D&B Hoovers vs. Salesforce Agentforce Sales

Prospecting corporate accounts near a hotel location. Our sales manager wants to generate a list of companies within a 5 mile radius that may need regular lodging for employees or contractors. D&B Hoovers will allow her to filer by geography, industry, company size and employee count. Then she can view detailed company profiles and contact decision-makers.

Incentivized

Obviously, for any business, there are two main areas to focus on — the sales path and the service path. Sales Cloud wouldn’t be suited for a company that’s primarily into support services. For those kinds of companies, Salesforce has a different product — Service Cloud. So, for anyone in the support or service space, Sales Cloud isn’t the right fit.

Incentivized

• The D&B Hoovers platform enables our team to customize, giving us the ability to fine-tune our searches
• D&B Hoovers integrates very well Salesforce, our CRM system, streamlining the workflows of sales teams and ensuring the verified transfer of data between platforms
• D&B Hoovers provides highly accurate and reliable business data

Incentivized

• The customizations - We have an organization that operates differently from most companies, so we’ve had to implement quite a few customizations — and Salesforce allows us to do that quite quickly. Most of the time, delays come from dependencies on other internal parties rather than the system itself.
• From my perspective as a consultant, one of the biggest advantages is that everything is in Salesforce — all the details, all in one place. The ability to customize it easily is a big plus; there’s really a lot you can do with it.

Incentivized

• I think maybe if they vetted the contacts that they're providing for those companies, it would be beneficial because I do use other avenues to vet the contacts because a lot of times I found that it is outdated information in D&B Hoovers, so that would be beneficial to us.

Incentivized

• We still need to include the production part. We started using Salesforce to sell the seeds — our inventory is in SAP — and from there we handle sales and track the process of planting, harvesting, selling, and then collecting payments. But we don’t yet manage the earlier production processes, like production planning. We handle allocation, but not full production planning, and that’s an area where we still have room for improvement.

Incentivized

I use D&B Hoovers very frequently and could not do my job as efficiently without it. I think there is room for improvement, but it is effective enough that I feel as though I will continue renewing by subscription. I highly recommend D&B Hoovers and find it very accurate and easy to use.

Incentivized

There are days when I wish we hadn't switched, but I know that if we put in the time, we will get to where we want to be with the software and that it has many more capabilities than anything else we looked at. However, the amount of time and onboarding we need to do is also far greater than we realized/were told when we originally bought the product. They told us we should hire onboarding support, but at the end, after we had already reached our budget maximum for this, so it's been slower than we had hoped.

Incentivized

Whenever I had to use D&B hoovers, I never had a hard time with getting what I need. Additionally, when I show the tool to others, they tend to understand the platform quite quickly. The tool itself is very good and straightforward when I use it to help me put analyses together.

Because I think it could be easier. We have different standards today since we’re used to interacting with consumer apps like Starbucks, where all you do is scan your card. Then, when you use Sales Cloud, there are still a lot of manual inputs. So my mission with AI is really about figuring out how to make that easier.

Incentivized

The platform is generally reliable and accessible when needed, with minimal application errors or unplanned outages. There may be occasional maintenance or minor disruptions, but these are usually communicated in advance and handled efficiently. Overall, it offers a high level of availability, ensuring that you can count on it for your daily operations.

Incentivized

Salesforce is always available securely from any internet-capable device anywhere in the world, UNLESS you choose to set security measures so that ONLY trusted IP ranges may access the system at certain times of the day. It's all about choice and flexibility with Salesforce products.

Incentivized

While the platform generally functions well, with pages loading in a reasonable time and reports completing within a satisfactory timeframe, there is room for improvement. Performance can sometimes lag with more complex queries or during peak usage times. Additionally, when integrated with other software or systems, there can be occasional slowdowns. Overall, while it performs adequately, optimizing speed and integration efficiency could enhance the user experience.

Incentivized

Salesforce performance in general is excellent. "The cloud infrastructure beneath Force.com has been fine-tuned over the past 10 years. It powers nearly 100,000+ businesses running more than 185,000 applications that 3 million users count on every day."
Points per Salesforce -
1) Multitenant kernel - With a multitenant platform, each business that uses the app doesn’t have its own copy. Instead, all businesses share a single copy and then customize it for their specific needs.
2) ISO 27001 certified security - You can’t compromise when it comes to enterprise-level security. Force.com is road-tested and trusted by nearly 100,000+ companies, including many of the world’s most security-conscious organizations, such as banks and health care providers.
3) Proven reliability - All Force.com apps run on world-class data centers with backup, failover, and disaster-recovery facilities. Force.com has had a proven 99.9 percent uptime record for years.
4) Proven, real-time scalability - Force.com is used by many of the world's largest enterprises, including Cisco, Japan Post Network, and Symantec. Applications can automatically scale from a few users to millions of page views, as needed.
5) Real-time query optimizer - You need fast access to your data. The Force.com query optimizer delivers under 300ms response time, at a massive scale.
6) Real-time transparent system status - You can always see real-time system performance, availability, and security information at trust.salesforce.com.
7) Real-time upgrades - Unlike traditional software platforms, our upgrades never break your customizations, code, or integrations. We upgrade the platform for you 3 to 4 times each year. As a result, you’re always on the latest version, with access to the latest features, performance, and security enhancements.
8) Real-time sandbox environments - With a single click, you can create copies of your applications, configuration, and data in separate environments for development, testing, and training.
9) Three global production data centers and disaster recovery - Force.com runs on three geographically dispersed, mirrored data centers with built-in replication, disaster recovery, a redundant network backbone, and no single points of failure

I think it could be better, easier and faster. Whenever I chat with someone it takes so long to get to an actual agent, and then when I finally get to one, they oftentimes don't have the answers for me or do not understand what I am asking, which is very frustrating.

Incentivized

The overall support has been good. More and more features are being released quite frequently. Very small features are also making big difference in how the tool can be adapted and used better. If there is anything we need or are stuck, the support team sets up a call and helps in resolving the issue/provides workarounds.

I attended two training sessions. I would rate them a 4 as an advanced user. It was very basic – great for someone new – would give 8+ for new person.

I had 3 years of experience at the time. I skipped basic and went onto advanced and still not helpful. A lot of it was best practices that didn’t feel relevant for our business

The training sessions were well-structured and covered the key functionalities of the platform, making it easy to get up to speed. The trainers were knowledgeable and responsive to questions, which added value to the learning experience. However, a bit more in-depth coverage of advanced features and use cases would have made the training even more beneficial.

Incentivized

I have gone through multiple. The content that’s delivered is quite basic – I wish they had more advanced training.

We are grandfathered into premium support plus training. We get unlimited access to instructor led and online training for free. We have taken advantage of this

for our use case, the implementation was minimal and we did not need a lot of help. The D&B Hoovers platform is pretty intuitive and our account manager was ready for any questions that came up when we use the D&B Hoovers platform

Incentivized

Just from an organizational standpoint - we standardized our data prior to moving to Salesforce. But we essentially standardized it wrong. That's created a big disgusting mess for us know that I'll have to deal with as the Admin. Be sure you think through use cases prior to doing something like that - seek outside opinions on how the data will work best, especially depending on what else you're going to integrate with Salesforce.

Finance Analytics provides a more thorough company credit report and is more in-depth than Hoovers. However, I use Hoovers for instances where I do not need that information because it allows unlimited queries, whereas you pay for a limited number of reports from Finance Analytics. Hoovers provides a better link between corporate family trees and finance analytics.

Incentivized

So I've evaluated, implemented Microsoft Dynamics in the past. I've used Oracle CRM solutions. I've used Daylight, which is a very niche CRM system the last couple of years. And I've evaluated a variety from Legacy Microsoft Ones to Zoho and Sugar when making implementation decisions at other companies. But usually I've gone with Salesforce. I'd say it's better than most. The only one that I generally prefer, and last time I chose an implementation from scratch, I did Microsoft Dynamics. And the reason is for small mid-size organization, Microsoft Dynamics, if you already have Microsoft Office products, it's much better integrated to all of the Excel, Word, OneNote, Outlook email than what you get from Salesforce. And so that's the only one that if someone's a Microsoft organization and small sized company, it'll save a lot of integration things, a lot of security, a lot of login and access and IT management by just sticking within the Microsoft ecosystem. But outside of that, if you don't use Microsoft or if you're a large organization or have other needs that you want, Salesforce I'd say is better than all of the other CRM offerings out there. It's the easiest to use and the most robust and the most vendors and products for the ecosystem.

Incentivized

The pricing model is generally clear and competitive, but there could be more flexibility in terms of unit pricing or billing frequency to better accommodate varying needs. While the contract terms are straightforward, exploring more options or customizable plans might enhance the overall value.

Incentivized

Salesforce is the most widely used CRM system. Professionalism tends to increase when things go wrong for market leaders. Salesforce considers us as users because they own the market. Having all of our data in one place and all of our teams working within Salesforce. Anyone who uses Salesforce is impacted by it, even if they don't.

D&B Hoovers is quite effective at adapting to the needs of different departments and locations, allowing for flexible deployment and integration across various parts of an organization. While it scales well and supports a broad range of users and functions, there might be some limitations depending on the size and complexity of the organization’s requirements. Overall, it provides a robust solution that can grow with your needs.4o mini

Incentivized

It's very scalable as it has a ton of features (but you do need an admin who understands how to leverage these features). Because of the various features, we've also needed to host onboarding sessions with our users so that they can familiarize themselves with the platform, which isn't always super user-friendly or intuitive.

Incentivized

very professional

Incentivized

Using Salesforce.com has made my daily routines more efficient and simplified the manual tasks I had to perform independently. I can now access data from any device, online or offline, and provide better guidance to my team about the forecasts provided by the built-in artificial intelligence (AI). A chat with a Salesforce support specialist would be great. The knowledge base has a community forum where Salesforce users can ask questions and learn more about the product.

• D&B Hoovers allows me to make the most of my time when searching for companies within specific industries. Once I find a company and examine their profile, I can then generate a list of employees in the purchasing and engineering departments. The profiles for each listed employee contain cell phone, Email address and LinkedIn profile. This information helps me to bypass the companies front desk and get directly to the people I need to speak with.
• By knowing the specific job title for the people that I am contacting and then being able to click on their LinkedIn link to learn a little about them before I make the call, I come across as a sales professional instead of an impersonal cold-caller.
• In cases where I do need to go through a front desk receptionist whose primary mission is to screen out sales people, I find that three out of four times the receptionist will connect me to the specific employee because I know their name, department, and job title. The Intel provided by D&B Hoovers makes it possible for me to get to the people I need to speak with.

Incentivized

• It allows me to keep a close eye on all of my performance metrics through the Dashboard Reporting, ie what my sales pipeline looks like, how much it's changed in the last 60 days, new opportunities created in the last 7 days, # of emails sent for the week, etc. The ease of the design and output make it really easy to check my progress throughout the day to find where I have holes and am falling short on my personal and work goals. It's resulted in greater transparency with my Mgmt Team and shorter 1-on-1 mtgs with my boss as he can see exactly where I am at all times (to be fair, I'm a senior sales rep, so he pretty much lets me do my job completely unfettered), but it does prove that I am continually producing which recently resulted in a raise I didn't even ask for.
• The SF repository is so detailed that I don't have to spend tons of time finding frequently used websites attached to a client or see what all interactions with the company look like. Even though I don't use SF for my bulk emails and email sequences, SF provides me with an email to use in the bcc of these emails which links everything back to SF. I find that extremely helpful. This really impacts my efficiency and I can honestly say that once I started using all the functionality of data management, it saved me about 20% of my time/week that I could then allocate towards other revenue-generating tasks like prospecting and account management. The more time I have for those, the better. My year-over-year on accounts 1 year and older just grew by 17% this last year.

Incentivized