Who are Workbooks CRM?

Workbooks CRM is a Reading, UK-headquartered CRM and business applications platform built for mid-market organizations- companies that have grown past a departmental sales tool or a spreadsheet but do not want the cost, complexity, or lengthy implementation timelines that come with Salesforce or Microsoft Dynamics 365.

Trading under the deliberately blunt ‘No-BS CRM’ positioning, Workbooks combines sales, marketing, customer service and commercial operations in a single platform, and is pitched at businesses that want that scope of capability without a Salesforce-sized budget to match.

Viewpoint Analysis is a Technology Matchmaker, helping businesses to quickly find and select new enterprise technology. Our aim is to be the place enterprise buyers go to understand the software and technology market before speaking to vendors. Read on to learn more about Workbooks - who they are, what they do, and why you might consider them for your future technology project.

What Does Workbooks Do?

Workbooks is, first and foremost, a cloud-based CRM platform, but the company positions it as broader than most CRM systems buyers shortlist alongside it. The platform covers the usual sales and marketing ground, salesforce automation, pipeline management and forecasting, campaign and email marketing, and customer service case management, all built on a shared customer record so different teams work from the same data rather than passing spreadsheets between departments.

Where Workbooks differentiates itself is in what it calls commercial operations - functionality that most CRM vendors leave to a separate finance or ERP system. Order management, invoicing, supplier management and fulfilment sit natively inside the platform, so a sales order raised in Workbooks can flow through to invoicing without a second system or an integration project. For mid-sized businesses that have historically stitched together a CRM, an accounting package and an order processing tool, this is the specific gap Workbooks says it is built to close.

The platform is delivered as a single configurable system rather than a family of separately licensed modules, and Workbooks has recently added AI-enabled features aimed at speeding up admin tasks such as call summarisation, data entry and report generation. Pricing sits below Salesforce or Microsoft Dynamics 365, and the company's own marketing puts the saving at 50 to 70 percent versus those alternatives for a comparable scope of functionality.

Workbooks Technology Areas

All CRM systems have different approaches. Some focus on the core product and partner with other vendors in adjacent fields, while others have a more broad-ranging technology span. Workbooks' functionality covers several distinct product areas, each worth weighing separately against your own requirements:

• Sales and Salesforce Automation. Pipeline management, opportunity tracking and sales forecasting.

• Marketing Automation. Campaign management, email marketing and customer journey building.

• Customer Service. Case and ticket management with service level tracking.

• Commercial Operations. Order management, invoicing, fulfilment and supplier management.

•  Reports and Dashboards. Real time visibility across sales, marketing and service data.

•  AI Enabled CRM. Generative features aimed at reducing manual admin and speeding up reporting.

Workbooks Alternatives

Workbooks sits in an unusual competitive position. It is priced and packaged to compete with smaller, sales-focused tools such as HubSpot and Pipedrive, yet its functional scope, particularly around commercial operations, is closer to what buyers expect from Salesforce or Microsoft Dynamics 365. This makes the shortlisting exercise less straightforward than it first appears, since a buyer weighing up Workbooks against a low-cost sales tool and a buyer weighing it up against a full enterprise suite are, in effect, asking two different questions.

Workbooks publishes head-to-head comparison pages against most of its main rivals on its own website, a useful reference once you know who else to compare it with. If you are exploring the CRM market and want to understand who else you should be considering alongside Workbooks, the Viewpoint Analysis CRM Longlist Builder is a good place to start. Answer a few questions about your requirements and we will come back with a comprehensive report covering all the vendors worth considering for your shortlist.

Salesforce. The dominant enterprise CRM platform, with far greater depth of customisation, a huge partner ecosystem and app marketplace. It typically costs considerably more to license and implement than Workbooks, and mid-sized buyers often find the flexibility comes with a heavier admin burden than their team needs.

Microsoft Dynamics 365. A natural comparison for organisations already committed to the Microsoft stack, offering tight integration with Office 365 and Teams. Workbooks is generally positioned as faster to implement and less expensive, at the cost of some of the deeper ERP style functionality Dynamics can offer through its wider Microsoft ecosystem.

HubSpot CRM. Strong on inbound marketing and a well-regarded free tier, HubSpot is popular with smaller sales and marketing-led teams. Workbooks' built-in commercial operations functionality, order management and invoicing among them, is not something HubSpot offers natively, which becomes relevant once a business needs its CRM to touch post-sale processes.

Zoho CRM. A lower cost, broad suite covering CRM alongside a wide range of other business applications. Workbooks tends to win out with buyers who want a more focused, UK supported implementation rather than Zoho's very large, largely self-service catalogue of add-ons.

Pipedrive. A pipeline-focused sales tool valued for its simplicity, but with a narrower feature set than Workbooks once a business needs marketing automation, customer service or order processing alongside straightforward deal tracking.

If you are looking for a new CRM solution, take a look at our CRM Software Options report for a run-down of the key vendors in the sector.

If you are at the stage of running a formal selection process, the Enterprise Software Selection Playbook covers how to review the market and run a professional evaluation to find the right option for your organisation's needs.

Workbooks Customer Examples

Workbooks publishes a substantial library of customer case studies covering a wide range of sectors, reflecting the breadth of the mid-market it targets rather than a single vertical focus. The four examples below are drawn directly from the company's own published customer stories.

4ways Healthcare. A healthcare services provider that used Workbooks to sharpen its sales focus and give its marketing team greater visibility of CRM information across the business, a shift Chief Commercial Officer Annie Meharg credits with contributing to 10 percent growth.

STV. The Scottish broadcaster moved off multiple disconnected data platforms onto Workbooks to streamline its business processes and improve visibility, work that has supported revenue growth across its sales operations.

Dains Accountants. A Midlands based accountancy practice offering services from taxation to forensic accounting, Dains adopted Workbooks to increase the scalability and flexibility of its client facing processes as the firm has grown.

TCMM Shutter Group. A UK interior shutter manufacturer operating across five brands, TCMM used a business wide Workbooks implementation to unify its operations. Operations Director Sam Tamlyn puts £10 million of the group's revenue growth down to the change.

Suggested Next Steps

Further reading. If you want to understand the wider CRM technology landscape before going further with any individual vendor, the Viewpoint Analysis CRM Technology page covers the market in detail, including the different categories, key vendors, and what to look for when evaluating your options.

Build your initial longlist. Not sure who else you should be considering alongside Workbooks? The Viewpoint Analysis Longlist Builder asks you a few questions about your organisation and requirements, and we come back with a comprehensive report covering all the vendors worth putting on your list. It is a straightforward way to make sure you are not missing a strong option before you start shortlisting.

Have your selected vendors come and pitch to you. Take a look at our Technology Matchmaker, where we will bring the leading technology vendors to pitch their ideas to you. It is a super-quick way to learn what is on the market before shortlisting them.

Run a quick selection process. If you are ready to move to a formal evaluation, the Viewpoint Analysis 30-Day Technology Selection service takes you from a standing start to a preferred vendor decision in a single month. It combines the best of our Rapid RFI and Rapid RFP processes, and we run the whole thing for you, writing the brief, managing vendor engagement, and guiding your team to a scored, defensible decision.

Let us know if we can help. If you would like to talk through your requirement and understand how we can help, request a call and one of our team will be in touch.