Microsoft Dynamics SL vs. Oracle Siebel CRM

For a small to mid-size business, MS Dynamics SL is effective. We are capable of managing our finances with a very low risk of error. We have worked with MS Dynamics for almost 15 years and have more than doubled the size of our business in that time with very few issues from the program. We have exponentially increased our revenue and reporting demands and have found SL to be very dependable and stable. The program does have the occasional glitch and those are sometimes outside of the realm of expertise of our IT department. SL support is excellent, but their timeliness is not as urgent as ours.

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As an end user, I would not recommend this solution for enterprise deployment. Lack of support for modern browsers, slow performance, and poor searchability - these things set Siebel CRM in the rear of the pack. There was no great mobile solution either, so that can be bothersome especially for road warriors like myself.

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• Provides flexibility for complex project based cost accounting
• Strong and flexible allocation processer for cost allocations, markups, and pricing
• A "Flexible Billing" module under the project controller series that allows for multiple billing formats ranging from fixed price schedule of values, T&M or Cost Plus, and scheduled billing.
• Flexible reporting with options using Crystal Reports, SSRS, a Quick Query tool, and ability to tie into MS Office tools such as MS Access and MS Excel
• Tight integration with Financials, but also the ability to integrate with modules such as Sales Order, Inventory, and Field Service
• Customization abilities ranging from a VBA (visual basic for application) foundation to allow customizing existing forms to the ability to use the SDK (Software Development Kit) to build more complex customizations that integrate with Dynamics SL.

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• Great data model: the out of the box version comes with standard objects that support most of the industries business models: Finance, Communications, Utilities, Public Sector, Life Sciences to name a few.
• Ease of implementation: implementation is done by configuring standard objects or creating new objects; additional level of customization via script is also possible.
• Lots of resources available on the product
• Supported by Oracle one of the world leader in IT
• Multiple developers can configure and test concurrently in their own workspace and then merge the result in the main application.

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• Reporting in the Project module is lacking functionality. I understand that most companies have specific needs when it comes to tracking project information but the standard reports are not good.
• I would recommend a product like Management Reporter that is for Projects only. Project Reporter should allow users to pull in all Project related data into reports.
• Fixing suspended batches. Obviously all of us users have experienced this mess. SL knows what needs to be corrected and there could be some step by step fixes in a separate repair module to do the steps we do in Query Analyzer.

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• Migrations between environments is one area that could be improved, with tools to compare and move data elements (source vs target).
• Easier ways to identify, through email or a web page, the health of the overall system (components, marketing campaigns, tasks, servers, etc).
• The UI seems to be improved with the newer versions of Siebel, but I believe it requires a lot of new features. It seems that other CRM solutions that are cloud-based are putting a lot of emphasis on the Usability and presentation, things where Siebel may need to catch up...

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Unfortunately, Dynamics' lack of ability to smoothly integrate with our CRM system is causing us to look at other solutions. The efficiencies that we gain by using Dynamics for our day to day accounting are lost in the constant headaches of getting sales quotes to import properly into the system for invoicing. Another major issue for us has been budgeting and reporting. We currently do all of our budgeting and board reporting in Excel, which is too time consuming and inefficient, especially when a system as robust as Dynamics should easily be able to handle this relatively simple task.

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I rate it a 10 because we have removed the fields we don't need so users can really crank the data into the system. The software was designed for the professional services firm in mind but does a tremendous job for construction firms and "blended" companies that are both distribution firms but project centric as well. Perhaps they drop ship inventory to a project where their employees or subs need to work on a project for example.

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Oracle Siebel CRM is an older Sales CRM, so many of it's features aren't as current as ones used today. However, it has a smoother and easy-to-use UI. We're glad that we can still access Oracle Siebel CRM because it's easier to find older information that we can't easily find in our Salesforce Lightning CRM tool.

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We have had only one unplanned outage for 2 hours in the last 30 months. We shut down for 30 min to 1 hour once a month, but that is for Microsoft OS updates to the servers. Being a 24/7 world wide operation, the reliability is really important. We do get an 8 hour window on the weekend that we can be down for a short period to install Microsoft Dynamics SL updates, but we do not have many of those. On our last version upgrade, we shut the users out at 9:30 am and were fully operational in less than 6 hours. The upgrade was New SQL server, New SL server and 2 new Citrix servers.

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Support is only used when needed, so unfortunately ,they get all the odd issues. It's a difficult business, but Microsoft and our firm do a great job of meeting customer needs. We get routine feedback that our support services are very good.

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We no longer have support for our Oracle Siebel CRM. When we did, the support was slow to get some things fixed, therefore, there was a lot of downtime. Of course, this slowed down our overall productivity and increased our overall frustration with the tool. However, it would be nice if we still had some support with it since we still do access it from time to time.

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Just to let it take its course. The implementation for me once I became a part of my former organization was pretty seamless. Just get to know the basics and call the support team to ask questions if you need help on an issue, should they arise. They are ready, willing, and able to help!

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Of the comparable mid-range ERP systems, Dynamics SL competes at the lower end based on price, but also above the high-end based on flexibility, data, and reporting. Being able to stay with the same core accounting from a $100 million dollar company to a $3 billion dollar company shows the range of capabilities.

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We also connect to Oracle Business Intelligence, which is not even an option of the list of products above (that's always encouraging when products are missing from lists!) This connects to campaigns in Siebel along with users writing reports based on data from Siebel. I don't think OBIEE stacks up that great with other systems because it seems to be lacking in reports, and those who can make them have to be quite technical. Oracle Database I think stacks up because of how robust and speedy (at times) it can be

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Since the backbone of the database is MS SQLServer, the database can be easily scaled.

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• More time is spent on manipulating reports which can and should be automated.
• Lack of electronic invoicing process and other green technology features creates more cost on printing and storage costs.
• The lack of a user friendly interface requires more training and a bigger learning curve for staff.

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• This has all my company needs for sales analytic. It has helped our call center and the sales portal become more lean and require less resources for their day-to-day.
• We use its research and direct email capabilities and use it to target specific groups of potential clients. We have seen an improvement of nearly 20%.
• We have clients who have used a few modules like bill summary, campaign management and customer information. Oracle Siebel CRM has helped them reap ROI within a year from going live.