NetSuite declares price cut SaaS war on Salesforce.com downunder

By Stan Beer
Tuesday, 18 November 2008 13:44

Development

SaaS business applications provider NetSuite has launched a price war against SaaS market leader Salesforce.com, declaring openly that it will take over the accounts of Australian and New Zealand Salesforce customers for half the price they now pay.

NetSuite says its program is aimed at winning Australian and New Zealand Salesforce.com customers who are eager to realise greater value from their CRM investment, as well as relief from some of the industry’s highest on-demand subscription fees.

The NetSuite RenewForce Program offers all salesforce.com customers the opportunity to drop their standalone sales force automation offering from salesforce.com in exchange for NetSuite CRM+ at a cost NetSuite guarantees will be 50% off the value of their current salesforce.com implementation, including service and support.

NetSuite claims its on-demand suite with built-in integration and business analytics offers substantially more value than the standalone salesforce.com SFA application for less cost.

The NetSuite RenewForce offer is available to all current salesforce.com customers in "good standing". The 50% discount will apply to a comparable license for NetSuite CRM+, including customer support and implementation services.

"RenewForce ends the age of being forced to pay up to A$200 per-user-per-month for basic contact management and SFA," said Johnny Jones, Vice President International Sales for NetSuite.

"In this environment, reducing costs and increasing productivity are key, and applications like NetSuite CRM+ that include—but go well beyond—basic SFA functionally enable companies to do a lot more with a lot less."

NetSuite also claims Salesforce.com customers who take the NetSuite offer will also receive important customer relationship management functionality not found in salesforce.com, including the ability to:

    * Create estimates or quotes

    * Generate sales orders

    * Manage multiple quotas and forecasts

    * Automate support for cross-selling and up-selling

    * Manage incentive management (commissions) within the system without using a third product

    * Conduct integrated email marketing

    * Pre-configure dashboards for business intelligence, and more

The market is waiting to see whether Salesforce.com customers will take the bait and switchand whether Salesforce.com deems the challenge worthy of a response.