Best-of-breed vendors exclusively offer the gamut of CRM tools. Sales Force Automation, Support, Marketing, and increasingly Analytics comprise the breadth of a best-of-breed CRM application. Suite applications address the CRM core, but they also seek to take things a step farther. They may offer extended functionality for financials, order management, inventory management, and eCommerce.

In deciding between a best-of-breed CRM application and a suite solution you must consider the following topics.

User adoption

Rule #1 for any business solution is to identify a solution that fits your business. If your solution negatively impacts the way your company conducts business, you are likely to encounter strong resistance. Consider the user productivity tools being replaced – are there favored features that stand to be replaced by your CRM selection? Will you be able to configure or customize the application to suit their needs?

Best-of-breed applications focus on what they do best, which is CRM. Because of their narrower focus, many best-of-breed applications have had the experience to provide standard configurations or customizations to support specific industries, possibly including your own.

Suite applications extend functionality beyond just CRM. As a result, the application has to be more things to more users. This is not in itself a disadvantage to a suite application, but it is important to consider the additional users who stand to be impacted by the new system.

Legacy systems and integration requirements

Another critical step in evaluating best-of-breed vs. suite application solutions for your business is to consider your existing technology infrastructure. Take stock of your existing systems investments to be integrated with CRM. Ensuring the technology of your chosen solution meshes with your existing IT infrastructure will help minimize implementation and support costs for your project.

Best-of-breed applications weren’t built to do everything, and they know it. A best-of-breed CRM application supports technologies to communicate easily with standard technologies. Across the best-of-breed applications, support for standards such as ODBC, XML, web services, and COM based interfaces hint at the ease of use with which these applications can be connected to your infrastructure. This integration flexibility extends to hosted best-of-breed solutions, the best of which provide a Web-services-based architecture to communicate with your legacy systems.

Solution flexibility

Your business is dynamic; what it needs today is not what it will need in 5 years to survive in a competitive marketplace. Your CRM solution should have this same flexibility.

Best-of-breed applications offer greater solution flexibility. They focus on CRM, leaving other aspects to be serviced by your own selection of business tools and processes. Selecting a best-of-breed CRM application leaves the door open to select a best-in-class point solution (for example, an eCommerce platform) where you feel your business will most benefit from it. Also look for open software architectures that can create opportunities to customize the application to a greater extent than a suite solution can be customized.

By contrast, application suites can give you a broader solution out of the gate if that’s what you need. An application suite may buy you the integration to supported systems, and configuration of these integrated systems can be fairly rapid. However, because of the depth of integration between systems, you might find less flexibility in a suite solution to custom tailor the CRM functionality. Consider the costs of migrating to best-in-class solutions if you were ever to outgrow a suite application.

Competitive edge

Spend your money on solutions that offer competitive advantages. Consider your company’s unique environment. For example, how often do customers interact with the company within a 24-hour time period? Which channels do they use to communicate? Differentiating the desirable features from the must-haves is an important step. It’s best not to compromise when it comes to functionality that will enhance your competitive advantage, installing best-in-class to achieve these results.

Best-of-breed applications are easier to marry with best-in-class applications in other disciplines, such as marketing automation, eCommerce, or inventory management applications. Best-in-class packages may be plugged in to support innovative processes that offer a competitive advantage.

A suite may offer the competitive advantage of reduced implementation time, but make sure it is not limiting your ability to introduce the customizations that will set your business apart.

So what do you do to fit your business?

When evaluating any solution, it’s important to first analyze current and anticipated business requirements, and build a strategy based on these needs. It’s important to obtain the right balance between depth of functionality, product flexibility, and integration costs. By carefully considering your environment and evaluating solutions against realistic benefits, you will ultimately find a solution that meets the needs of your organization while maximizing the company’s financial health.

Benjamin Holtz is Founder and CEO of Green Beacon Solutions LLC, a leading provider of strategy and implementation services for Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) technologies. Benjamin works with numerous clients in different industries providing him with knowledge and expertise on a variety of CRM topics. Benjamin and his colleagues at Green Beacon focus on customizing systems for the SMB market, with the understanding that there is no “one-size-fits-all” system. Company: Green Beacon Solutions LLC