Recently I was in a sales cycle with a prospect that had already made the decision to use Salesforce for their 20 sales people, but was unsure about which version of Salesforce they needed based on their business requirements.

They were trying to decide between the Professional and Enterprise Editions. They felt that their needs were basic and were therefore inclined towards the Professional Edition. At a high level they needed:
•    Basic lead and opportunity management
•    Account and contact management
•    Reporting and dashboards

They asked me as the implementation partner which factors they should consider in their selection.

My advice was to approach this selection very carefully, and not just from a financial perspective. While the list price of the Professional Edition is almost 50% the cost of the Enterprise Edition, there are significant differences between the two versions. Choosing the Professional Edition because you think your current needs are “basic” may cost you later in terms of user adoption, user satisfaction, and potential expense of re-implementing the Enterprise Edition if you discover that the Professional Edition cannot meet your business requirements.

Salesforce does a good job of documenting the differences between versions at http://www.salesforce.com/products/editions-pricing/feature-comparison. Rather than repeat the comparison chart, I will point out the unavailable features in the Professional Edition that may help you determine whether you need to buy the Enterprise Edition. Note: The points below are mainly geared towards a traditional sales organization, not a support or channel model.

1. User Profiles and Permissions

Do your users all intend to have the same data privileges or will there be exceptions? The Professional Edition provides a fixed number of user profiles that cannot be edited, so all users see the same feature set, tabs, and form layouts.

While a security hierarchy is supported in Professional Edition there is no field level security. Consequently, this limitation more than others pushes people to the Enterprise Edition.

2. Product Catalog

If you plan to have a product catalog, and have salespeople build opportunities using products, the product catalog is not available as standard in the Professional Edition, but can be purchased for an extra fee.

If product granularity on opportunities is important from a reporting and/or production visibility perspective, either buying this feature as an add-on or selecting Enterprise Edition is needed.

3. Workflow

Workflow – both standard and approval – is not available in Professional Edition. Arguably for a small sales team this may not be a show stopper as a review of reports/dashboards would suffice for small data volumes and a small number of users.

As your sales team and transaction volume grows the need for workflow in the form of email notifications, tasks being created, fields being updated, and callouts to external systems such as an order management system will also grow.

4. Campaign Management

Also available as a Professional Edition add-on is the campaign module. Consider this add-on or the Enterprise Edition if you need to aggregate leads or contacts into campaigns for campaign ROI analysis and mass mailings.

5. Outlook/ Mail Integration

Will your sales people want the ability to automatically add emails from Outlook to Salesforce? With Professional Edition they will not be able to do this unless you also purchase the API.

6. API/Integration Capabilities

Access to the Salesforce force.com web services API is not available in Professional Edition as standard, but can be purchased for an extra fee. While the Professional Edition supports some basic imports it does not support the full import/update/delete capabilities offered in the Enterprise Edition.

If you plan to integrate Salesforce with other external systems, or even periodically load data into custom objects, this is not supported in the Professional Edition. Carefully consider this requirement for both your initial implementation, which may require data migration, and for your ongoing needs.
Be aware that Single Sign On is not available, even for an extra fee.

7. Force.com Development

The force.com application development platform is not available for Professional Edition so no Apex code based customizations/extensions are possible. S-control based code is supported if the force.com API add-on is purchased.

One of the areas we have found this to be an issue is in the lead conversion process. Many companies want to do something custom to support their specific process, such as setting up two contacts that are captured on the lead record, or mapping some other related list data to the mapped account/contact/opportunity.

8. Translations

Professional Edition does not provide the Translation Workbench, which is a tool that allows administrators to provide foreign language translations for custom fields/tabs/objects, etc. If you need to support multiple languages, and have created any custom objects or custom fields, then Enterprise Edition is required.

In closing, our experience has been that most companies opt for the Enterprise Edition. Part of this is a function of the types of customers we target and part is a function of the Enterprise Edition offering the best value and long term growth prospects for a sales organization beyond single digit users. The few Professional customers we support have a small number of users, a simple sales process, and sometimes no dedicated Salesforce administrator. However, we often get a collective moan from these customers when they ask us, “Is xyz possible?” and we tell them, “Yes, if you upgrade to Enterprise Edition!”

Bottom line:
•    Think about your long term strategic vision regarding how you will use Salesforce
•    Consider all of your users needs
•    Review the list above to determine the “must haves” from the “nice to haves”
•    Don’t make the decision just based on cost. By the time you add on the cost of some Professional Edition add-ons and you factor in some of the manual work you will likely perform on the workarounds, you my be closer to the cost of Enterprise licenses than you think!

If you need advice regarding which Salesforce edition is right for you, feel free to contact Apprivo directly for a no-obligation consultation.