Microsoft Dynamics 365 is a CRM providing sales, marketing, and service functionality. It is offered as SaaS and on-premise. Dynamics 365 is part of the larger Dynamics suite of business intelligence and ERP products.
$44
per month
SAP SuccessFactors HCM
Score 8.3 out of 10
N/A
SAP SuccessFactors is a suite of HR/HCM products covering these capability areas: core HR and payroll, recruiting and onboarding, learning and development, performance and compensation management, workforce analytics and planning, and employee experience management.
it is important to highlight the areas where SAP SuccessFactors excels: extensive modular functionality, strong integration with other SAP products, and advanced analytics capabilities.• Advantages: Integration with the SAP ecosystem, customization, and support for complex …
All told, if it hadn't been for the fact that we were testing it with both employees who knew CRM lingo and those who were new, we wouldn't have found such an issue. The program itself can be very useful for people who already manage CRMs, who know how to use them, who know how to run and manage employees on them, namely because of the "one-stop-shop" concept in data visibility. When it came down to it though, if you have high-turnover, then this product will devolve into only being used for it's base components. Down the middle, we found that the people who'd been in marketing for 4-5 years fell into the product easily because of the way it was written. Everyone before that, with novice experience, thought it was written like a textbook for a graduate class - little to no leeway if you don't happen to know one specific term
In my experience, this system is very well suited for any large corporation that requires a global talent management platform for uniform and formal human capital management throughout the organization. I found the system user-friendly, with a seamless workflow, and easy to understand and use. On the other hand, any small business with limited human resource needs may find it costly to implement and maintain. Of all the platforms I have worked with, SAP SuccessFactors HCM is one of the best.
Some useful out-of-the-box features, like mass uploads of Leads from trade shows or when qualifying a Lead, CRM automatically creates the Opportunity, Contact, and Account for you, etc.
Really powerful customizations through the user interface to improve user experience. Things like Business Rules, for example, if Field A = 1, then Field B = 2 and Field C = 2, if Field A = 2, then Field B and Field C don't apply, so automatically hide them.
Or other functionality that improves user experience, like Business Process Flows. These walk users step by step through our business process, helping them know when certain actions should take place, and at what point other data is now required. We've used this extensively with our Lead to Opportunity to Quote to Order process, helping users understand the business process each step of the way.
Customizations built on top of the platform now called model-driven PowerApps. You can have connections to "typical" data, like Accounts, Contacts, or Opportunities, for example, but then connect that data to custom entities, records that only apply to your specific business. This is all done through the user interface and allows you to customize and automate specific line-of-business applications for your specific needs.
Behind the scenes, D365 CE is built on SQL. So the data conforms to industry standards and makes it much easier to interact with. Your developers and IT team will thank you.
Microsoft Dynamics 365 storage & license cost can prohibit some large deployments or even cost-sensitive small projects from using the platform (although I'm certain most deployments would realize a positive ROI if implemented correctly with process automation).
The cost and licensing document for Dynamics 365 is 61 pages and will take a rocket scientist to understand it. It's better to just have your Microsoft help estimate the cost if they are willing to help you that.
The documentation on how to first fully understand the Out of the Box default solution and settings is lacking or even non-existing. This has the potential to derail Dynamic 365 launches and implementations from the gitgo. Want to use an out of the box entity?.. well it's probably related to 5 other entities that require configuration and full understanding of it to successful implement. And you ask where is the laymen guide or instructions?... User groups and forums. In Summary, Microsoft can up its game in deployment training and supporting documentation.
Microsoft needs to incentivize more external platforms to build app connectors for easy integration, such as ZenDesk, Slack, Tableau, etc. Even the current connector apps such as Salesforce, MailChimp, Docusign are useless or don't work at all.
Several limitations inhibit successful Dynamics 365 deployments such as: limited number of Rollup field calculations (summarizing fields on child/related records), limited number rows that can exported to Excel via advanced find, Dynamics 365 files, log and database storage size limit is extremely small and will always require purchasing additional storage (for Online deployments).
New user buy-in or acceptance or system platform changes can be difficult if a solid change management plan isn't enacted.
Don't expect much help from Microsoft on implementation or solutions unless it's a technical flaw with the platform. Microsoft relies on their MVP partner network to consult for implementations at a hefty cost. Hiring a knowledgeable and savvy Dynamics 365 System Administrator can reduce the need for consultant support; of course, this is dependant upon many many variables.
I think because this is such a robust and powerful product that it is quite intricate and it is quite sophisticated, so you do have to stop and take time to learn it. I don't think you can go in with any assumptions that it's like anything else you've used. It's quite intricate and involved and complex. So I think sometimes you need to take a step back and be intentional in taking time to learn it properly because in doing that you'll be able to leverage it to its fullest capacity. That's been a lesson we've learned throughout time that we really do have to slow down and take time to learn it as users and as people that support users.
CRM has allowed us to keep all of our data in one place that is easy for all users within the company to view. I came into the company after they had been using CRM for about 4 years. They have all said that since we have used this it has helped us control work processes better, it has allowed us to be able to track things so much better, and has been something that has helped unite many processes that used to be all over the place. We are currently using CRM 4.0 and are planning on upgrading in the next 18 months to the 2011 version. Support for 4.0 is almost all but dried up. Understandably so. Some of the customization we have done, and a plugins we use, are now contained within the 2011 version so we are looking forward to that upgrade. We use an email marketing company as well, and they primarily support the 2011 version, but their product connects and is integrated within CRM. This is a great benefit as well so that all of our marketing information can be contained in one location.
We have put a vast amount of time and effort into our installation- and there is more work to be done, but the system has a lot of benefits that we plan to maximize and optimize in order to generate the greatest value for everyone involved
The user-interface is very clunky, truncating data fields while wasting space on the screen. There are too many menus.
Getting bulk data into the system used Excel. This caused much "mojibake" (look it up in Wikipedia) by the poor handling of different character sets (UTF-8 and Windows 1252).
Getting data out of the system was extremely long-winded and unreliable. It seemed that Microsoft never wanted us to copy data out of the system.
SAP SuccessFactors is very user friendly, starting with Single Sign-on integration, then right away showing various tiles, such as organizational chart, time-off management, notifications of any review tasks, such as time-approval for team members. It has good navigation functions and language is very intuitive, so easy to understand for business users, no need to be too tech savvy.
Until now we have not had serious availability problems with SuccessFactors, we had Microsoft Active Directory and SSO with ADFS and we had availability problems but because of problems with ADFS, we migrated to Azure AD and with that the availability problems of SuccessFactors because of ADFS went away. The only windows of unavailability that we have had are those that we are communicated to do maintenance and upgrades.
The performance is very good, the truth is that we have not had serious performance problems, some complex reports may take a little longer, but considering the complexity and the amount of records it is an acceptable time. We have never received a complaint from users regarding page loading speed.
Our partner, Ledgeview Partners has been FANTASTIC to work with. They are always timely in their response and have taken time to understand our business and our specific needs. We've made a lot of advanced customizations and they have been a great help in making those updates.
SuccessFactors Employee Central gets a middle of the road rating from me because of the things it does really well - Training. It falls short with the objectives cascade and visibility amongst my reports. That's what brings it down to a 5. Objectives need to be clear and concise in order to gain buy-in from your reports, and SuccessFactors muddies that by poor delineation between cascaded attributes and my report's objectives. The whole objectives cascade can be reworked.
The in-person training was with a consultancy, we have taken several courses, all very specific. They have been reports in ecp, general configuration of ec, reports and IAS
We use SAP Learning, and we like it very much, the topics are updated along with the products, we have access to the SFX customer certifications and we have done them all, in general the SAP learning platform is very good and complete.
We used a data warehouse to house our data, and our IT team and implementation vendor worked diligently ahead of time to construct idea implementation plans. Out of millions of records- we had less than a dozen errors, which is remarkable. My major insight is simply having a group of completely devoted individuals working towards your goal who fully understand the desired outcome. Focused resources for implementation season are critical to success.
As we were new with all this, we would greatly appreciate if we had assitance directly from SAP so we can implement the modules with all of its features and best practices. Unfortunately, we notice that the partner left some thing incomplete.
Salesforce has more desirable functions than Microsoft Dynamics 365, at a competitive price. Its user interface is far more superior, it has more customization, easier customization, and out of the box it is more pleasing to the eye and to the end user. If the client doesn't have a deep-rooted connection with Microsoft I wouldn't leap to Dynamics 365.
At City, we currently use SAP on-premise applications for all HCM functionalities, and we have already implemented SF Onboarding, Recruitment, and Employee Central. Since we are long-time customers using all on-premise HCM applications, it's easy for business users to choose SuccessFactors products. We are delighted with the SAP HCM products we are currently using.
On our purchase, I'd been interrogated about our usage. Our needs are met by Microsoft Dynamics 365, which is simple to use. With so much data and information available, we must ensure that it is presented correctly to managers. Due to a lack of use, we don't have to spend as much money on Salesforce.
The scalability and flexibility of SuccessFactors is unbeatable. It is very easy to scale the product to new countries and areas, and with the help of CPI it can be easily integrated.
My company's preferred program right now is Microsoft Dynamics 365. We use it to keep track of customers and important sales metrics in a streamlined manner. Anyone familiar with CRMs will find the tool extremely useful. Considering that we have a good turnover, this product will be used for its basic segments. As a result, there are few chances of error with Microsoft dynamics because it is so easy to use. Many options for recording data on these leads are available. It meets our needs and pays off.
We did use this service to do analysis of the solution being implemented. It was a good check point during the project to see if everything is going as planned.
As far as ROI, I don't know what the investment is in the product, so I can't give you an exact number of profitability, but I can tell you for ease of use, it has been a lot easier to use the product. I think the only thing that I would prefer is instead of having the print screens, I'd prefer having video modules to explain how to use the different aspects of it.
