Item: Zoho CRM
Rating: 6
Author: Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with Zoho CRM

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

ZoHo is used as our Sales and Accounting CRM. It addresses our need to save/access leads, accounts, potentials and reports on each. We also use it to track some invoicing.

Pros and Cons

Pros

Pre-Populated reports are easy to access.
The hierarchical approach to create a Lead, Account, and Potential are easy ways to classify a client and is easy for reps and managers alike to understand where a particular potential client is in our pipeline.
The stage duration and history function is a good tool for our team as we can look at where the majority of our bottlenecks are and then implement solutions to resolve those issues.
Creating customized reports is a pretty simple task although understanding what "module" to pull from takes some time to figure out when you first start using Zoho in order to get the data you are looking for.

Cons

I think the entire dashboard and interface could be more aesthetically pleasing.
I would like to see Zoho reduce the amount of "clicks" that are required to navigate and edit a potential, specifically when updating close dates, changing the name of the potential, or adding attachments.
On the Lead page I think it's great we can put "notes" in there, but I would like to be able to select which notes are carried over when the lead is converted into a potential. Many times I have information that is great for the Lead page or the Account page, but is really nothing more than a basic description of an organization. I don't want those notes in my potential as I want the notes there to be potential specific and not other information.
ZoHo could make the analytics easier to figure out. It's not tough - it just takes time to, again, figure out which module to pull from and some reports you run produce no-data even though we know there should be some there - then you have to work backwards to figure out where you added/didn't add something to the report.

Return on Investment

I think Zoho has helped keep our pipeline in check and let us more accurately forecast close dates and expected revenue. Because of this we can accurately allocate the proper resources for projects.
I think Zoho has made our sales reps own their accounts and potentials more as they are required to keep Zoho updated and are called for specific information. This ensures that all reps are operating in Zoho the same which means the reports we run have legitimate data we can analyze.
Zoho is a good repository to keep our deals organized and assign priority and complexity which, again, helps our organization allocate resources in advanced so we are prepared to begin development once the deal is "Closed Won".

Alternatives Considered

Sage CRM,Salesforce.com

ZoHo was selected for budgetary purposes and while I think it's a perfectly usable and valuable tool, I found Sage and SalesForce easier to use and easier to get new employees acclimated to quicker.

I think Zoho is a good tool for sales people that have some experience working in a CRM. As for managers, Zoho provides great information that can be analyzed to help guide new training, new strategies, and new approaches to help grow the business. Furthermore, Zoho provides our marketing team with great information around "deal type" and "industry" so we know where to spend our marketing dollars and who our ideal demographic can be for different campaigns.

Likelihood to Recommend

I think ZoHo is a good, budget friendly CRM that has most of the functionality that any organization would need to effectively add and access data. However, I feel that the report functions aren't that intuitive and that using ZoHo Analytics would require a tutorial that many of us don't have the time for. I'd love to dedicate someone internally to be our CRM Admin, but if we wanted to pay for that we would probably just but Salesforce licenses too. ZoHo works, it's good, the UI could be better and analytics could be easier to compile.

Using Zoho CRM

Users and Roles

10 - Our sales and sales management team uses ZoHo for obvious reasons. Furthermore, our operations and accounting department has access to ZoHo to follow effeciceny and payments. Finally, our marketing team uses ZoHo in order to look at opportunities that we've "won" in order to review the notes when developing case studies, etc.

Support Headcount Required

We currently do no have anyone dedicated to supporting ZoHo - we troubleshoot ourselves or search for answers online.

Business Processes Supported

Tracking Leads to Potentials to Closed Deals
To access information such as "Lead Source" to see where the ROI is coming from based on our marketing efforts
To run reports that show performance for the sales team, status of potentials, duration of potentials in a particular stage, and invoicing

Innovative Uses

We've been able to develop more targeted marketing efforts based on the data we have in ZoHo

Future Planned Uses

Not sure. We'd like to get deeper into the analytics.

Comments

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Potentials and Pipeline - Zoho CRM Review

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