Pega Vs Salesforce: Which CRM Is The Best?

In the wake of steady digitization at a global level, the number of CRM platforms and solutions available in the market is increasing at a substantial rate. A simple Google search would provide you with a plethora of CRM platforms and service providers to help you manage your customer databases. While everyone claims to be the best, it is important to be objective and choose the right CRM solution for your business.

Pega and Salesforce are two highly popular CRM platforms preferred by organizations around the world. They allow users to handle their customer records to provide personalized services to the clients. If you are confused in choosing between the two platforms, make sure you consider the nitty-gritty details about their features and look at Pega vs Salesforce from an objective point.

However, before getting into Pega CRM vs Salesforce, let us have a glimpse of the two platforms.

Pega CRM: An Overview

Pega CRM is an enterprise-level CRM platform that allows users to integrate sales, customer services, and marketing capabilities within a centralized platform. It allows you to capture the actions undertaken by your customers throughout their buying journeys and help you tailor your services based on their specific needs and preferences.

Pega CRM is designed to be deployed on a public cloud or in the Pega Cloud. It provides users with a range of advanced and automated tools that help them attain specific business objectives and streamline important processes. The CRM platform is developed to help users save their time and efforts in performing business processes and getting the desired results.

Salesforce CRM: An Overview

Salesforce is a cloud-based CRM platform that has been catering to organizations across the world for more than two decades. It helps users in recording, storing, analyzing, and tracking their business records to personalize the services provided to their customers.

The offerings of Salesforce are divided into different “Clouds” based on the departments they cater to and the users they are designed for. Some of the most popular Salesforce offerings include Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, Marketing Cloud, Financial Services Cloud, Commerce Cloud, and Community Cloud.

Salesforce also allows organizations to build business-specific applications using its environment. These applications help you use your business data to provide customized services to your customers.

Now that we are through with the essence of both the CRM platforms, let us get into the details of Pega CRM vs Salesforce CRM.

Pega Vs Salesforce: A Comparison

In order to compare the two platforms, it is important to understand the features provided by them and the utility you can derive by implementing them.

Here are some of the key parameters that can be used to understand Pega vs Salesforce:

Pricing

It is a common assumption that Salesforce is a high-priced CRM and is suited only for high-end enterprises. However, when it comes to comparing Salesforce with Pega CRM, Salesforce costs fairly less.

The basic edition of Salesforce starts at the price of $25/user/month with Salesforce Essentials. The price keeps increasing up to $300/user/month with Salesforce Unlimited. On the other hand, Pega CRM charges you anywhere between $97/user/month for running a single-tenant cloud platform for case management to $295/user/month for getting an omnichannel experience. However, third-party vendors list Pega CRM for the price of $200/user/month, which is still higher than a couple of editions of Salesforce.

Looking at the pricing plans of both the CRM platforms, Pega CRM is not an ideal option if you run a startup or a small business. On the other hand, spending as little as $25/user/month would provide you with the seamless functionality of Salesforce and its offerings.

Ease Of Operation

In the age of digitization, more and more non-technical users are switching to cloud-based platforms. This increases the need for CRM platforms that are easy to understand and operate. Although Salesforce started off as a CRM platform that was difficult to operate, it kept updating its user interface to improve the ease of operation. Today, the CRM platform provides users with a clean UI that is easy to navigate and understand. Also, the introduction of a mobile application has provided greater flexibility to users across the board.

On the other hand, Pega CRM revolves majorly around case management. It allows users to treat every customer as a separate case being handled by the organization. Once a customer is added to the database, data from multiple external systems relevant to the concerned customer flows into their case in near real-time. The goal of Pega CRM’s user interface is to allow sales reps to close customer engagement in the best and the most effective way possible.

However, comparing the two CRM platforms in terms of ease of operation, it is can be concluded that Salesforce provides users with a better and simpler UI. Especially with the introduction of Salesforce Lightning, both technical and non-technical users can operate on the CRM platform and perform their tasks seamlessly.

Platform Implementation

When it comes to platform implementation, both Salesforce and Pega CRM require organizations to hire dedicated experts to set them up. Salesforce is considered to be one of the earliest pioneers of SaaS applications being used as CRM. The CRM platform has always stuck to its cloud-based approach for providing flexible services to its customers.

However, although the cloud-based nature of Salesforce makes buying a license easier, it is different from actually implementing the CRM platform and starting working on the same. This makes it important for businesses to undertake Salesforce implementation by hiring in-house Salesforce developers or contractors for setting up the platform. Either way, it is always advisable to rely on someone with Salesforce expertise to implement the CRM platform within your organization.

When it comes to Pega CRM, the platform is designed for being deployed on-premise, on a public cloud, or through Pega Cloud – a single-tenant cloud computing environment handled by Pega systems. To ensure a robust implementation of Pega CRM, you would need the expertise of professionals with integrator-level skills. This would further add to the overall cost of implementation.

CRM Customization

CRM customization allows organizations to tailor the functionality of their CRM platforms based on their specific needs and preferences. It provides you with a clear direction to head towards for attaining the desired objectives.

Salesforce is certainly one of the most customizable CRM platforms in the world as it provides users with a plethora of tools and features that can be customized according to their needs. Especially in the domain of low-code app development, Salesforce helps users use their data and knowledge to build robust applications that are in sync with their business needs. Recently, the CRM platform has also started making the elements of the low-code platform available as open-code for better and more customizable development.

When it comes to Pega systems, the CRM platform has employed a set of visual tools that allow organizations to customize specific Pega applications. As compared to Salesforce, these tools are more accessible to average end-users of the platform. This makes it easier for organizations to customize Pega CRM as compared to Salesforce.

Although Pega is easier to customize than Salesforce, the functionality of Salesforce tools is better than the ones offered by Pega CRM. If you are able to afford to hire Salesforce implementation partners for customizing the platform based on your needs, you should always go ahead with Salesforce implementation.

Customer Support

Both Pega and Salesforce provide personalized support to the customers and help them get their issues resolved on a timely basis. However, over time, Salesforce has built a big user community using which sales reps, customers, and administrators can interact with each other and share valuable insights. This makes Salesforce a more preferred CRM platform if you are looking for holistic customer support.

Variety Of Features

Pega CRM has followed more or less the same path when it comes to providing users with tools and features. All the applications offered by the CRM platform share the same code base to provide a seamless experience to the users.

However, when it comes to the variety of features offered, it is very difficult to beat Salesforce. Salesforce CRM has a substantial edge over its competitors as it provides users with a wide range of tools and features across the board. Along with the fundamental features, the CRM platform provides users with a variety of modules and add-ons such as marketing automation tools, document management tools, sales management tools, and more.

Salesforce has adopted the strategy of keeping a common customer record that allows all its add-ons and third-party applications to be invoked through a common object model. This ensures that Salesforce users are provided with a seamless experience along with a wide variety of features.

Pega Vs Salesforce: The Final Word

While comparing Pega CRM vs Salesforce CRM, it is difficult to say which is a clear winner. Both the platforms have their own set of benefits and drawbacks. The right platform to be implemented depends on the specific needs and preferences of an organization. The best way to make the right decision is to go through all the parameters discussed above (and more), see which CRM platform ticks all the boxes regarding your business requirements, and go ahead with the alternative that takes the lead!