Bigin by Zoho CRM vs. Workbooks

- Multiple pipelines let me organize processes like sales, marketing, customer support, and assets clearly. - The forms builder allows me to gather leads, sign-ups, and customer requests from my website directly into the Bigin by Zoho CRM. - Integrations with Zapier and Make connect website orders and data from other sources smoothly. - Email templates make it easy to send professional, branded communications. - Automations handle repetitive tasks like managing customers, orders, and team tasks, saving me time.

It's a really great system for small to medium organizations that are willing to spend some time thinking about how their workflow can be improved by designing processes which will allow them to streamline and automate their business. For people who are not serious about making a commitment to bettering their business, Workbooks may not be a correct fit. For instance there are a lot of features which many people think they don't need, but they haven't really spent the time to figure out what the needs of the business are. The nice thing about Workbooks is that you can turn off things you don't need, and then when the business demands, they will be there for you to utilize.

• Manage big databases. We have a large database of contacts and partners (more than 5,000 contacts), which are updated day by day, as a result of our participation in conferences, webinars, etc. For this reason, we needed a platform that would allow us to always have our database up to date, and accessible and editable by any member of the company.
• Pipelines. Pipelines are very necessary in our daily lives, since we present many service proposals to different clients, and until now we control the status very manually. With Bigin by Zoho CRM, we can have all this information centralized in a single place, and know at all times the status of the service proposals we present (sent, pending decision, lost, won...).
• Product definition. The product definition block has allowed us to further structure our typologies of products and services. At least, it has allowed us to reflect on them and what is the best way to package the service offered.
• Control panel. The control panel has been very useful for us to be able to quickly see the main indicators (offers presented, next actions to be taken, etc.).

• Sales process management from enquiry to delivery of product
• This was previously on as many as 4 systems using excel and legacy applications such as the written word in log books
• Automatic reporting for financial compliance: once built, the reporting process reduced the workload on a monthly basis from 2 days to 20 minutes
• The FD loved it
• The overall capability of the package enabled the sales force to rapidly pull our pertinent data for a sales call, plus managing time and resources better for increased efficiency
• Business development and focussed marketing became so much easier, we noted that the process paid for itself many times over

• No multi-select bulk move in pipeline After a webinar we had 42 cold leads that qualified → wanted to drag them all to “Interested” in one go. You can’t; moved them one-by-one like playing Solitaire.
• Workflows hidden behind pay-wall We needed an auto-survey when deal = “Won”. Works in trial, the day licence dropped back to free the rule simply stopped – zero warning.
• Offline mobile = read-onlyMentor met founder in co-working basement (no Wi-Fi). Took paper notes, re-typed into Bigin back at office → duplicate risk.
• Pick-list values can’t be deactivated, only deletedWe miss-typed “Refferal” instead of “Referral”. To fix, must delete; history of 60 old records then shows empty source.

Incentivized

• There really isn't all that much, what I would like to see is an app to use on iDevices. Our sales team all have iPads for presentations etc.
• While Workbooks works rather well with HTML 5, I would still like to see an app. I know it's in the making, but haven't seen anything of this as of yet.
• I am sure that would increase productivity even further (if it's of the same standard as the main environment).

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Incentivized

the product works. support has been good or great so far all has been great and we hope to get more from the product. we purchased for an initial year then renewed for a longer term, we have no regrets with this.

Bigin has really helped us with selling our monitoring services to our customers, which is primarily farmers in the UK. We often need to talk to customers before, during and after a sale, and Bigin helps us keep our contacts and leads organised as we track all these interactions. We recommend it very strongly

Incentivized

Workbooks CRM never let me down.

The support is all international and it takes a while to get support as you have to go through chats and set up times, not as easy to just call and get the support you need. They are very nice when you do finally connect with someone and they are knowledgeable, just challenging being international sometimes.

Incentivized

Workbooks online trianing does what it needs to; but some training will always be better suited to face to face..

Simplicity Without Sacrificing Core Features
Unlike full-scale CRMs that often feel overwhelming, Bigin by Zoho CRM provides a focused set of features that are perfect for managing deals, contacts, and activities. It’s not bloated, and that was exactly what we needed for a lean, fast-moving team.

We felt the high amount of customisation available from Workbooks was much more beneficial to us than the offerings from the larger CRM companies. We also liked the smaller company mentality of Workbooks as it reminded us of ourselves. Ultimately the price also paid a factor as Workbooks was more affordable for what we needed.

Incentivized

• I was able to migrate from Hubspot CRM easily saving me hours of time
• I have recieved 5 x replies to the email sequence i set up since i started using it
• I have improved lead conversion by 5% so far

• Allows us easy management of leads and clear visibility of opportunities for the sales team
• User levels allows us to lock down various parts of the system to only allow them to view or edit certain areas
• Allows us to manage customers in one piece of software and avoid having to use separate software for support, sales and operations

Incentivized