Government CRM Software Solutions

The Market Leading Software Products in the Public Sector

Each of the below vendor products are popular Government CRM software solutions.

Aplicor

Aplicor is best known as a hosted or on-demand CRM and ERP (enterprise resource planning) software solution. We last reviewed the Aplicor Enterprise SaaS (software as a service) product in October 2007. Aplicor's strengths include:

• A welcome easy to use interface; the one-click-to-anywhere and many-to-one account viewing make the intuitive navigation and user interface the simplest of all our reviews
• Uniquely strong workflow automation (to support user-defined business process automation)
• Impressive business intelligence (BI) suite which includes dashboards, data warehouses and OLAP
• Aplicor meets some of the more difficult government procurement requirements such as NIST C&A, FIPS 199 and Section 508 compliance; the company is also a veteran owned small business and on the GSA Schedule
• The company is ISO 27001 and CMMi Level 3 certified
• Relative to its much larger competitors, Aplicor is a much less costly CRM solution

Aplicor sells to the private industry as well as the public sector. While the company supports hosted users in 91 countries and every time zone except one, it is a small company and does not possess the market awareness of its much larger competitors (either a strength or a weakness depending upon your perspective).

Oracle

Oracle is by far the public sector market share leader in North America and the world. While Oracle also sells its COTS (commercial off the shelf) CRM product to both private industry and government, Oracle's federal business is the largest single business group in the company. Oracle strengths include:

• Public sector market presence and market share leadership
• An extremely broad application product suite which includes CRM and ERP (enterprise resource planning); Oracle is also the maker of impressive middleware and of course the namesake database
• Much of Oracle's government CRM presence was inherited from its Siebel Systems acquisition; similarly, much of its government ERP market share came with its PeopleSoft acquisition
• Oracle is on the GSA, section 508 compliant and retains most government procurement requirements and certifications
• The Oracle solution is extremely flexible and deep; In our most recent Oracle review we found the products feature sets and available functionality unmatched by any other vendor
• Oracle is clearly an enterprise solution that requires significant investment for both software procurement and implementation
• While Oracle does have a pseudo hosted solution, the value proposition doesn't compare with true software as a service products; therefore, nearly all Oracle government implementations are on site

While Oracle generally comes with a big price tag, the company has always gotten aggressive with pricing and discounting when necessary (particularly at their quarter and fiscal year end).

SAP

SAP has solid public sector presence internationally, however, has not achieved the same traction in the most lucrative North American market place. SAP strengths include:

• Despite a lack of US government penetration, SAP has successfully implemented several international (namely European Union (UE) member country) governments and in the private sector is the largest ERP software manufacturer in the world
• Relative to primary competitor Oracle, SAP's government credentials and security certifications are much fewer
• Like Oracle, SAP is a costly solution which requires significant capital outlay for software procurement and implementation efforts
• SAP utilizes a unique and proprietary NetWeaver software technology; this may be an advantage or disadvantage depending upon your position

SAP and Oracle are the two largest application software companies in the world and as such battle it out for most enterprise software sale opportunities. They are both proven solutions, however, certainly have many different competitive strengths and differences.