposition from Microsoft. For example,
Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online provides predictable pay-as-you-go pricing and a financially backed service level
agreement (SLA).
Flexibility, reliability, security, and simplicity
are often considered important characteristics
by organizations who evaluate CRM
solutions. Microsoft delivers tremendous
value when assessing these characteristics
along with delivering lower user productivity, deployment, and application support costs. This is one reason that
Microsoft Dynamics CRM is regarded as a leader in the CRM industry3 by top technology analysts.
Success. Microsoft Dynamics CRM has delivered successful sales, service, and marketing solutions to more than 30,000
customers and 2 million users worldwide, from the largest organizations in the world to the smallest. For more
information on some organizations that switched from Salesforce.com and realized success on Microsoft Dynamics CRM,
see the appendix section entitled, ―Customer Switchers: Salesforce.com to Microsoft Dynamics CRM.‖
3 http://crm.dynamics.com/en-us/analyst-coverage
Salesforce.com Hidden Costs
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Flexibility. With the power of choice in deployment, you
can implement in the cloud, on-premises, or have your
solution privately hosted by one of our partners.
Additionally, Microsoft Dynamics CRM is built on the xRM
Application Framework, a declarative modeling
application that lets power users modify and even create
new applications in a point-and-click manner. And
because Microsoft Dynamics CRM is built on .NET, it is
easy and cost-effective for organizations to leverage their
existing Microsoft investments to adapt Microsoft
Dynamics to specific needs and processes, as needed.
Reliability. In addition to a financially-backed 99.9
percent uptime SLA, Microsoft offers several global data
centers that are managed and operated directly by
Microsoft. Also, each Microsoft data center offers best-in-
class security and in-region disaster recovery.
Security. Unlike Salesforce.com, there is no co-mingling
of customer data in Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online.
Customers are provisioned with their own customer
database to maximize the security and integrity of their
data.
Simplicity. The Microsoft Outlook experience and ease-
of-use is only one reason that sets Microsoft apart from Salesforce.com. Additionally, with Microsoft Dynamics CRM
Online, you are able to scale the number of users up or down, based on your business requirements.
The remainder of this document explores a range of hidden costs associated with Salesforce.com across a variety of
dimensions including deployment costs, application support costs, and user productivity costs.
Interested in comparing costs?
Check out the cost comparison calculator at
http://crm.dynamics.com/compare.
Salesforce.com Hidden Costs
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User Productivity Costs
Social and Collaboration: Salesforce.com provides Chatter to all CRM subscribers for no additional charge. However,
there are several collaborative features absent, and Salesforce.com customers have expressed mixed feeback on Chatter.
Activity feed relevance
Chatter is not as productive without the context of CRM records. Chatter Plus doesn’t
permit access to CRM objects such as opportunities, cases, or contracts. Chatter Free
doesn’t permit access to any Salesforce.com objects.
Workflow triggers Users can’t flag or create Outlook or CRM tasks from important Chatter posts, only follow
or unfollow.
Search
Salesforce.com search capabilities are disconnected, incomplete, and can cause user
productivity losses. For example: there is a separate search bar for content library and
Chatter Groups; the search options don’t have the ability to search through all custom
objects; the search function doesn’t search through attachments to CRM records. The
only files it searches through are content library and Chatter files. Additionally, global
search is only available if Chatter is enabled.
Reduce activity feed
clutter
New Chatter users automatically follow the objects and fields for feed tracking that their
Salesforce.com administrator has setup. It is incumbent upon them to ―unfollow‖
irrelevant groups, people, and objects—a time-consuming ―tear down‖ approach that
drains user productivity.
Document management
Salesforce.com has multiple document and file storage features including Chatter Files,
Content Library, attachments on CRM records, and a Documents tab. Which feature
should a customer use and when?
Document check-in /
check-out Content Library doesn’t provide an option to check in or check out a document.
Privacy Chatter doesn’t allow hidden groups. They are either public or private. Administrators
have visibility to private Chatter posts.
Enterprise-wide
deployment
Chatter can't always be used cross-company. It limits its customers to one instance of
Chatter per Salesforce.com organization with a maximum of five domains.
Twitter and Facebook
setup
Salesforce.com offers Twitter and Facebook monitoring through an AppExchange add-on
that does not include support. Customers have expended time and effort to install
without success or Salesforce.com assistance.
Twitter monitoring Salesforce.com Twitter requires the user to manually refresh to get new tweets. The
tweets come through a fire hose with no logical grouping or organization.
Hidden Costs
Salesforce.com for Twitter and Facebook Free/unsupported
Chatter Plus U.S. $15 per user per month (excludes existing
CRM susbscribers)
Workflow and Business Process Automation: Salesforce.com workflow is designed to handle simple business
processes, such as notifying a manager that a new opportunity has been created above a specific dollar amount. There
are significant limitations related to objects, conditions, criteria, actions, and timing.
Salesforce.com Hidden Costs
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Multi-entity business
process
Salesforce.com can’t run workflows across multiple standard entities, only the primary
entity. For example, it can’t update an account status field if a case has been opened or
an open opportunity exists.
User initiated workflow Users can’t initiate workflow, it is only triggered by automated workflow rules.
Chatter workflow Users can’t initiate workflow from Chatter, only view or take action on approvals.
Parent / child workflows Users can’t initiate a child workflow from a parent workflow.
Stop a workflow Users can’t stop a workflow, only administrators can deactivate a workflow rule.
Hidden Costs
Orchestrate ProcessComposer overcomes many of the limitations
and frustrations of the native Salesforce.com workflow engine and
action plans.
$35 per user per
month
Marketing Automation: Salesforce.com provides basic campaign management capabilities without the ability to target
specific products or automate drip campaigns with time and action-based workflows.
Mass email campaigns Salesforce.com limits users to 250 email messages per campaign in Professional Edition,
and 500 email messages per campaign in Enterprise Edition. (See page 31)
Campaign multi-currency Users can’t select a foreign currency for the campaign.
Programs and related
campaigns
Parent / Child campaign relationships can be established to manage a program, however,
rollup statistics such as budget and number of responses will not rollup to the parent
campaign.
Campaign price list Salesforce.com has no mechanism to associate a special price list with a campaign.
Target products Salesforce.com has no selection of targeted products for a campaign.
Hidden Costs Marketo Marketing Automation $2,000 per month
Eloqua Marketing Automation $2,000 per month
Salesforce Automation: Salesforce.com lacks account, opportunity, and contact management capabilities required by
many companies to manage their customers. Customers must fit into the defined forecast and sales pipeline
management templates which have limited flexibility.
Account management
Users have no visibility to key account management aspects such as lead history,
competitors, credit balance and status, communication preferences at the account level,
order and quote history, account specific pricing, and payment terms.
Contact management
Salesforce.com doesn’t display the converted lead that created a contact, or track related
contracts/agreements by contact. Also, it can’t assign multiple accounts to contact (many
to one).
Order and invoice
tracking
Salesforce.com can’t pull quote or opportunity details into orders and invoices to
automate the business process and reduce clerical errors.
Product and SKU depth Users have no ability to organize products into unique units, define effective dates,
convert products into a kit, or substitute products for discontinued or out of stock items.
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Forecast / Goal insight Users have no embedded graphical view of a forecast or ability to forecast on any criteria
or metric.
Goal flexibility Users can’t change forecast categories or definitions, or assign custom time periods such
as weekly or bi-weekly.
Quotas Managers can’t submit quotas or goals to subordinates for review and acceptance or tie
child goals to a parent goal.
Contract setup Salesforce.com has no automated contract setup or option to pull contract line items
from products in the opportunity.
Contract management
Salesforce.com has no delivered process to manage allotted products or services versus
actual. It cannot track assigned product serial numbers. It has limited parent/child
contract relationships.
Contract visibility Users have no visibility to detailed contract pricing, discount terms, invoice history, or
service level without attaching the contract or customizing the form.
Hidden Costs
Vertiba Account Based Pricebooks Free/unsupported
Big Machines Configurator, Quotes, Pricing, Proposals and Contracts $20,000 and up
Right90 Sales Forecast Capture Varies
Scout Product Bundles $7 per user per
month
Service and Support: The Salesforce.com Service Cloud has been touted as a market-leading customer service solution.
The question that surfaces freqently is: At what price? Fundamental case management features and a dimensional
knowledgebase are available for additional subscription fees from Salesforce.com or its partners.
Case association Users can’t pool customers together under a common case or track customer satisfaction
related to a case.
Product-specific case
management
Users have no visibility to a contract pertaining to the case or related asset or product
serial number.
Workflow-driven case
actions
Users can’t start a script or process dialog against a case or manually trigger a workflow
within an open case.
Case routing and
escalation
Case routing is limited to specific entities and conditions. For example, users can’t
escalate or assign a case based on account owner’s assigned territory or contract status,
or prioritize a case if there is an open opportunity.
Knowledgebase and
article management
Users can’t assign multiple categories or subjects related to an article, create and manage
custom article templates, or track article comments without subscribing to
Salesforce.com Knowledge.
Customer service resource
scheduling
Salesforce.com has no service calendar with a consolidated list of service activities, nor
ability to assign resources to a service activity.
Service calendar actions Users have no option to reschedule and update service appointments, define scheduling
rules, select deployment locations/sites, or manage schedule conflicts in a calendar.
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Hidden Costs
Salesforce.com Knowledge is a multi-channel collaborative
knowledge base application.
$50 per user per
month
Stone Cobra Advanced Case Management $39 per user per
month
ServiceMax is a field service application built on Force.com
platform.
Estimated to be more
than $100 per user per
month
Reporting and Dashboards: Salesforce.com provides a basic set of tools to create reports and dashboards. Customers
with business intelligence requirements will need to subscribe to a third-party tool.
Inline visualizations Dashboards are not embedded in entity specific pages. The user needs to go back to the
home or dashboard pages.
Inline visualization
refreshes
Salesforce.com has no automatic notification to a user that a dashboard needs to be
refreshed.
Dashboard creation Users must create a dashboard from a custom report, not a standard report.
Dashboard drill down Users can’t click a specific chart component to see associated report details or drill down
into a specific chart component and display a new chart.
Analytics Users can’t create reports on any pairing of objects or entities, they are limited to record
type pairings restricted by the database schema.
Report formatting Users can’t change column headings and interactions such as drill down or navigate, nor
control report formatting such as number or date format.
Hidden Costs
Qlikview is a Salesforce.com business intelligence solution. Varies
Birst is a business intelligence appliance that can be deployed on-
premises or in the cloud. Varies
Platform: Salesforce.com is a proprietary platform with several database and architecture restrictions.
Built on open standards Developing applications requires the use of the proprietary Force.com platform and
coding in APEX and Visualforce.
Many-to-many
relationships
Users can’t add many-to-many relationships between standard entities—neither multiple
accounts to a case (several customers with the same issue) nor multiple accounts to a
contact.
Subject trees Users can’t organize products, sales literature, and knowledge base articles by subject,
they are only able to add categories and dimensions to knowledge base articles.
Conditional formatting Users have no option to add context to CRM list views by highlighting or changing fonts
and styles based on specific conditions.
Advanced find Salesforce.com can’t create criteria-based or conditional queries, only limit a search by
selecting which entities to search.
Salesforce.com Hidden Costs
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Active Directory
integration
Salesforce.com only enables the ability to configure single sign on. Organizations must
either implement a recommended solution (as described at Force.com) or purchase a
partner solution.
Hidden Costs Salesforce.com platform limitations reduce the chances to
successfully deploy the application and achieve high user adoption.
Potential for lower
return on
investment (ROI)
Salesforce.com Hidden Costs
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Deployment Costs
Microsoft Outlook Integration: To integrate Salesforce.com with Microsoft Outlook, you have to install an Outlook
add-on. Even with this add-on, you are limited to a background process that syncs only email, events, and tasks, leading
to lost productivity such as spending extra time looking up account history or determining if there are customer issues
that could adversely affect an opportunity.
Automatic email tracking Salesforce.com does not create email message activity records that are linked to the
original messages in Microsoft Outlook.
Multiple duplicate records
added to Salesforce.com
Without duplicate detection, multiple entries can be synced from Outlook to
Salesforce.com For example, where more than one person is trying to sync the same
entry from their Outlook contacts.
Global Address Book
synchronization You must use a partner application to synchronize your LDAP server with Salesforce.com.
Blank records added Salesforce.com has the potential to create blank records in Outlook.
HTML and rich text email Rich text or HTML email messages are converted to plain text when synchronized with
Salesforce.com.
Event synchronization
Salesforce.com will not sync with some Outlook Event conditions. Examples include 1)
recurring events, 2) all-day events (with certain criteria are applied), 3) event attendees,
and 4) multi-day events.
Corporate and federal
compliance policies
In the United States, Section 508 of the Americans with Disabilities Act requires that
federal agencies’ electronic and information technology is accessible to people with
disabilities. Salesforce.com for Outlook isn't fully 508-compliant and doesn't currently
support single sign on.
Customization If you rename tabs in Salesforce.com, such as changing Contacts to Candidates, those
new names aren’t reflected in Outlook.
Hidden Costs
Ping Identity Cloud Identity Solutions for Salesforce provides single
sign on by using Active Directory federation and automated cloud user
provisioning.
Pricing not
published
Riva Integration Server offers server-side integration between
Salesforce.com and Microsoft Exchange.
$195 per user
per year
Salesforce.com administrators can spend significant effort cleaning up
duplicate and triplicate records caused from Outlook. High
Invisible CRM SalesDesktop brings all Salesforce CRM objects to the
native Outlook environment.
$18 per user per
month
Supporting mobile and offline users: Salesforce.com customers have a single deployment option. There is no on
premise or partner hosted model.
On premises deployment Cloud deployment is the only option.
Offline Limited offline capability delivered through a briefcase. Doesn’t include forecasts, cases,
or reports.
Multiple device support
per user
A limit of one mobile device can be assigned to a user—for example, cannot use both an
iPhone and iPad.
Salesforce.com Hidden Costs
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Mobile reports Can’t view reports or data behind mobile dashboards, only the chart (See page 53).
Fragmented mobile
applications
CRM and Chatter mobile applications are separate, and the devices supported for Chatter
are not necessarily the same devices supported for CRM.
Incomplete mobile device
support
Salesforce.com Mobile for Android is a beta product, and it does not offer iPad or
Windows Phone support.
Access to all objects via
mobile device
Mobile Lite can’t access all standard objects such as Campaigns, Contracts, Products, or
Forecasts or any custom objects.
Hidden cost:
Salesforce.com Mobile Edition
$50 Per User /
Month (Included
w/ Unlimited
Edition)
Salesforce.com Offline Edition
$25 Per User /
Month (Included
w/ Enterprise
Edition +)
Migrating CRM Data: Like many CRM vendors, Salesforce.com provides an import wizard to migrate CRM account and
contact data. Customers who deploy Salesforce.com burden their implementation teams to migrate CRM data such as
opportunities, cases, activities, contracts, orders, and invoices using desktop or third-party applications.
Import multiple entities
To import CRM data such as opportunities or cases requires the use of a desktop tool,
the Force.com Apex Data Loader. This tool allows you to import one file to one entity or
object at a time, not one file to multiple entities or objects.
Import restrictions The import wizard allows a maximum of 50,000 records at a time; otherwise, accounts
and contacts need to be split into separate import files using the Apex Data Loader.
Data quality Salesforce.com does not have option sets / picklists for states and countries which can
create data inconsistency.
Hidden Costs Informatica Cloud Standard provides an enterprise-grade data
import and quality tool. $3,000 per month
Data De-Duplication: Salesforce.com does not have real-time de-duplication prevention capabilities.
Duplicate prevention Salesforce.com has no mechanism or alert to prevent duplicate records upon user entry.
Duplicate finder Salesforce.com has no feature or report that scans the database to identify duplicate
records.
Limited de-duplication
objects
De-duplication import rules are limited to the Leads, Accounts, and Contacts objects.
Other imported records, such as custom objects, can only be de-duplicated if the record
name, Salesforce ID, or external ID is provided.
Hidden Costs
CRM Fusion DupeBlocker stops the users from being able to create
duplicates in real time.
Maximum of $5,000
per year
CRM Fusion Demand Tools clean duplicate objects of any type
directly from your Salesforce CRM system
$2,500 to $5,000
per year
Salesforce.com Hidden Costs
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Application Support Costs
Application Administration: Companies often find that they have to spend extra time maintaining Salesforce.com
because of limited standard support offerings and no service level agreement (SLA).
Announced features that
are really private beta
Salesforce.com often announces new features as private beta or limited pilot well in
advance of general availability, confusing prospective customers and current users.
Automatic upgrades, no
customer choice
Salesforce.com historically released three updates annually, placing a heavy burden on
CRM administrators. Customers receive upgrades at the designated time assigned by the
vendor, not at their choosing.
No SLA Salesforce.com has no financially backed SLA.
Premium support
positioning
Salesforce.com markets and sells a Premier Success Plan offering as an alternative to its
Standard Success Plan, which is limited to online case submission, 12x5 phone support,
and two-business-day responses.
Developer and advanced
technical support
When Force.com developers experience a problem, they usually have to visit a forum or
Twitter group to resolve it, as Salesforce.com standard or premium support offerings do
not always resolve custom object or developer technical issues.
Hidden Costs
Premier Success Plan offers faster response, 24x7
coverage, and expanded training course access.
15 percent of license list price for
Professional and Enterprise Editions
Premier Administrator offers access to a pool of
Salesforce Certified Administrators who can
configure and maintain a Salesforce.com edition.
10 percent of license list price for
Professional and Enterprise Editions
Data Archiving and Restoration: Salesforce.com does not provide enterprise-class data archiving, restoration, and
compliance capabilities with the core application. Customers can manually monitor their data storage limits and run
basic data archiving processes, or invest in partner applications to automate and comply with corporate data retention
policies.
Data archiving Salesforce.com has no automated data archiving tool to archive records based on age or
other conditions.
Parent-child data
archiving
Salesforce.com provides tools such as the Apex Data Loader or Mass Delete process that
limit the archiving (delete or export) process to single entities for each process—users
can’t select multiple entities in one archive process.
Data and file storage
limits
Edition Data Storage File Storage
Professional Minimum per instance = 1 GB
Maximum per user = 20 MB
Minimum per instance = 11 GB
Maximum per user = 612 MB
Enterprise Minimum per instance = 1 GB
Maximum per user = 20 MB
Minimum per instance = 11 GB
Maximum per user = 612 MB
Unlimited Minimum per instance = 1 GB
Maximum per user = 120 MB
Minimum per instance = 11 GB
Maximum per user = 612 MB
Data center limitations Data centers are leased from a third-party web-hosting facility, Equinix, in North America
and Asia. Salesforce.com does not have a data center in Europe.
Storage double counting
Person accounts count against both account and contact storage because the API
considers each person account to consist of one account as well as one contact. Archived
activities count against storage.
Salesforce.com Hidden Costs
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Sarbanes-Oxley
compliance
Salesforce.com provides front-end revenue process compliance features such as
approvals, audit history, and the option to connect the API to an order management or
billing system for Enterprise and Unlimited Edition customers. Professional Edition
customers, however, will need to utilize third-party applications to comply with the U.S.
Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX).
Restoring data
Salesforce.com creates new record IDs when restoring data. The previously linked related
data (such as contacts and activities related to accounts) will not automatically be linked
to the restored records.
Configuration and code
backup
Salesforce.com has no ability to backup and restore configurations, customizations, or
APEX code without a sandbox.
Sandbox refreshes Full sandboxes can only be refreshed every 29 days, which makes it difficult to keep
sandbox and production instances in sync on a frequent basis.
Hidden Costs
Sesame Software Relational Junction allows you to load an
entire Salesforce.com site into a local database. $1 per user per year
Salesforce.com Additional Data storage $250 per GB per month
Salesforce.com Additional File storage $5 per GB per month
Bluewolf Salesforce Data Replicator allows you to back up
Salesforce CRM data to handle Sarbanes-Oxley compliance. $8,500 per year
Salesforce.com Hidden Costs
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How to Avoid Salesforce.com’s Hidden Costs
Asking the right questions helps organizations to avoid unwanted surprises after a contract is signed. To help you avoid
this undesirable situation, you might consider reviewing the following topics with Salesforce.com before you sign a
contract.
If I don’t use all my Salesforce.com licenses as planned, will Salesforce.com allow me to decrease the number of
users before the end of my contract?
Please provide an estimate for implementation charges from either Salesforce.com or a system integration
partner. If Salesforce.com claims that no implementation charges are needed, inquire what those charges might
be if the project doesn’t go successfully.
If I want to have my CRM system work like Outlook, what options exist and what are the associated costs?
Would you describe your licensing model for extra storage? Would you help me estimate my storage costs over
a one, three, and five year period?
How does Salesforce.com integrate with SharePoint for content and collaboration? Please provide an estimate of
how much a Salesforce.com and SharePoint integration will cost.
How much will it cost to add a mobile client for each of our users?
If my organization wanted to have iPad support for Salesforce.com CRM, how much would that cost?
Workflow, or the ability to ensure certain activities follow a certain process across the organization, is an
important piece of functionality for my company. If my organization needed to trigger a process from any piece
of data in CRM, could it? If not, what is the associated cost to enable this functionality?
Our organization would like a Service Level Agreement (SLA) to ensure Salesforce.com is committed to providing
uptime at the level that our organization requires. I understand Salesforce.com does not offer an SLA, but will it
allow customers to ―license‖ one? How much, and for what level of service?
Data de-duplication is important to ensure that our organization is making decisions on quality customer
information. Please help me understand how Salesforce.com identifies and prevents duplicates, and what
additional costs might be needed to ensure a high degree of data quality.
If my company should someday decide to use a different CRM vendor, are there any charges for getting a copy of
my organization’s data? In a flat file format (eg, *.csv)? What about in a relational format?
Salesforce.com Hidden Costs
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Select Microsoft Dynamics CRM Customers
Magma Design Automation: Switched from Salesforce.com to Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online
for better reporting, insight, and flexible change processes. Realized:
Reduction in IT administrative workload: Two-thirds
Reduction in customer support calls: 50 percent
Reduction in internal support tickets: 80 percent
Savings in software licensing costs: More than 70 percent
Savings in support costs: $200,000
Expected increase in sales productivity: 50 percent
Syncsort: Increased user adoption and reduced costs with Microsoft Dynamics CRM.
Smead: Reduced costs by 75 percent by switching from Salesforce.com to Microsoft Dynamics
CRM Online.
Data Reduction Systems: Reduced user costs by 50 percent and increased user adoption 100
percent.
New Orleans Hornets: Chose Microsoft Dynamics CRM over Salesforce.com.
Panduit: Switched from Salesforce.com; increased productivity 20 percent and, adoption rate 90
percent, achieved ROI in 10 months.
Taylor Corp / IGH Corporation: Switched from Salesforce.com and increased user adoption by
246 percent.
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27jan12