Item: Zoho CRM
Rating: 10
Author: Verified User

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

we use zoho crm to manage the deals with prospects and multiple pipelines for different teams to understand the ageing, no of meetings, calls, sales cycle duration, stage movements, new deal addition and overall account details.

This also helps us identify prospects for upsell cross sell based on their payment status.

i am regularly Reporting and Analytics to make reports for the management and also activity monitoring . I have also integrated it with a telephony tool to keep a track of daily calls, average duration of calls etc.

Pros and Cons

Reporting Interface can be shared to multiple admins , easy of access
concurrent view of the same report at the same time without glitches
Views created saves time so that every time filter doesn't have to be applied

Use of formulas is one area which is tricky
Blueprint is a powerful tool, need to have multiple sample blueprint in the system
Tracking deal stage movement isn't precise

Product Scalability

8

It is flexible and scalable as i have myself upgarded for my team from 6 members package to 60 members package and managing their account.

Flexible because it gives me many options to define new fields based on the requirement
I have been able to customize it about 80% of my current requirement and remaining 20% i am still exploring the options and reaching out to support

Zoho Customer Experience

We have grown from 50 customers to more than 300% customers

yes it has created an impact in terms of how an what we do to manage the relationship with the clients.

We are more empowered with the features that zoho has customized.
Mapping the entire customer journey with the zoho crm has become so much easier which otherwise would have been very tough

Return on Investment

Zoho has made my task easier because multiple teams' data can be collated and presented easily in a report
Return on Investment is still debatable because it creates a long-term value and initial investment may not give immediate ROI
Timestamp (created time) gives a clear understanding about the lead ageing

Alternatives Considered

Zoho Social and Zoho Sign

I have explored Zoho Social and Zoho Sign with a free trail account to understand the capabilities and have taken some insight.

I have shared these insight with marketing team and leadership team to evaluate these options for marketing automation and contract signing ease . managing contracts is critical and doing this with a digital signature can save a lot of time and money.

Key Insights

Do you think Zoho CRM delivers good value for the price?

Yes

Are you happy with Zoho CRM's feature set?

Yes

Did Zoho CRM live up to sales and marketing promises?

Yes

Did implementation of Zoho CRM go as expected?

Yes

Would you buy Zoho CRM again?

Yes

Other Software Used

Google Drive, Microsoft Power Automate, Microsoft Power BI

Likelihood to Recommend

Scenario well suited:
A large teams performance dashboard can be presented on the zoho interface rather than excel or google sheets which is very handy tool.

Less appropriate:
Need to have more chart design options, playing with formatting of chart area, plot area, legend etc . We can also look at exploring forecasting capabilities with the charts like how it is in PowerBI and Excel.

Users and Roles

59 - Multiple teams , from B2B to B2C to B2B2C . The interface is intuitive enough for everyone to use it and feature are simple enough to customize different workflows for different teams .

I have implemented the Blueprint functionality to control the action of each sales managers and also the Workflow rules to send automated emails to the respective owner and the admins, so everyone is apprised on the movements of large deals.

Support Headcount Required

1 - I Manage the support and implementation of all the members.

I Don't feel any advanced technical skills are required to manage the zoho crm, except one to have a good understanding of the microsoft excel.
The Report module is designed in such a way that anyone will be able to customise a report in a matter of few clicks , including making visualizations by groupign rows and columns data.

One thing which can be improved is on of chart options provided , something like box plot , waterfall, sunburst, or Treemap aren't supported in zoho crm

Business Processes Supported

Blueprint customization
Deal pipeline segmentation for different teams
Workflow rules for automated emails
Lead segmentation by lead status
New field customization feature

Innovative Uses

Integrating with a tata telephony solution was innovative
Automation of lead assignments to different calling managers
Kanban view customized view for review purposes

Future Planned Uses

Formula fields are not working perfectly at this point , i feel zoho can improve this further
VLOOKUP of contacts is also one area that isn't very smooth while customizing new fields
stage movements aren't accurate in the professional edition
while customizing report the stage duration option does not show up

Likelihood to Renew

10

i have already renewed my subscription twice. I am in the 3rd Year now.
I have been using it for a while and have been recommending to my friends as well.. have attended ZOHOLICs the annual program of zoho and it gave me new insights of managing the crm solutoin.

Products Replaced

No

Key Differentiators

Cloud Solutions
Scalability
Integration with Other Systems
Ease of Use

Evaluation Lessons Learned

Customer Support and the MTTR( Mean time to resolution) will be the key factor for me , while evaluating any cloud solution as i do not prefer chatting to the bot .

Implementation Rating

7

It required too much back and forth coordination with the zoho spoc

Implementation Details / Implementation Partner

Implemented in-house

Implementation Phases

No

Change Management Lessons

Change management was a minor issue with the implementation

Implementation Issues

multiple calls with the zoho spoc

Training Types Used

Online Training

In-Person Training

Online Training

8

it was good, i took the training from mr ganesh

Product Configurability

8

Its easy to design as per the org needs

Configuration Lessons

Well make a draft layout on figma or any other tool before implementing

UI Customization

Some - we have done small customizations to the interface

Extensibility and Customization

No - we have not done any custom code

Additional Customization Considerations

Added a lot of new fields as per the org needs

Support Rating

9

Team is quick to get on a screen share call and help with the challenges

Zoho CRM Customer Support Pros and Cons

Pros	Cons
Good followup Knowledgeable team Problems get solved Kept well informed No escalation required Support understands my problem Quick Initial Response	None

Premium Support

I had to take a zoho crm training course to better understand the workflows and use it systematically as per my organization needs.

The training was for 4 days and was a paid training course, it was a short batch size, but i saw a great commitment from the trainer in terms of work ethics and addressing queries.

Bug Resolution

No

Exceptional Examples of Zoho CRM Support

I have done multiple calls with a a person named Sharon , i use zoho crm professional edition and i was trying to find out the accurate stage movement duration, even though we couldn't achieve the objective as it was a limitation of the professional edition, but the support she extended on how to leverage the present functionalities is appreciable.