analytics: crm on demand vs sfdc

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CRM OnDemand vs Salesforce.com Reporting and Analytics Comparison

Dynamic Dashboard Filtering

A single dashboard can easily be built that

displays data specific to the user who is currently

viewing it.

Administrators cannot create a single dashboard

that will show data specific to the user

viewing it.

Many reports, such as performance against goals or territory analysis, require that data be filtered based on the user who is viewing the report. With salesforce’s reports, administrators must create a report and clone it for each user. This makes making changes to these reports extremely labor intensive. In addition, SFDC administrators may not make changes to a user’s account without logging in with their credentials, further belaboring the process.

“we have now literally hundreds of reports and about 50 dashboards due to this lack of functionality for a user to see in the common dashboard only his information. this of course means tons of administrative work with reports.”

Commentary

*Quote from Salesforce.com Customer

*All quotes from salesforce.com customers taken from the salesforce.com “idea exchange”

“I want to see MY performance against quota”

Joining Multiple Tables

Oracle’s reporting allows for easy

combination of multiple tables.

Reports can only join 3 tables; a “parent” and 2

“children”.

For example, a report that shows Account, Contact, Open Opportunities, and Tasks would not be possible without joining multiple tables. Creating a 360 degree view of the customer will be very difficult without the ability to combine data from various tables within the application. This would require export of data with salesforce.

“…we have been told that we should purchase some other expensive reporting package, that links with salesforce, in order to run this and other reports. I just don't see this as an answer either. Why should I have to purchase another package for something Salesforce should be able to accomplish[?]”

Commentary



“Give me a 360 degree view of my business”

Pivot Table Reports

Oracle offers Pivot Tables which let you

view data in the optimal presentation.

There is no Pivot Table functionality in

salesforce.com.

Pivot Tables have are a widely used and understood mechanism for simplifying complex data sets, and presenting. Pivot Tables are used in reports such as “waterfall” reports, forecast vs. actual, and territory analysis; and are typically the most widely used report type for Oracle users. Pivot tables are also helpful in report administration, allowing the creation of a single report that presents data many ways. Without Pivot Tables, most report producers export data from the system and use a separate tool for reporting.

“I personally spend a lot of time taking data out of salesforce only to create a pivot table with the data due to the limited reporting functionality on the existing dashboards.”

Commentary



“Segment and organize my data without exporting and using another tool”

Report Drillability

Any report value may be a hyperlink to anywhere, including other reports,

records in the CRM system, or external URLs; to any number of levels. Can also drill into multiple

locations from a link.

Reports are static, and do not include the ability to drill deeper and easily access deeper data. Cannot link to the record in the

report.

A key to user adoption in any application is ease of use an navigation. When viewing a report, users often need more information and want to go deeper to the source of the data, which allows them to gain better insight into their business. Without drillability, reporting will be cumbersome, and user adoption will be significantly diminished.

“[I would like to be able to] Click on a dashboard chart element to drill to report detail. This will save time and enhance user experience by drilling down directly to the detail instead of having to click on the dashboard component and then filtering on the specific grouping.”

Commentary



“Give me real insight without a lot of clicks”

Exception Reporting

Oracle includes exception reporting.

Salesforce does not allow exception

reporting.

Exception reporting allows one to identify reported results that deviate from expected results. It allows one to find performance metrics that fall outside of acceptable metrics, or find sets of data that do not contain a data type. Without exception reporting, your administrator will have to export data to third party reporting tools. Example: Red flag when a rep is taking 15 days average to close their service requests, when the SLA is 12 days.

“The Holy Grail of Salesforce! If this came about I could *almost* kiss your developers. I spend roughly 40 hours a month exporting data into Excel files so that I perform joins for major reports (e.g., follow-up on cases using "Log A Call" and "Emails", and what the frequency of those responses are).“

Commentary



Help me understand when something’s going wrong

Negative Reporting

Oracle offers negative reporting.

Salesforce does not allow negative

reporting.

Negative reporting is a type of exception reporting. A typical scenario involves running a report on “contacts with no activities scheduled”, “accounts with no opportunities”, or “opportunities without products”.

“[I Tried] to see if I could formulate a report to view open opportunities without open activities. I could not; it pulled up opportunities that did not have any activity history. However, any new opportunities that had a pending activity but no history yet, were included in the report. There have been several ideas on this in the past and I am surprised that Salesforce has not found a way to implement exception reporting such as this. I am still having to export to separate reports and run scripts in FileMaker Pro in order to run the report I need.”

Commentary



I want to see Accounts and Opportunity data – even if there are no Opportunities for an Account

Without “negative” reporting.With “negative” reporting, data is exposed.

Data Warehouse

Oracle stores data in a traditional data warehouse, where it is optimized for reporting and

analytics.

Salesforce.com stores data in a transactional reporting system. The

only way to trend is to create multiple reports and “snapshot” them.

Oracle offers a traditional OLAP data warehouse, aggregating data it into a multidimensional warehouse. SFDC can take a snapshot of a report, which means you must predict accurately your reporting needs, and update reports when you add new fields or objects. Oracle holds your data at the ready for historical analysis wihtout any intervention. Finally, performance and storage will be an issue for SFDC, as they are purposing a transactional database as a data warehouse.

“Hear, hear! It's a nonsense that I can't deliver change-over-time reports on the opportunity pipeline. “

Commentary

Quote from Salesforce.com Customer


Historic trending available on demand

Enterprise Grade Dashboards

1. Tabbed Dashboarding2. Dynamic Guided Navigation3. Color Control of chart

elements4. Drag & Drop

creation/administration5. Unlimited Components6. Dashboards easily Sum

1. No Tabbed Browsing2. No guided navigation3. No color control of elements4. Clunky arrow based report

admin5. 20 components only6. Dashboards don’t natively

Sum

A simple user interface for both users and administrators is critical to the adoption of both reporting and analytics. Oracle allows for tabbing and nesting of dashboards, more varied chart types and colors, unlimited reports within dashboards, easy summation, and many other little features that add up to a big difference in actual report utilization.

Commentary

Tabbed dashboard

Custom Chart Colors

Drag and Drop DesignerDrag and Drop Designer

Simple interface plus powerful, feature-rich dashboards equal increased user adoption

analytics: crm on demand vs sfdc

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