HCL Unica (acquired by HCL Technologies from IBM in late 2018) is a suite of enterprise marketing management tools including marketing automation with cross-channel campaign management, budgeting and forecasting, project workflow management, asset management, brand management and spend management.
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Infor CRM
Score 6.0 out of 10
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Infor CRM delivers tools for individuals, teams, and companies focused on increasing sales performance and the insights to optimize sales, marketing, and service strategy and execution. Infor CRM provides sales teams with rich customer information from interactions and transactions across the business and accommodates the modern flexible workforce with multiple access methods. Robust process automation capabilities enable efficiencies and the application of best practices across sales…
I think it is wel suited for a business with a lot of one on one relations in the database. For example a supermarket that sells products to a client and gives a reduction on that product. It is nice if the selection process is not to complex and does not involve to many calculations. It is also nice if it is very clear what you want to follow up. In our environment we have lots of many-to-many relations. for example one product is held by more then one client. And that client might have more of those products with other clients. These kind of situation demands for a lot of calculations with derived fields(*), and there things go far too slow. Unica is probably not such a good solution for us, because our environment is too complex, and so is to process of creating the selection, we often have to change things in the selection flows. Because of the complexity it is difficult to see what the flow is exactly doing afterwoods, it also takes to much time to modify existing campaigns. The interface is not handy to work with, if you have long lists of variables, of tables or derived fields(*) you have to scroll through trough them, you can not really search them or reorder them. You can not drag and drop fields or other objects like derived fields in the flow, what would be easy if you have to make frequent changes to the proces flow. When you copy objects something the content of the object changes because the links with other objects or lost. (*) derived field: field to calculate something
If you have a mobile workforce, it likely wouldn't be as appropriate (keep in mind we're using the desktop client, and have very limited experience with the web app). It is well suited if your business needs lots of custom processes- find a good vendor. We utilize SimpleSoft out of Ohio, and they have been excellent. Key question: think about where your business is going to be in 5-10 years, and will this CRM solution be able to grow with us?
Ability to translate Multiple SQL queries into a very easy to use visual GUI.
Provides the ability to pre-define segments, run them once in off hours, store them in their own system tables for quick youth and a significant reduction in CPU utilization on the database.
It’s use of Reusable objects. Including user variables to pre-define calculations one time, macros that you can create and pass values to parameterize the SQL code And the creation of templates to easily replicate work.
It’s ability to bring in external data on the fly that can very easily be mapped into any flowchart.
It’s flexibility and creating UNIX script via triggers to automate sending of files to multiple vendors with different FTP sites
It’s flexibility in the output layouts that it can create.
Saleslogix functionality can be managed to a very granular level for each individual using it. Within the users profile you can restrict access to modules, remove write permission, remove export privileges, etc.
Saleslogix has one of the best sync engines I have ever seen. If you allow your outside sales reps to have their own database, they can modify customer record while off line and when they do have internet access they can sync changes in both directions. This functionality works great when you have inside and outside sales staff covering the same territory.
Saleslogix can be customized using Visual Basic Code syntax. This is a positive aspect as well as a negative. Our existing Saleslogix is so customized that if we were to upgrade to 8.0 it would cost us over $20k to redo some of the customizations. Upgrades are frequently incompatible with customizations.
Greater integration of real time (Interact) capabilities with outbound channels, in particular IBM eMessage Email & SMS delivery.
Additional outbound channels to be integrated into eMessage, including Facebook Fanpage & Twitter DM broadcasts. At the moment these are possible only through custom additional integration.
Support for additional marketing database technology, e.g. MySQL, Exasol, ParAccel, WX2.
Provision of database technology with software purchase, as Web technology (IBM WebSphere Express) is supplied for free, but no database is supplied - since IBM also market DB2, which is a supported technology it seems a shame.
InforCRM has made dramatic improvements in the web client though in some cases it has been painfully slow to get the most needed things updated. An example is the slow speed of the web client. The newest update is supposed to fix this.
The web client does not autosave, so users have to remember to hit the 'save' button at each screen. This is the biggest complaint of users going from the desktop client to the web client.
I personally would like to see data panes (account, contact, etc.) with the capability to set up a different view for each team and/or security level that would access the data.
There are three main factors to renew a licence: 1) Cost to migrate to another platform would be rather expensive and time consuming, plus the requirement of retraining employees to use a new tool 2) It has been proven time and time again that it is a market leader in the space (10 years +) 3) It can be built upon, with the addition of additional IBM EMM modules - despite theories it does have very strong digital capabilities.
Because we've already made the investment in the original on-premise version, the cost per user is relatively low. The product has grown with us and we can now choose a LAN or Web client version and host the site internally, giving us total control of our data. The iPhone and iPad versions allow the sales team quick access in the field and the voice-to-text option is quite handy. SalesLogix doesn't require that our technology stack be constantly up to date which again, keeps our cost down. They are always making enhancements to the product and we can choose to update/upgrade when those enhancements appeal to us enough to justify adding the service pack.
- We had to rebuild a part of the datamart afterwards to tighten up and simplify the selection process. But as it was too time consuming to rebuild all the existing campaigns, we no run campaigns on different versions of the datamart. - The response tracking of the campaigns never worked out well, it was impossible to implement a direct response where there is a link between the lead and the response in our operational process
The contact history and the response history are so powerful. You can track whatever you want to help the call center to push relevant offers to our customer. In addition, predictive models can be built, with patience, in IBM Campaign. If you have some complaints from the call center about any campaigns, you can easily validate it into the contact or response history.
We selected INFOR CRM over Salesforce simply because it was affordable and didn't have so many 'bells & whistles' that Salesforce has that we were not using. We didn't realize that the compatibility with upgrades were going to be such an issue.
