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Maximizing Business with Zoho Expert: Solutions for Tech & SaaS

Published on: October 7, 2020Category: Certified Zoho Consultants, Zoho CRMLast Updated: September 21, 2023 Comments: 0

As a Technology and SaaS company, you’re managing leads, sales, deals, and likely managing subscriptions. Perhaps you are even using Zoho apps to do it. With Zoho CRM, Zoho Desk, Zoho Subscriptions, and Zoho Books implementations, capturing your data across the business is covered.  It’s a great start to business problem solving.

But are you using that data to the fullest? 

Are you keeping an eye on the correct metrics for your Key Performance Indicators? In this article we share the top three problems that we see a lot of Technology, Saas, CaaS, TaaS, and Subscription-based businesses contend with and how to solve them. Keep reading to ensure that you’re resolving these possible lapses in reporting. Avoid these pitfalls that could be leaving a hole in your potential revenue.

Problem 1: You’re Losing Track of Subscriptions or Recurring Revenue

using kpis to measure successSome businesses use deals to keep track of annual subscriptions or contracts, but depending on your contract structure, this can lead to a case of counting your chickens before they’ve hatched. Keeping an eye on your KPI’s slightly shorter-term will give you a more accurate pulse on the health of the business. Business problem solving can start by tracking Monthly Recurring Revenue. 

What is Monthly Recurring Revenue?

“Regardless of your subscription model, monthly recurring revenue as a KPI is foundational to your business. Take the total number of paying clients by the average revenue per customer to achieve this figure. Straightforward really, but if you have a lot of pricing variants, it can get sticky. (Bonus points if you can segment your recurring revenue by new vs existing clients.) Taking into account your known churn rate when looking at MRR could give you insight into whether or not it’s time to acquire more accounts.”

Keep your Monthly Recurring Revenue data at hand when you add this metric to your executive dashboard. In Zoho CRM, or Zoho Analytics depending on your business need, you’ll be able to bring this KPI front and center, with the ability to drill down for specifics when you need them. You won’t lose track of subscriptions or recurring revenue as easily when you make it part of your organization’s KPI’s.

Problem 2: Your Quoting, Job Costing, and/or Sales Process is Complex

As the market space for SaaS and Tech businesses continues expanding, so must the service and product offering of many organizations. If your business model includes software services, plus physical equipment – and maybe even installation – then your quoting complexity certainly goes up a notch. 

people working on a whiteboardHere’s a quick bonus tip: With a solution such as a custom Zoho CPQ tool, built on Zoho Creator your org can use your own factors, triggers, and calculations. Then you’re able to assemble quotes that include software, hardware, and  services. (P.S. The app includes a quote configurator, as well as kitting or bundling!) 

With complex businesses, and complex quoting, so exists a complex and often longer-term sales process. They can be difficult to keep tabs on. This is where having the right tools and a handle on the right KPI’s can really help. Start by asking yourself some questions geared toward business problem solving. For example, do you know with certainty:

    • How many new deals are in your pipeline right now? 
    • Which deals are closing this week?
    • Do you have a deal that started out promising that is now going stale? 
    • Do you know why? 

There’s a KPI for that! Here we provided a little bonus tool suggestion with the customer Zoho CPQ tool. However, we recommend a very common tool with far-reaching KPI’s to keep tabs on quotes, your open deals, deals with subscriptions renewing soon, and more. It’s a sales pipeline.

Use a Sales Pipeline in Zoho CRM, in tandem with your custom Zoho CPQ tool, to have quick insight and a connection between the data in your deals and your sales process. Tracking pipeline data can help you:

    • Know when it’s time to dive into issues with sales staff, saving time and maybe even saving a few deals your org might have lost due to inattentiveness.
    • Identify patterns in pipeline data to help you identify your ideal customer to target as you search for new leads.
    • And if you are dealing with complex quotes and long sales cycles, you can also see when customers are dropping off at certain stages of the cycle. You’ll know the seat of the problem and won’t have to guess where to start adjusting your sales process.

This insight from an integrated Zoho solution can solve for complex sales processes and mean a big leg up against your competitors.

Problem 3: You Don’t Know if Your Current Clients are Happy.

Anecdotally, you can poll your sales staff on behalf of clients. Or you can talk to a few customers to find out what they do or don’t like about your offering. However, without an active effort to utilize data from Zoho CRM, Zoho Survey, and potentially custom Zoho Creator functions in this process, you may never know the full story. If this sounds familiar, actively start business problem solving for customer satisfaction.

Are there things you could be doing differently to ensure happy customers and what are they?

We suggest three KPI’s to track, both lead and lag measures. They can help you understand objectively if your clients are happy. This mix of KPI metrics provides a rounded set of information to indicate the overall health of your existing customer base. 

First, Churn Rate. 

The SaaS industry average is said to be between 5-7% annually. Do you know yours?

The outlay of cost (CAC) to acquire a new client is usually significantly greater than the cost of maintaining an existing customer. Right off the bat, this is a bonus because the lower your churn rate, the less you may have to invest in acquisition. Satisfied clients aren’t generally searching for new business solutions. So for this reason, we recommend keeping tabs on Churn Rate as a lag indicator of customer satisfaction. To do this, use Zoho tools to calculate the percentage of your cumulative cancellations over your cumulative sign-ups every month. 

Secondly, On-Time Delivery. 

On-Time Delivery is a process metric that can tell you if your operations are working as intended. However, on-time delivery can double as a lead measure for customer satisfaction. In most cases, if your staff have promised a delivery date, and it has lapsed (calculated as a rate of deliverables made on time) there’s a very good chance that customer perception will be impacted. Knowing your baseline for on-time delivery, and acknowledging anomalies alongside other satisfaction metrics could be a simple way to stay aware of potential negative trends.

And if you need assistance with this or any KPI’s, Zoho’s many tools are indispensable. Zoho’s almost endlessly customizable with the Creator app. It allows you to create the features you need to capture the data your org needs including on-time delivery and churn rate. Zoho Creator  puts the tools to innovate and improve squarely into your hands.

Finally, Net Promoter Score. 

Net Promoter Score is used widely to measure customer satisfaction. Zoho Survey is a perfect tool for measuring this, and straightforward to do. With a single question, customers are identified as Promoters, Passive, or Detractors. We suggest adding in a comment field in order to collect statements if your customers wish to leave one. Using the quantitative data of the 1-10 rating, alongside the qualitative comment data, you open the door to actionable insights.

Ready to start solving business problems and empowering your organization through better use of the data you’re collecting? Instead of leaving it to chance, contact us for an assessment that’s geared specifically to your business. Whether you’re in SaaS, other technology, or you use subscriptions in any form, the ZBrains team of Zoho Certified Consultants are eager to help.

October updates from ZBrains

Zoho Updates, New Features, and Issues | October 2020

Published on: October 6, 2020Category: Certified Zoho Consultants, Zoho Bugs, Zoho Corporation, Zoho FeaturesLast Updated: May 10, 2023 Comments: 0

As you likely know through experience, Zoho is a diverse and dynamic ecosystem of applications and is constantly updated and improved. While we know that not every change will immediately improve your system, we’re striving to ensure that the most up to date information about Zoho Updates is available and shared with you regularly. It’s our hope as your partner that this information will inform any required updates to your systems and minimize unnecessary impacts to business. Each month we’ll post this short digest with information including:

  • New features for Zoho apps
  • Application updates from Zoho
  • Issues that might impact your system

We’d love to know if this update is useful for you. Let us know in the comments what else we can include to help provide you with the latest from Zoho to make your day easier.

Here are your What’s New updates for October 2020. 

 

New Features from Zoho

Zoho CRM

Zoho Books

  • Introduced discount at the line item level for bills and purchase orders.
  • Get a faster at-a-glance view with this Zoho Books business performance ratios improvement. See the details here.

ZOHO UPDATESApplication Updates from Zoho

 Zoho Creator

  • Lots of updates and improvements recently in Zoho Creator, so we’ll give you the highlights here.
    • You’ll see improvements in security, SMS default functions, and a greater flexibility with API permissions by user. 
    • Export settings have increased to 100,000 records.
    • Now you’ll find more flexible styling options in iOS. 
    • Most recently, Zoho Creator offers greater connectivity and Zoho-to-Zoho integration. You can connect custom functions with Zoho Books, Zoho Invoice, Zoho Subscriptions, and Zoho Inventory. 
  • These are just a few of the highlights of what’s new in Zoho Creator, please see the full technical documentation from Zoho for more. 

Additional Critical Notes on Zoho Creator Updates

  • Effective end of October, 2020 Zoho is making a change to the notations used in API Names. If you are using Smart Scheduler for FieldTech or any other custom extensions, please schedule your updates. Zoho Creator is moving from Dot (.) notation in API Names to the Double Underscore ( __ ) notation for all components and Removing Dot(.) and Double Underscore(__) Notation for Default fields of Custom Modules created in Zoho Extensions.
  • Recently Zoho announced the end-of-life for Creator API v1 on February 3, 2021, and will require a migration to Zoho Creator API v2. The application will remain compatible until then; however, we strongly recommend scheduling your analysis and migration in advance in order to avoid any interruptions in service.  This change applies to you if you are using the v1 API and syncing w/ CRM, Books, or any other application. The API for v2 is already released. Next, we suggest getting started as quickly as possible because the timeline for your migration is variable depending on the complexity of your solution. Contact us any time to schedule your migration analysis.

 Zoho CRM

  • It’s time to update your browser for CRM. Zoho has upgraded the default browser version for CRM to facilitate features like widgets and scripts. Change effective October 15, 2020. For documentation on the most current specifications, please see the updated system requirements documentation.

Zoho Books

  • Firstly, Zoho Books has provided a new option to use the suggested rate when categorizing bank feeds in foreign currency with transactions in Books.
  • Next, you can save a step with this new update, “[Books] Provided the option to choose a payment mode from multiple payment modes if you mark the option ‘I have received the payment’ while creating an invoice.”
  • Update allows time-savings with the “option to configure auto-apply credit notes and excess payments to recurring invoices.”

 

Zoho BugsIssues Notices from Zoho

  • For now, we don’t have any notable issues to share, but keep your eye on this section for future updates about issues.

 

 

 

If you have any questions or would like to schedule assistance around any of these updates please contact our consultants or call our offices at (888) 207-4111.

 

Connect with a Consultant

 

Zia Zoho CRM

Zia and Zoho CRM: How AI Can Up Your CRM Game

Published on: October 1, 2020Category: Certified Zoho Consultants, Zoho CRM, Zoho FeaturesLast Updated: June 14, 2023 Comments: 0

Today we want to introduce you to Zia, Zoho CRM’s AI-driven conversational assistant who you can chat with via text or voice, and who can provide sales insights or even remind you of tasks. This is just the start of what Zia can do. In this article we’ll cover:

  • Spending less time in your email
  • How Zia helps you get in front of your customers at the times best for them
  • Generating reports and getting quick answers to your reporting questions with Zia
  • How Zia helps to notify you of abnormal sales metrics
  • Maximizing your cross-selling and up-selling opportunities
  • And believe it or not, more

Stay tuned for all of the areas that Zia can assist, but first a bit more about how Zia does what it does in Zoho CRM. Zoho says,

“[Zia] optimizes your CRM data through data mining and machine learning to deliver key business information such as sales predictions, suggestions, and alerts. It is not only based on what goes into the system, but Zia even learns how each salesperson uses Zoho CRM from all her analysis.”

The result is better, more informed – and personalized – communications for sales and marketing with your prospects and leads. Let’s take a closer look at all the ways that you and your team can interact with Zia to shave time off common tasks from calls to reporting, and gain more insight into the world of your customers’ behavior. If you want to know how to use Zia in zoho CRM, keep reading. 

• Spend less time in email with Zia.

In email, something we all use daily, Zia is able to streamline work by identifying and extracting tasks. Zia can set appointments directly from email. How much time could that save you in a week?

It can also mark sentiment of email messages. Then you can easily recognize requests, queries, complaints, or other types of messages. This helps you easily identify potential escalations like complaints allowing you and your employees to organize what should be prioritized. Then, take this data one step further to segment records based on email sentiment – positive, negative, or neutral. For example, you can find all recent negative sentiments and schedule appropriate follow up actions like phone calls or meetings. 

This is just the start of what Zia can do.

• Zia answers when you ask. 

If you have questions about the data you keep in CRM, simply ask Zia to receive information quickly such as: 

  • a list of your open tasks for the day
  • which deals are closing in the next 30 days
  • or get granular and ask more complex questions

You can ask about sales numbers, or search anything in CRM when you type the word “search” and then the term you are looking for. Add skills for Zia to complete actions for you like creating tasks, changing deal stages, converting a lead, and placing a call to a contact. The functionality here goes much deeper of course, and we’re happy to answer your questions about Zia so contact us any time. 

• Contact your leads and customers at the right time with help from Zoho CRM Zia.

At the beginning of this article we mentioned that Zia learns from and uses behavioral patterns to do its work. Some of the behavioral patterns that Zia looks at includes “Best Time to Contact” information. In contact records you can view the best time for a call or email based on what Zia has learned from the contact behavior, as well as the agent behavior with that contact.

Now, anytime you want to do outreach take a quick look at the “best time” suggestion to improve those communications and increase your chances of connecting. (You can look for times both today or in the future if the best time for the day has already passed!) Tack on Zia reminders and double-down on your AI-powered successes. This feature works when you select your tasks for a day and ask Zia for reminders. It even takes into account the “best time” data so you don’t have to.

• Zia in Zoho CRM can recommend products, increase engagement, and improve customer experience.

[caption id="attachment_5689" align="alignright" width="467"]ZBrains Zia and Zoho CRM
Zia aggregates behavioral data points from many areas of the customer journey, then provides actionable recommendations for your sales and marketing teams.[/caption]

Using self-learning, Zia’s Recommendation tool can help you by finding behavioral patterns that can be used to position the right product at the right time, to your customers. You choose the areas where you want Zia to provide recommendations, then connect standard or custom modules to define the desired recommendation model. 

Zia aggregates behavioral data points from click-through rates and conversions, to revenue and cross-selling, and then provides actionable recommendations. Whether you’re looking for e-commerce or other online sales recommendations, Zia can be configured to help. 

Additionally, your customer’s preferences can be leveraged even more when Zia is used to place preferred content, products, and more to increase the efficiency of your lead nurturing campaigns, increase engagement, or improve customer satisfaction. This is the power of delivering the right messages at the right time.

• Get better predictions and get trend notifications with Zia.

CRM Administrators can take advantage of the prediction tool to find key business indicators such as the likelihood of a lead converting to a deal, revenue forecasts, and how likely it is for a site visitor to convert on – or purchase – a product. You can set up Zia predictions for both standard and custom modules. It requires 24 hours and a minimum of 200 matching training records or that contain data relevant to the prediction. 

When a prediction is configured, a custom field is visible on each record. Creating a prediction using Zia is relatively straightforward, but as always you can contact a ZBrains Zoho Certified Consultant if you’d like to get a running start.

In addition to predictions, Zia also looks for trends, and can alert you to spikes or dips without the need for you to check on a dashboard daily. You’ll get notifications about leads, contacts, deals, tasks, events, calls, email and more depending on the components you select for Zia to watch. An enviable tool for any sales manager, Zia analyzes the data and lets you know when significant changes occur. To see them check the Zia notifications in the lower right corner of your screen.

• Streamline tasks with an AI assistant, Zia.

What if your AI assistant Zia could recommend workflows, or tasks you repeat often, and streamline them for you? 

By enabling Workflow Suggestions, it can! 

Zia notifies you when it recognizes a new suggestion. Then you select if you’d like to use it or not. Automated workflows are suggested for and can be created in Leads, Contacts, Accounts, and Deals. 

A great example of this is, you may have several workflows already in place to help you manage follow-ups with your leads. And you may have leads that find you and engage with multiple campaigns. Zia can help by notifying you when leads may receive multiple campaign or auto responder emails in a single day.

Through behavioral learning Zia will recommend workflows for the manual activities that you repeat often, like the example above. Remember to check your Zia notifications to see them.

• Put an end to confusing record owner assignment rules, let Zia do it!

Confusing rules about client territory, industry, interest, or preferences, in tandem with agent availability are remedied with Zia’s record owner assignment. Zia suggests automated assignments based on how your current CRM records are assigned. 

For example, all customers in New York interested in product AA, should be assigned to agent Jane Smith. Record assignments can also be split based on the customer’s preferred form of communication. For example, if only an email address exists on a record, it should be handled by agent Richard Nguyen, and if only a phone number exists then the request should route to another agent. 

Similar assignments are made based on agent or user availability and their workload! Once you define and set them up with Zia, you can stop referencing protocol documentation. You put an end to emailing a team to find out who is available to take a new lead.

[caption id="attachment_4513" align="alignright" width="500"]how to use zia in zoho crm Streamline your Zoho CRM activities, automate repetitive tasks, and let Zia do data entry or answer those quick questions that pop up throughout the day.[/caption]

• Let Zia do the new record data entry.

Everyone finds it bothersome when a new record is entered in the system and the information is incomplete. Is that true for you, too? From information entered in Leads, Accounts, and Contacts, Zia will crawl the web and look for corresponding data matches including:

  • social media handles
  • complete address
  • phone numbers
  • email addresses
  • industry type

You and your team are set to save a few minutes here and there doing data entry. We all know that these little tasks add up over time.

So, once you have enabled data enrichment and mapped fields, Zia collects and enters the data for you whenever a record is created or edited. Of course, security is always a concern.  Zia does not store any information. It only accesses public information shared on the internet.

• Use Zia as your FAQ source.

Last, but certainly not least, Zia can act as your Zoho CRM FAQ. Have a question about something in the Zoho ecosystem? Type your question in the “Ask Zia” chat at the bottom right of your scree. Then see relevant articles and information to start your research.

Are you interested in learning more about Zia, Zoho’s AI assistant? Ready to start? Contact us!

Connect with a Consultant

BackToWork with Zoho

Zoho’s BackToWork Apps Free Until End of 2020

Published on: September 8, 2020Category: Certified Zoho Consultants, Zoho CorporationLast Updated: May 16, 2023 Comments: 0

Zoho has a mission to help businesses keep on track, especially during this uncertain time. Now they’re doing it again by offering the BackToWork apps free until 12/31/2020. We’ve sure experienced endless changes in 2020 and Zoho is primed to help. (You might remember they did so with Emergency Subscription Assistance Program (ESAP) and even made their Remotely suite free until July 2020 earlier this year.)  

Currently at ZBrains, we’re hearing from a lot of clients who are gearing up to open their doors – or even moving forward already – and the need for digital transformation tools that allow for a safe return to work is evident. As you embark on the journey back to business safely in these new circumstances, take a look at what BackToWork offers in this single pack – no need to subscribe to each one individually. 

What solutions are included in BackToWork?

Six primary modules are associated with this future-driven solution from Zoho. The information and communication we needed to operate seamlessly has changed dramatically. BackToWork can help with your struggles around safety, compliance, communication, facility management, and even asset and maintenance requests, and resource capacity. With Zoho BackToWork, you get “a ready-to-use app that focuses on workforce readiness.”

Admin control center module – Welcome your staff back to a safer office space. This dashboard empowers top-level management to assess the preparedness of facilities better, and view individual employee health statuses.

Wellness module – Provide industry-approved surveys. This dashboard lets you circulate and collect self-assessment and contact-tracing forms, and oversee organization-wide health information.

Safe entry module – Determine which employees are ready to work from the office. With this module, perform employee self-assessments, segregate high-risk groups, and evaluate entry requests from employees and visitors.

Employee self-service module – On this dashboard, you can manage asset requests, ranging from office supplies to sanitizer to office space maintenance.

Communications module – Correspond with staff over the phone and the web, and share guidelines, best practices, frameworks, and announcements in a coordinated manner.

Volunteer module – Give back to the community. This module allows organizations to recruit employees, and organize and execute volunteer drives.

How to get BackToWork

How would you use the BackToWork app collection? If you’re already thinking about how it could benefit your business and your team communication, or if you’re looking for other Zoho Solutions to enhance your organization, our team of ZBrains consultants would be glad to connect and analyze your situation for you. 

Contact us any time to start the conversation about your digital transformation.

CRM Implementation Steps: How to Keep Your Staff Informed

Published on: August 22, 2020Category: Certified Zoho Consultants, Zoho CRMLast Updated: May 16, 2023 Comments: 0

CRM Implementation Steps #3:  | Keep Your Staff in the Loop

As you plan a CRM implementation, it’s important to know exactly how you’ll be using the modules inside your CRM. Who knows your business systems better than the folks who use them every day? Your expertise and their experience is a recipe for success. In this Zoho CRM tutorial, we will guide you through four easy CRM implementation steps, empowering you to make the most out of Zoho CRM and optimize your business operations.

Keep your staff in the loopKeep your staff in the loop.

This one’s very important. Obviously, you don’t want your staff to come in one day to a system they haven’t a clue how to use.  

As soon as you’ve decided you’re going to implement a new CRM, bring in your staff or your key champions, and detail the plan. Be sure to include an implementation timeline.  

As long as your staff knows what you plan to do, they can plan their days around occasional work stoppages, and be prepared the day you launch your new CRM.

Read All CRM Implementation Quick Tips

Visibility for CRM Projects

Deployment is never a one-fell-swoop sort of maneuver, and hiccups do occur from time to time. If you know an issue has surfaced that will affect your staff or put things a little behind schedule, better to let them know as soon as you know than share it later when it seems like a surprise to everyone.

Keeping employees abreast of the latest CRM developments, and inviting them to take part in ideation or input, will ensure their happiness with the new system. Afterall, one of your goals is productivity, isn’t it?

Is there potential for your CRM to work better for your organization? Take the CRM Adoption Survey and find out where you stand.

Take the CRM Adoption Survey

Don’t Overlook CRM Training

Published on: August 22, 2020Category: Certified Zoho Consultants, Zoho CRMLast Updated: June 9, 2021 Comments: 0

CRM Implementation Tip #5 | Don’t Overlook Training

 

Once your CRM is up and running it can be a relatively common impulse to rush back to work using the new CRM tools you just spent so much time planning for and implementing. 

However, before you take off running back to business, it’s time to think about training.

 

CRM Training IdeasMake sure everybody who’ll use the system knows exactly how to do so – train them!

 

Even if your new CRM makes life easier all around the office, your employees probably won’t be able to sit down on launch day and navigate their way through the system without some prior knowledge and CRM training.

You can take all the mystery out of their first days on the new system by giving them training sessions, either set up by you or by a Zoho certified consultant.  You should schedule one session per employee group or department: accounting, sales, marketing, etc.

 

Each group of employees will likely be using the CRM to perform different functions so their training will vary slightly.

 

Training Your Staff for a New CRM Implementation

Make sure you allot time to answer questions when you schedule these sessions. Most of us need more than one exposure to learn something new. 

 

For teams that work together with certain data in the CRM, schedule a training session that includes everyone in those departments so no one is left in the dark about another’s process. For example, an Order Fulfillment team that receives data directly from a Sales team would benefit from training together.

 

Multi-departmental training also serves to take some strain off you. Now, employees who have questions about certain CRM processes can also rely on each other. This shared knowledge can strengthen teams and inter-departmental communication when one associate can ask CRM questions of someone from another department. If they need help understanding the implications of their specific actions on certain data you aren’t the only resource.

 

Click through for the rest of our implementation quick tips!

 

Read All CRM Implementation Quick Tips

 

 

We hope this insight is helpful, but if you want to ensure that you’re getting the most possible out of your CRM, we recommend taking this CRM Adoption Survey. Find out if you could be doing better.

 

Take the CRM Adoption Survey

 

Transition Your CRM in Phases

Published on: August 21, 2020Category: Certified Zoho Consultants, Zoho CRMLast Updated: June 9, 2021 Comments: 0

CRM Implementation Tip #4 | Transition Your CRM in Phases

Big business changes, especially changes in everyday systems like a new CRM implementation, can be turbulent times. This quick tip describes how to disturb your business the very least during CRM implementation time. This one is really simple.

Transition CRM in stagesTransition your CRM in phases, not all at once

It bears repeating – yes, again – that even a successful CRM implementation doesn’t happen all at once. With so many facets of your  system designed specifically for your business, you’ll need time to test everything out and make sure it’s working as it should.  

 

For that reason, it’s a great idea to start using parts of your new system a little at a time – gradually – until you’re completely migrated over to your new system. A phased approach can account for some improvements in user adoption, but it’s not always possible to do. Need more quick tips for CRM Implementation? 

 

Read All CRM Implementation Quick Tips

 

 

What if a phased approach won’t work for you?

If it doesn’t make sense to move your entire operations to a new CRM in chunks, you might decide to implement a new CRM behind the scenes while your employees continue working on the old one.  (Of course, this doesn’t mean you shouldn’t still keep them informed about what you’re doing.)  If you choose to go that route, you’ll have a little more time to make sure things are working as they should – all the more reason to move deliberately, and in smaller phases.

Is your organization using its CRM to the fullest? Take the CRM Adoption Survey and find out!

 

Take the CRM Adoption Survey

 

Streamline Business Processes with CRM Implementation.

Published on: August 21, 2020Category: Certified Zoho Consultants, Zoho CRMLast Updated: May 16, 2023 Comments: 0

CRM Implementation Process Tip #6 | Streamline Procedures

While you may be in the mood to shake things up by deploying a new CRM, you may not have thought to shake up your very business processes themselves.  Well, in the name of efficiency, why not?

Streamline with a CRMUse your CRM Implementation as an opportunity to streamline your procedures!

There isn’t an exact science behind this, but we’re willing to bet the majority of businesses who elect to set up their own CRMs aren’t so well-versed in how their systems work. There’s a good chance that they’re missing some opportunities to streamline processes inside of their unique CRM systems.

Hand off the right CRM data at the right time

Using a CRM to pass information from one department to another is common in businesses, but, it’s not always done in the best way. For example, your Sales team member’s objective could be to pass information to Sales Managers. Historically, your sales team had to communicate certain information to Sales Managers verbally because of an imperfect information transfer. Now that you’re implementing a new CRM this is a great time to look into how to transfer all relevant information from Sales Agent to Sales Manager!

Read All CRM Implementation Quick Tips

Next steps for CRM Implementation Process Streamlining

That’s just one small example, of course. We recommend spending time to thoroughly outline all the areas in your business where information passage could be faster or serve the users better.  Then research ways of doing those things inside your new system.  Of course, if you aren’t quite sure what to do or simply don’t have time, you can always consult a professional, too.

Does your current CRM support your current procedures? Take the CRM Adoption Survey and find out where you stand.

Take the CRM Adoption Survey

Use a Project Manager for CRM Implementation

Published on: August 18, 2020Category: Certified Zoho Consultants, Zoho CRMLast Updated: June 9, 2021 Comments: 0

CRM Implementation Tip #10 | Use a Project Manager

 

If you’ve found this article, there’s a good chance you  know a few basics about getting your new CRM system deployed and running as it should. However, even if everything goes as planned, there’s one other thing you can do that will really cement everything together. It’s also very likely to improve morale for everyone involved.  Not quite a magic bullet, but, it’s darn close.

 

CRM project managerBe Successful the First Time With a Project Manager.

 

It’s understandable if you can’t be the one to take this bull by the horns and ensure that all implementation steps are completed in a timely way – after all, you’ve got a business to run.  

 

Hiring a project manager, or selecting a capable champion within your company to take charge can work wonders for generating enthusiasm among employees. This resource can help with more than answering their questions. They can also act as a liaison between you (or your teams) and your IT department (or your deployment consultants).

If you haven’t already, don’t miss all 10 of the CRM Implementation Quick Tips.

 

Read All CRM Implementation Quick Tips

 

Selecting a CRM Project Manager

 

When selecting a Project Manager from among the ranks of your company, do be sure to pick someone with a sense of authority (read: management skills) and a good amount of charisma. They will need both in order to motivate both your employees and the people behind the implementation itself!

 

It helps if they also have some experience with your business processes.

 

The reasons for picking someone with those personality traits are clear: someone with management skills will know how to deliver tasks to your deployment team in a way the team can understand. They also provide it with structure so the team adheres to a schedule.  As well, if that person is charismatic, they will be able to paint the chosen CRM migration in a positive light. They will motivate fellow employees to do their part to ensure the implementation goes smoothly.

 

 

Effects of Open Door Policy and Training on Maximizing CRM Deployment

Published on: August 18, 2020Category: Certified Zoho Consultants, Zoho CRMLast Updated: May 16, 2023 Comments: 0

CRM Implementation Tip #9 | Have an Open Door Policy

You can apply this tip to more than just CRM deployment. Upon deploying a new system of any sort, you’ll be greeted with both positive and negative responses. How do you deal with the pushback you might receive for doing something new?

CRM Project visibilityHave a CRM Project Open Door Policy.

Keep your door open, as well as your training sessions and email threads. When making big changes to your business and employees’ work days with a new CRM, consider giving them all the information they need or want to make the transition smoother.

When you do encounter some blowback from your traditionalist employees, be sure to heed their criticisms. Then, explain calmly and succinctly what the new system does to either improve life or alleviate their concerns. Show them how everyone will benefit from the new changes. Keeping your ear open lets employees know you’re willing to consider their feelings. Having an open door policy will ultimately make them happier in the long run, even if they aren’t satisfied at first with the new system. Trite but true, a rising tide lifts all ships, and the same is true with upgrades in technology like Zoho CRM.

Include extra training opportunities

If employees’ problems lie in the fact that they don’t feel they’ve been trained enough on the new system, host another training session, or several of them.  As well, keep everyone in the loop by maintaining a single group email thread, or message channel for company-wide CRM developments and questions. We also recommend these smaller group or department-specific channels for more specific developments and questions.

Read All CRM Implementation Quick Tips

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