Last week Onyx released its CRMExpress package, a pre-configured version of its core CRM platform that bundles in licenses, implementation services, training, and support.
ComputerWire’s efforts to elicit specific pricing details missing from Onyx’s initial press promted to an e-mail from Onyx last week that did just that. Onyx’s original press release only stated that CRMExpress comes with a single, low fixed fee.
According to the e-mail forwarded by Carrie Holmes, Onyx’s marketing communication manager, the flat rate for CRMExpress is quoted at $129,000 for 50 users. The price includes a pre-configured Onyx solution that the company owns for online and offline use, professional services, end user and technical training, product support, and documentation.
We believe businesses will be hard pressed to find that type of value with another vendor, Onyx said in the e-mail.
Onyx is clearly targeting what is sees as band-aid hosted solutions from CRM rivals Siebel Systems Inc and Salesforce.com Inc. Onyx claims both companies’ hosted CRM offerings struggle to scale upwards economically.
Onyx argues that Onyx’s solution, on the basis of a 50 user license over an 18 month period, would run cheaper than salesforce.com’s Enterprise Edition, which runs at $150 per user, per month.
Plus salesforce.com products are ‘templated’ products. There is no platform for growth. Customers will just have to fork out another $90,000 per year.
Bellevue, Washington-based Onyx also argues that customers buying hosted CRM solutions often fall into the trap of assuming they won’t have to pay for implementation costs.
This is not always the case. Hosted vendors often contract out third party consultants to perform this at an additional cost to the client, Onyx asserts. These services are built into the price of CRMExpress.
Salesforce.com was unable to respond to Onyx’s claims due to its 25-day enforced quiet period as mandated by the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) following its recent IPO.
Onyx’s comparison with Siebel Systems is perhaps more interesting. Based on the same 50 user, one year calculation, Siebel’s hosted offering, which runs at $70 per user, per month, works out to be much lower than CRMExpress for the first and second years, at $42,000 per year.
However, Onyx argues that the total cost of Siebel makes it unattractive in the long run.
If the customer want to migrate from Siebel OnDemand to an on-premise solution from Siebel, they’ll need to purchase a completely separate application, in essence wasting the money spent on onDemand from the outset.
Onyx claims that even though Siebel’s hosted and on-premise applications share the same data schema, customers will still be stung by what is sees as significant costs associated with migrating the solution and repurposing any customizations made in the hosted environment.
With CRMExpress these costs don’t exist.
Officials from Siebel’s OnDemand was unavailable for comment last week.
