Dynamics 365 Vs. Salesforce & HubSpot
Dynamics 365 Vs. Salesforce & HubSpot Dynamics 365 is our pick for a CRM system for most businesses – but one size doesn’t fit all. How does Dynamics 365 stack up against the other leading CRM systems, Salesforce and HubSpot? Take a look at our comparison table below, or scroll down for a more in-depth analysis. Features Dynamics 365 Salesforce HubSpot Customisation Deep & rich Deep, but complex Simpler, but easier Sales Management Strong forecasting Strong forecasting Good, but much simpler Marketing Automation Addons available Complex but powerful Bigger focus Analytics Power BI integration Advanced but complex Simple, but good for start-ups and small businesses Integrations Microsoft 365 built-in, other APIs available Largest marketplace Broad range, marketing focused Ease Of Use Moderate, but familiar for Microsoft 365 users Steep learning curve, extensive training required Easy & simple, but with limited features Implementation Medium commitment & cost to set-up High & ongoing commitment & cost Quick & cheap to get up and running, with less customisations Licence Cost* £50 – £80 per user, per month £80 – £100 per month £77 – £130 *Prices listed are for Dynamics 365 Sales Professional & Sales Enterprise respectively, Salesforce and HubSpot prices are for the closest comparable licence for each, based on feature-set. Other addons are available for all 3 systems for different departments (e.g. Customer Service), at extra costs. Learn More About Dynamics 365 Our Recommendation:Dynamics 365 Not every system fits every business, but we believe that Dynamics 365 fits those who meet the following criteria; They’re existing Microsoft 365 users (Teams, SharePoint, Outlook, Office) They need some bespoke features that vary by department They have between 10-100 users We believe that Dynamics 365 tends to be a better option for SMBs, due to it’s balance of an impressive feature set compared to HubSpot, but a shorter setup cost and commitment compared to Salesforce. While Salesforce may seem like a feature-rich powerhouse of a system (and we’re not saying that’s incorrect), the steep learning curve combined with the rigid sales-focused feature set, not to mention the high ongoing costs of supporting a Salesforce system, means that we can’t recommend Salesforce for any businesses other than large enterprise organisations who are sales-focused, and aren’t in need of a wealth of features for other departments. On the other hand, HubSpot might seem like a great little system to set up and use on the cheap, the limited feature set and limited customisation make it a difficult recommendation for companies looking for bespoke features. While the above features make HubSpot ideal for start-ups and very small businesses to get off of the ground, we find Dynamics 365 a more suitable system for companies in their growth phase, who are looking to scale up with a system built for thier business. Overall, Dynamics 365 offers better variety and ease-of-use than Salesforce, more extensive feature set than a base HubSpot system, and at a lower price than both. Let us help you come to an informed decision – give us a call or shoot us an email, and let’s talk. Get In Touch For A Free, No-Obligation Demo Dynamics 365 Vs. Salesforce To make things easier for you folks reading this, we’re going to split our comparisons into 3 parts – Target Market, Feature Sets, and a summary of the ideal customer for each. Make sense? Great, lets get down to it. Target Market Starting off, Salesforce is aimed primarily at larger conglomerates and enterprise-level businesses – and is priced as such. Coming in at the most expensive licence cost per user, per month, Salesforce is best suited for companies with a lot of money to throw at it, as well as companies who are willing and able to consistently spend to develop and maintain a successful CRM system. Finally, Salesforce is very sales-focused with a sprinkling of marketing features here and there, whereas systems like Dynamics 365 and HubSpot offer great variety of options for other departments – from customer service to field service. Dynamics 365 on the other hand, is aimed primarily at small-medium sized businesses, who are looking to invest and grow, or already in the process of it. We find the sweet spot for Dynamics 365 to be anywhere from 10 to 200 seats, and ideally a business who’s looking for one system to handle multiple departments, from sales and marketing, to customer service, HR and field service. Lastly, Dynamics 365 is aimed squarely at those already using the Microsoft 365 ecosystem, to which Dynamics 365 fits right in, and feels familiar. Feature Set Dynamics 365 and Salesforce have pretty comparable feature sets, for the licence costs mentioned in the table above – maybe closer than you think. Dynamics 365 Familiar interface for existing Microsoft 365 users Customisable dashboards Power BI analytics integration Outlook email tracking Easily scalable Integration with Microsoft 365 (Teams, SharePoint, Outlook) Highly customisable & versatile for different departments (Sales, marketing, customer service, field service) Moderate cost and commitment to set up Price: £50 – £80 per user, per month Salesforce Customisable, albeit complex Advanced analytics, but complex set-up Advanced forecasting & pipeline management Basic email marketing features Steep learning curve High ongoing cost, long commitment to set up Scalable, at a higher cost Useful for sales teams, limited for other departments Longest time commitment to set up. Price: £80 – £100 per user per month, for comparable features to Dynamics 365 Ideal Customer The ideal customer for a Salesforce system is a large enterprise with a fully-stocked sales team who can take advantage of the sales-first features that the system has to offer. Ideally they’d have a big yearly budget to spend on the implementation, training, and continued development of such a system. If that sounds like you, then great, you can take advantage of the great forecasting and analytics that Salesforce has to offer. If not, then keep reading… Dynamics 365’s ideal customer is a small-medium sized business, anywhere from 10-200 seats, who are either looking to scale up soon,
5 Easy Ways To Reduce Office Energy Costs
5 Easy Ways To Reduce Office Energy Costs With energy costs rising for everyone, and no energy cap on businesses, reducing your office energy costs comes down to reducing your energy consumption, and could be the key to saving your business money How much energy are you currently using? A lot of businesses don’t actually know how much energy their office equipment uses. It might be a shock to find out just how much energy they’re using on a daily basis, check out the table below to find out the rough estimates. Equipment Watts Per Day Daily Cost In £ Monthly Cost In £ Yearly Cost In £ Cost Per 25 Staff Per Year In £ Desktop Computer 240 0.65 19.50 234.00 5850.00 Thin Client 65 0.18 5.40 64.80 1620.00 27″ Monitor 30 0.08 2.40 28.80 1440.00 (2 monitors per staff) Laptop 65 0.18 5.40 64.80 1620.00 Server 500 4.00 120.00 1440.00 N/A *Based on average cost per Kwh being £0.38, an 8 hour workday and 30 days in a month This means that if your business has a server and 25 staff, all of whom have a laptop and 2 monitors, your equipment will be costing you an average of £4500 per year! And that’s before you add on the cost of your lights, air conditioning, heating, and any other standard appliances you may have. But what can you do to keep on top of this number? Here are 5 quick fixes to reduce your energy costs Making sure you adhere to these 5 quick tips will help you stave off any unexpected (and unwanted) energy costs. 1. Put your laptop/PC into sleep or standby mode when not in use, especially during lunch. Reducing the amount of time that your computer is turned on and awake takes out a decently sized chunk of your energy costs already. 2. Switch off your computer at the end of the day. Many of us fall into the habit of just locking our computer, or closing the lid of our laptop, at the end of the day. But guess what? When you do this, your computer is still using power and therefore costing you money! 3. Reduce the brightness of your monitor. This is good not only for using less power, but also better for your eyes in the long run 4. Only keep your laptop plugged in when it needs charging. Leaving your laptop plugged in when full means it’ll constantly sip power in order to keep itself topped up, so unplugging it when it’s full will help save you energy! This is also better for the battery health meaning it could increase the time until you need to replace your laptop! 5. Finally, unplug any USB accessories you’re not using. USB accessories will command a power draw when they’re plugged in, even when not in use – so unplug what’s not needed and reduce your energy consumption. These tips will help you cut down on your energy consumption little by little, but they may not drastically reduce your energy costs in the way you might want. For that, you’ll need some more long term solutions that can take bigger 3 long-term fixes that will reduce your energy costs These longer term solutions can be more difficult to implement, but the rewards are much higher! Replace your power hungry desktop PCs with more energy efficient laptops It’ll cost an average of £20,000 to replace 25 desktop computers with laptops (at £800 per laptop), but over 4 years it’ll cost £24,000 to run 25 desktops. Whereas, it’ll only cost £3,228 to run 25 laptops over 4 years, meaning that over the 4 year period it’ll still be cheaper to replace your desktops with laptops, with an average saving of £772. If electricity prices rose to £0.50 per Kwh then over 4 years 25 desktops would cost £35,000 to run, meaning you would save £10,254 if you replaced your desktops with laptops over the 4 year period. Not to mention, having laptops instead of desktops increases your staff’s possibility of working from home, which means you could save even more money by having fewer people at the office. If you’re using Microsoft 365, you could move your computers to the Microsoft cloud. Depending on your current Microsoft 365 package, you could already be entitled to do this with the resources costing just £18 per user on a 3 year commitment. Click here for more information on Microsoft 365 Migrate your existing on-premise servers to Microsoft Azure. With 1 and 3 year commitments available, this could take out a huge chunk of your energy consumption by not having to power a server on-premise. But that isn’t the only benefit. Save money on energy costs No need for hardware renewals No expensive upfront expenditure A reduced risk of downtime All in all, energy prices are only going to go up, and with the energy price cap not applying to businesses, you need to do everything you can in order to keep costs down, and profits high. These tips will help you keep on top of your energy bills so that you can go this winter without worrying about the bank. For more information, contact us here
Using Advanced Find In Dynamics 365
Using Advanced Find In Dynamics 365 If you’ve woken up, logged into your CRM, and your trusty funnel icon has disappeared – you’re not alone! As part of the Dynamics 365 release wave 2, Microsoft is rolling out some changes across to the platform between October 2022 and March 2023. Chief amongst these is the move to a more Modern Advanced Find – the feature that allows for detailed searching, and which underpins both system and personal list views. Advanced find has empowered users to build advanced search queries, customise the columns of data, and save them for future use, and collaborate with colleagues by sharing these within their teams. And that hasn’t changed – however, the way you access and manage these has. The new advanced find experience will be deployed by default from October onwards. So – what exactly has changed? For those systems with Dataverse search enabled, you’ll note that you cannot simply access the funnel icon on the top right of your interface any more. Old New Instead, you’ll now have the ‘Edit Columns’ and ‘Edit Filters’ buttons They exist to allow you to make temporary changes to views (which will reset if you refresh your page), which you can save as a new view from within the view selector. These would need to be shared with whichever users need to use them. https://evorio.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/Edit-Columns-and-FIlters-V2.0.mp4 OR to start a new advanced find from scratch, use the global dataverse search at the top of the screen and choose the ‘Search for rows in a table using advanced filters’ option at the bottom. This will pop out a window to the right asking you to choose a table / record type to build your search on – note that the record type must have been added to your model-driven app in order for it to appear here. https://evorio.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/Managing-Views-V2.0.mp4 Can I Disable Modern Advanced Find? You certainly can. If you want to administer views in the way you’re used to, navigate to (or ask your system admin to navigate to) your environment settings in the Power Platform and disable Modern Advanced Find. Et voila, your funnel is back! https://evorio.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/Disabling-Modern-AF.mp4 In short – Microsoft is moving us to a slicker, more modern and integrated version of Dynamics – building, saving and managing advanced finds within the Modern experience feels intuitive and makes the most of parts of the system we already use. It is moving away from the scary funnel at the top of the screen that people are too intimidated to use, and positioning it as just another set of filters you can save and access whenever you want! Empowering the user to slice and dice data to give themselves the best experience within the system. This is a pretty polarising change, though, so for those who like the golden olden days, with a couple of clicks you can go back to your comfort zone and use the original advanced find. It’s all about finding the methods that suit you, and we’re glad Microsoft has given us the flexibility to do so.
Why You Should Outsource Your IT
Why You Should Outsource Your IT As a business owner, you’ve got lots to do and little time to do it. From managing your company’s finances to keeping up with the latest technologies and market trends, nobody can handle everything on their own. One particularly time-consuming challenge for a small business is managing an IT system. This is where a managed service provider comes in: What Is A Managed Service Provider (MSP)? An MSP is a company that provides ongoing management and maintenance of your IT systems. They’ll handle things like your network infrastructure, cybersecurity, data storage, and much more. Most will offer services on a subscription basis, which provides your business with a predictable cost for support and management. A managed service provider is perfect for a small to medium-sized business that lacks the resources or expertise to manage its IT systems in-house. With that in mind, here are the top reasons why a business like yours should outsource their IT: Concentrate on your business As a business owner, IT is probably low on your list of priorities, which could lead to increased security risks and outdated tech. Both of which will cause you downtime, reduced efficiency and potentially even damage to your reputation. So why not let an MSP take care of these problems for you, and free up your time to focus on what’s important to your business. Save your business money Maybe the easiest reason to justify, using an MSP can save you money. Fewer employees needed for your internal IT team means fewer salaries to pay and fewer training sessions to provide. Many small businesses simply don’t need, or can’t afford, the expense of an in-house IT specialist, which often means businesses use outdated systems and suffer downtime as a result. Most MSPs operate on subscription-based models, meaning you pay a monthly or annual fee for their services – which allows you to see if it’s feasible within your budget. Increase your business’ efficiency MSPs will have the expertise and resources available to optimize and streamline your IT systems, which will help you increase your productivity and efficiency, without having to worry about your IT. An MSP can also work out and organize vendors on behalf of the company, meaning that any issues you might encounter get solved promptly and with minimal downtime. Improve your security MSPs have the expertise and resources to give you robust security solutions that will help protect your businesses from cyber threats and data breaches. They’ll also work with you to create a disaster recovery and business continuity plan, giving you piece of mind that you’ll be protected, even if the worst happens. Most MSPs will provide around-the-clock monitoring and support, so you can rest easy knowing that your IT systems are being monitored and maintained 24/7. Click here to see Evorio’s cyber security offerings Scale your business A managed service provider will provide IT solutions that are scalable to meet your business’ needs, even as they change. This means that no matter how big your business becomes, you won’t have to worry about outgrowing your IT infrastructure. Gain experienced workers MSPs have a team of experts with specialized knowledge in multiple areas of IT, meaning your business can benefit from their experience without needing to hire and train new employees. Here at Evorio, we regularly invest in staff training to make sure you’re getting the highest quality of service from a team of highly skilled experts. Give a helping hand to your in-house team A lot of businesses have an in-house IT manager who looks after the systems on a day-to-day basis, but what happens when they go on holiday? If they’re sick during downtime? If they resign? What happens when they’ve simply exhausted the extent of their knowledge when dealing with a complicated issue? This is where an MSP comes in to help. To find out more about Evorio’s offerings as a Managed Services Provider, click the button below Learn More