A few months back I wrote about some FUD documents that came across my desk from NetSuite. It was, overall, a poorly put together document, out of date, etc.

So, I guess I should not have been surprised when a prospect sent over a similar document from Salesforce.com. But in a way I was surprised, as my rating below will indicate - I was a bit saddened by the production value of the document. I mean, here is a company on track to hit $1 billion in sales - and they produce this aesthetically unpleasing FUD sheet? Well, I guess the sponsorship fees for the latest Carnegie Hall benefit increased significantly this year or something…

Anyway, on to the rating…As you may remember, my criteria were the following (graded 1-5):

Literary Merit: How well is the piece put together?

Design and Execution: Does the piece look like it is a well though-out competitive document, or a knee-jerk reaction to a potentially lost deal?

Factual (In)consistency: Does the document actually point out real product deficiencies?

On to the Judging…

Literary Merit - 4

Actually, this document we have been seeing more of (while writing this another sales person forwarded it to me) is put together well. Lots of long sentences that belittle SugarCRM and vaunt Salesforce.com as a market leader, etc. (This could have been written by Marc himself.) There is a strong theme - “Myths” about Sugar’s superior model versus the hard “Facts” of Salesforce.com’s market position (little talk of actual technology work done by SFDC to make its product better for the next generaton of app development).

Design and Execution - 2

While presented well in terms of theme - this is the ugliest document I’ve ever seen from Salesforce.com or any other vendor. I mean, come on, as an analysts I’d get chocolate, posters, and pretty press kits Fed-Exed to me seemingly on a weekly basis…this is a major disappointment. BUT - maybe the low-budget look is Salesforce.com’s attempt to look “open source.” Who knows…

Factual (In)consistency - 5

I am not sure how to grade these, I mean this is FILLED with murky logic and outright untruths, so does that mean it should be scored a 5 or a 1? Some of my favorite gaffs:

-The misnomer that Sugar’s product is created by an open source community - rather than a centrally controlled IP that is QAed and beta tested by a wide and active community.

-Sugar does not support development or sandbox environments - WHAT?!?!?!

-Sugar has nothing akin to AppExchange (though SugarForge far preceded AppExchange)

-(This one’s the best) SugarCRM is simply trying to be a “non-proprietary duplicate of Salesforce.com” (yeah, we’re setting our sights on an already outdated product model…)

I could go on…But what struck me the most in this document, which was overall a pretty sad piece of work from a company known to spend a lot on making itself look better, is how they position SugarCRM as not even having a SaaS offering. Most of the TCO and “hidden cost” arguments they make are about basic maintenance ANY server-based product would incur.

It amazes me that even as open as SugarCRM is, there are still a huge number of people that refuse to simply download the product, go to SugarForge or Exchange, look through the specs on the web site, etc. Old habits, I guess….