Microsoft BI (MSBI) vs. Pipedrive vs. Zoho CRM

Microsoft BI has a lot of features and is a very powerful tool, especially if you have folks on your team that know how to utilize all of its capabilities. To truly unlock all that it can do, it does require people to have a deep understanding of its capabilities. That's where the software really shines. If you are looking for a simpler, more basic reporting tool, there are other programs available that do not require such a steep learning curve.

Incentivized

Pipedrive is a fantastic tool to help monitor and track lead generation and referral sources. It helps maintain accountability with the sales team and helps ensure that we are doing appropriate marketing to maintain a steady influx of cases. The weekly and quarterly sales reports that it can generate are incredibly helpful and insightful. They help inform us of what we need to focus on each quarter/year.

Incentivized

Interfacing with our target clients at the correct minute is crucial in today's society. Another valuable include is its capacity to coordinated with other programs. It helps me in keeping track of the every day work emails I send to my colleagues or get. Zoho CRM makes it straightforward to consequence or send out information agreeing to our needs. Zoho makes a difference keep in mind individuals by means of e-mail and pop-ups, which dispenses with the issue of overlooking follow-ups and reminders. This not as it were helps within the organization of this incredible instrument but moreover within the execution of data.

Incentivized

• Comparatively easy to use compared to other data analytics solutions, collaborating with other colleagues on data work is simple.
• Using Visual Studio for database, ETL, reporting, and analytics development save time and money.
• Transfer of data from one application to another via Excel and comparison of data attributes between applications
• Dashboard functionality, as well as Python support, are available, allowing you to add additional charts and graphs.

Incentivized

• Great visual visibility of the funnel plus easy to drag the deals across the stages
• The email integration that collects all relevant communication (also through the possibility of adding a deal-specific Pipedrive address on BCC)
• The integration with Pandadoc, which we use a lot, so that Pipedrive keeps a really handy overview of the documents we have sent out / which have been signed

• Hooks into our website and can import data from forms.
• Has great automation tools built in.
• Reporting features are great.
• Easy to learn, makes it easy for us to onboard new users onto it.
• Fairly customizable. We have fine tuned it to work the way we need it to.

Incentivized

• MSBI designs can work on increasing data processing capabilities enough to handle the huge datasets etc.
• It would be a lot better if it is a little low on cost.
• it needs to create opportunities little more than they do regarding customization of some very unique visualization effects

• Showing the customers name on the pipeline page. Right now I can only get it to show the brand name twice. I wish it would replace the second brand name with the main point of contact.
• Better reporting tools. Their reporting tools are not easy to pick up. I've spent time trying to figure it out and it isn't something I can pick up on quickly.
• Better training options. I wish I had a personal trainer to walk me through the best way to use Pipedrive so I can get the most out of it.

Incentivized

• Need some way to switch a field type without losing the pre-existing data.
• The settings controls should be broken out differently - I don't like that I can't keep some users from exporting all contact records (i.e., the entire Contacts module) because if the export function is turned off, the export function of Reports for those same modules is also blocked.
• Frustrating that only 3 custom lookup fields are allowed per module in our license.

Incentivized

Microsoft BI is fundamental to our suite of BI applications. That being said, Northcraft Analytics is focused on delighting our customers, so if the underlying factors of our decision change, we would choose to re-write our BI applications on a different stack. Luckily, mathematics are the fundamental IP of our technology... and is portable across all BI platforms for the foreseeable future.

-2 for Its cost and +8 for the need of tracking of leads and monitoring of team.

Incentivized

i have already renewed my subscription twice. I am in the 3rd Year now. I have been using it for a while and have been recommending to my friends as well.. have attended ZOHOLICs the annual program of zoho and it gave me new insights of managing the crm solutoin.

Incentivized

The Microsoft BI tools have great usability for both developers and end users alike. For developers familiar with Visual Studio, there is little learning curve. For those not, the single Visual Studio IDE means not having to learn separate tools for each component. For end-users, the web interface for SSRS is simple to navigate with intuitive controls. For ad-hoc analysis, Excel can connect directly to SSAS and provide a pivot table like experience which is familiar to many users. For database development, there is beginning to be some confusion, as there are now three tool choices (VS, SSMS, Azure Data Studio) for developers. I would like to see Azure Data Studio become the superset of SSMS and eventually supplant it.

Incentivized

Pipedrive is easy to use and has a clean interface so we can follow up accurately. Its custom features help manage leads and evaluate team performance. It saves time and improves efficiency. Pipedrive is stable and supports integrations and automation.

Incentivized

The methodology of the 'out of the box' user interface is fairly easy to learn. In some cases however, the interface is not consistent throughout the software. Upgrades to the interface has certainly improved some of this--- but now we are seeing the same kinds of inconsistencies across Zoho apps, particularly those more recently added to their platform. This issue is not major in that everybody on staff seems able to learn how to work the programs--- it's just annoying and less than efficient when inconsistent user interfaces or inconsistent terms are used in the programs and/or the requisite documentation.

Incentivized

The product has been reliable.

In my many years using Zoho, I think there were only 1 or 2 days when there was something happening and I was not able to log in. Sure, it wasn't fun and we all panicked a bit, but right after that, all was well and work-life continued. Being cloud based, I'm never worried about losing my iPhone, iPad or Laptop as I know I can log in anywhere on any device and workflow won't stop.

Incentivized

SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS) can drag at times. We created two report servers and placed them under an F5 load balancer. This configuration has worked well. We have seen sluggish performance at times due to the Windows Firewall.

I don't recall every having any issues with a page not loading due to it being a Zoho issue. Anytime I've had any issues with something being wonky, I clear cache and that has always solved the problem. Or a simply computer reboot and we're back, hard at work. Look, I don't expect any product to delivery 100%, 100% of the time but if I had any consistent ongoing issues, I would have left many years ago. I still keep my eyes open to what is new but after a quick evaluation, I know Zoho will long be my home.

Incentivized

MSBI natively has a site that allows you to vote on user enhancements and bug fixes. This allows the largest nagging issues to float to the top and the development team can prioritize accordingly. As mentioned earlier, the large community base of MSBI developers assist technical resources in handling technical questions.

Incentivized

Between quick video tutorials and having very quick feedback from their support teams, it is one of the main reasons I would recommend Pipedrive. It is critical, especially when setting up the platform to meet your companies needs, that a solid support team like Pipedrive has is there to make the transition easier.

Incentivized

We did the training and that was a huge waste of money. The information provided was basic and the instructor was sloppy (he even forgot to turn off his mic when he used the restroom - no one should ever hear what we heard). I offered up a 9 because we were able to find what we needed on your website.

Incentivized

This training was more directed toward what the product was capable of rather than actual programming.

I attended a Zoho-Holics event in Austin, TX, several years ago, and it blew my mind. So many industries were represented using Zoho in so many different ways. It was unbelievable all that I learned from that experience, as there were features that I wasn't aware of that I immediately started using. Best of all, the trainers were patient and knowledgeable

Incentivized

I have used on-line training from Microsoft and from Pragmatic Works. I would recommend Pragmatic Works as the best way to get up to speed quickly, and then use the Microsoft on-line training to deep dive into specific features that you need to get depth with.

There is an endless supply of YouTube videos from Zoho and the many Zoho partners/consultants. Plus, Zoho has it's own library of training videos and webinars to learn from plus an entire community at the ready to answer any questions. While Zoho has been available for many years, there are constantly new training videos and webinars available for the novice and the experienced users.

Incentivized

We are a consulting firm and as such our best resources are always billing on client projects. Our internal implementation has weaknesses, but that's true for any company like ours. My rating is based on the product's ease of implementation.

Experiment is the only way to start

When you switch CRMs, you can automatically assume everything isn’t going to match up correctly. We had used Salesforce for 10+ years and had a ton of data and customizations. It was not a clean transfer, but we were able to sort it all out. The only issue that really bothered me was Zoho support. Even simple questions couldn’t be answered over chat, and we would have some team members try for hours to find the right answer

Incentivized

We have used the built in ConnectWise Manager reports and custom reports. The reports provide static data. PowerBI shows us live data we can drill down into and easily adjust parameters. It's much more useful than a static PDF report.

Incentivized

I much prefer the interface of Pipedive when compared to Zoho. Much more user friendly and the team is always readily available when we need them. Pipedrive allowed for many custom integrations to be added, as Zoho was a tad more complicated to manipulate. We would not go back to Zoho in any case.

Incentivized

Free user access was one reason to use it more than any other software. Also, for a mid-size organization, the Salesforce cost was a little higher, and Pipedrive was almost similar to Zoho. As we were already using Zoho, we found no urgency to switch.

Incentivized

I think Zoho CRM is priced at a reasonable amount. Simply put, you get what you pay for and Zoho does not disappoint. My organization is comfortable with what we pay and pleased with continually renewing the software. The billing frequency is just right. There are no complaints on our end

Incentivized

We're still in the early stages of scaling this across departments. We have high aspirations of doing this, but it takes time to migrate to the new system and to help people get acquainted of doing their work in a different way thru Zoho.

Incentivized

In addition to being a user of Zoho CRM, we are a reseller as well. Often, at times our Partners request for on-boarding the platform configuration for them. During such requirements, we have utilized the Professional services team directly from the Zoho CRM team. Our partner feedback was quite positive, throughout.

Incentivized

• As a SaaS provider we see being able to provide self-service BI to our client users as a competitive advantage. In fact the MSSQL enabled BI is a contributing factor to many winning RFPs we have done for prospective client organisations.
• However MSSQL BI requires extensive knowledge and skills to design and develop data warehouses & data models as a foundation to support business analysts and users to interrogate data effectively and efficiently. Often times we find having strong in-house MSSQL expertise is a bless.

Incentivized

• Great on setup which made our work easier and less technically equipped people can manage a lot of things(compared to SalesForce where you need to hire a developer to set it up)
• We were able to integrate our calling system easily and get things going on the lead calling aspect.
• Great multipipeline option where we were able to manage both organisations under one roof.

Incentivized

• because we are new to the CRM world, we wanted a product that was reasonably priced, yet had the features we were looking for
• we have found a much higher customer engagement rate and ROI
• we used to "lose" customers in our makeshift process. Now, all customers are being attended to.

Incentivized