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Zoho updates December 2020

Zoho Updates, New Features, and Issues | December 2020

In the past month, we saw a number of updates and improvements in the Zoho CRM application. They’re outlined briefly in this post, along with additional insights about Zoho Creator and Zoho Meet. Keep reading for details.

Finding the updates helpful?  Let us know in the comments if there’s anything else we can do to help provide you with the latest from Zoho and make your day easier.

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

 

New Features from Zoho

Zoho CRM

  • In CRM instances with Cliq integration, you will find the capability to call or chat with the record owner directly from CRM when you hover over the record owner name. Enjoy this improved communication workflow!
  • External fields is a new feature in Zoho CRM allowing you to connect CRM with outside data sources. With this feature you can designate a custom, single line field for third-party application information is stored. With this “upsert API call” the external ID can be used to search, create, update, or delete records. Learn more
  • Improvements to the CRM Auto Number field now allows you (as an admin) to select the date formatting option from settings that you like best.

Zoho Creator

  • Security upgrades for Creator accounts associated to Zoho data centers in EU, India, China, and Australia. API and Security Permissions are designed to enhance application security by limiting user access to resources such as API access, PII data, and ePHI data.

  • Zoho Creator’s audit trail feature has been improved for all accounts using Creator 5. Quick summary includes the following:

    • IP address and source information can be captured including: OS, device, and browser.

    • Logs can be exported as .CSA, and you can apply filters while exporting.

    • Improved security.

    • Unchanged data retention for logs is 365 days.

  • Zoho Creator US V5.25.6 iOS now includes upgraded security including allowing reports printing options only for users with this permission.

  • Increased security in Creator applies field permissions to record and print templates when exporting or printing, and ensures that the results contain only the fields permitted for the end user.

  • From Zoho, “You can now control the availability of the change email address option for your portal users. We’ve introduced the Allow customers to change their email addresses option in the customer portal settings.” Read more about this improvement and more on Creator here.

Zoho Meeting

  • Exciting performance improvements and bug fixes to Zoho Meeting are now live. Users now enjoy multi-video feed support for webinars, bandwidth optimization, and improved reliability for recordings. Meetings have also been reworked to resolve several known bugs.

ZOHO UPDATESApplication Updates from Zoho

 Zoho CRM

 

  • Updates in CRM include limits of 1000 merges per month per organization for Professional, Enterprise, and Ultimate edition users. This applies to merges performed while using the mail merge templates’ mail merge and print preview actions. If you need assistance with this new limit or have questions about how it could impact your organization, don’t hesitate to contact us.

  • There have been updates to the Workflow rules in CRM. From Zoho, here are the new limits for this feature:

    • Workflow rules per org: 2500

    • 2500 (maximum 2000 active rules)

    • Execution limit/org: 50

    • Workflow rules per module:

    • Free – 10 (maximum 5 active)

    • Standard – 30 (maximum 15 active)

    • Professional – 80 (maximum 40 active)

    • Enterprise- 125 (maximum 75 active)

    • Ultimate – 150 (maximum 100 active)

  • Turning on notifications in your Feeds Preference now allows you to receive notifications for actions via automations such as when records are created, updated, or deleted. (Just select ’Send Notifications.’)

  • If you are using Workflow rules in CRM Standard edition, now you can take advantage of these actions: Field Update Trigger, Delete Trigger, Field update action, and Email recipient in alert.

Additional Critical Notes on Zoho Creator Updates

  • Zoho announced the end-of-life for Creator v1 on February 3, 2021, and will require a migration to Zoho Creator 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.  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 BugsIssues Notices from Zoho

 Zoho Creator

  • In Creator, a bug affecting the field labels in PDFs attached to email notifications not translating as expected has been repaired

  • Bug fix for custom location in map report for Zoho Creator has been implemented.

 


 

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

 

difference between quotes and estimates in Zoho

What’s the difference between an estimate and a quote in Zoho?

When it comes to your business – and it’s true for the clients we work with here at ZBrains – one of the primary things you want and need to do in your CRM or ERP system is to create quotes and/or estimates. It’s a concise way to share your offering with clients. And more than likely, you want to create them quickly and efficiently. And also in an organized way that is easy for your teams to manage. So, when it comes to this process – and quotes vs estimates – what are your best options in Zoho? Keep reading for a little more insight on the differences between estimates and quotes, and how to use them in Zoho CRM, Zoho Books, or with another custom integration like QuickBooks.

The Difference Between Estimate vs Quote

When is the last time you were able to give a straight price for a project or service to one of your customers without some customization? Because so many businesses rely on custom solutions in order to meet their needs, there’s a good chance that you’re probably using estimates or quotes to build personalized prices for each of your clients’ jobs. We’ve certainly found that no two jobs are exactly alike, so relying on a good way to build and communicate estimates or quotes is absolutely necessary. And giving your clients exactly the decision making information they need from the start of their relationship with you will set the tone for a successful partnership.

So, what is the difference between an estimate and quote?

A quote gives your client a fixed price to accept for a project or service. It acts as a contractual agreement. A vendor (you)  will combine fixed and variable costs, and present to the customer to accept or not. This will include a combination of hourly rates and cost of materials, equipment and/or services for a job. Generally speaking, a quote includes exactly what is needed for a job. Once it’s accepted by your customer, this is the price they pay at the end. The price in a quote is not subject to change, unless additional work, materials, or services are agreed upon by a vendor and their client. (Sometimes these become change orders.)

An estimate also includes fixed and variable costs for a job, but does not act as a contractual agreement. In this event, a vendor might share a range of costs to give a scope of what the project entails. This is a “ballpark” number. It’s subject to variation whether that comes in the form of fewer or greater hours, changes to services purchased, or materials used for a job.

In order to effectively communicate with your clients, it’s a good practice to provide both quotes or estimates in writing. Additionally, both types of engagements generally have an expiration date.

Quotes vs Estimates: which is best for your process?

When it comes to your clients and your business, you must decide between quotes vs estimates and which is best for your process. A common practice is that your level of effort is equivalent to the amount of detail provided by the lead.

For example, you may wish to use a less time-intensive method to share what a job or project may cost when a lead or potential client has provided only high-level information about their needs. In this case, an estimate allows you to give a realistic look at the possible, estimated costs of a project. At that time, the lead may decide it’s not what they want and move on, and you haven’t spent a lot of time on exacting work that goes to waste. 

Alternately, your lead may see the quote and be interested in going forward with the work based solely on the estimate. That’s great!

Or in cases where further refinement is needed, you may engage in additional information gathering with the client. Then perhaps you’d spend a little more time putting together a more formal Quote for their final approval on this contract before beginning the work.

In the event that estimates won’t work for your business, you may spend additional time in your sales process qualifying a lead. Your goal is to determine if they are a fit before investing time in the lengthy process of building out an exacting quote for them. 

Consider your clients, your business needs, and your processes carefully – or engage with a consultant – if you’re in a position to integrate your estimating or quoting process into a CRM or ERP system.

Using Quotes in Zoho CRM and Using Estimates in Zoho Books

compare quotes vs estimates“Quote” and “Estimate” are essentially the same in Zoho; however, Quotes are generated in Zoho CRM and Estimates are generated in Zoho Books. We understand that it seems pretty awkward to say this given we just spent all that time sharing the practical difference between the two. Now we’re saying that Zoho says they’re the same? 

Well, Yes. And, No. But stay with us here!

Remember how we just mentioned that this all boils down to how you run your business, what your process is, and what the needs of your clients are? This is why there are so many options in Zoho! 

  • You can keep it streamlined by using Quotes in CRM. With a little set up, you can engage a Zoho CRM function allowing you to create Quotes from Deals.
  • If you’re using Zoho Books, you can use Estimates to create a proposal, and then convert it to a sales order or invoice upon acceptance.
  • Perhaps you might have a simple sync between Zoho CRM and QuickBooks that ties together Quotes and your accounting functions. While this isn’t a 360° solution it works great for some.
  • And if you’re searching for a true ERP solution, then a fully integrated, real-time solution is what you want. This could include Zoho CRM, Zoho Books, and other applications – even third party integrations.

Finding the right solution for quoting or estimating

When it comes down to making a choice about how to set up your system, including how you’ll use quotes vs estimates in your sales process, we recommend taking the time to fully evaluate your existing systems. Furthermore, evaluate your process to ensure that what you select is serving your needs.

ZBrains helps businesses like yours by working together and analyzing expectations and performance gaps in your business process. We take the time needed to examine your business from the perspective of the world at large. Then, our experts determine what is working, and what is not.  We’ll consider which methods need to be introduced to change and strengthen the fabric of your company.

The basics of Business Process Analysis from ZBrains works like this:

  • First, we partner with your team to thoroughly review your sales, marketing, operations, and accounting processes. And work to understand requirements and current systems. 
  • Next, with your timeline, goals, and targets in mind, we give you a strategy that can be executed with precision to create a successful business plan.
  • We recommend solutions and develop customizations to support your goals. (Like determining how you want quotes vs estimates to flow in your system and sales process!)
  • Finally, we consolidate your business operations into a centralized platform with Zoho as the hub. And you begin operating in a system that supports every aspect of your operation that was identified at the start. 
  • With the systems in place, and useful data at hand in Zoho, you can more easily refine and optimize your business as time goes on. 

Does this sound like the digital transformation you’re considering? We’d love to help. Contact us today!

Connect with a Consultant

Zoho Updates 11 2020

Zoho Updates, New Features, and Issues | November 2020

Again in the past month, we’ve seen a lot of changes, updates, and bug fixes in Zoho; most notably Creator. Be sure not to miss the additional critical notes on Creator to ensure your systems continue running smoothly.

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 November 2020. 

 

New Features from Zoho

Zoho CRM

  • Many-to-many associations between records within a module is now possible in Zoho CRM. Self-referencing lookup fields allow you to create deeper relationships between the contacts and content in your database. Need help setting this up? Let us know!
  • Special and foreign characters are now supported in email addresses of CRM records such as Leads and Contacts. The following characters will be supported: # ! $ % & ‘ * + – / ^ _ ` {} | ~

Zoho Creator

  • A new field property available for “Contains Health Info.” This allows for further HIPAA compliance control because now fields can be designated as sensitive if they contain health information. This is available for the following field types: single line, email, number, decimal, percent, currency, date, time, and date-time.

ZOHO UPDATESApplication Updates from Zoho

 Zoho Creator

  • This month we again saw many application updates for Zoho Creator:
    • Improved client communications because you can use more verified email addresses. Zoho ONE verified (sender) emails increased from 10 to 50!
    • Improvements to widgets, including externally hosted widgets, and white listing 3rd party services.
    • Additional improvements added for user admin assignments. Now the app only allows to select users that have accepted an invitation to your workspace.
    • Smarter logic protection is now in place to ensure you don’t delete connections used in other applications. When deleting a connection a prompt will show the places it is used including: integration fields, integration orgs, pages, and workflows. 
    • Version 6.2.5 of the Zoho Creator Portal Android app and Version 3.4 of the Customer Portal – Zoho Creator iOS app both introduced improvements recently. The Android version offers authentication-related security improvements and has fixed several minor bugs to improve stability. Further updates have improved application speed. In addition to improvements similar to Android, iOS now makes accessing and managing offline components better.
    • Get granular and control report printing parameters for your application’s end users. Now the “Print” option in reports will be available for the end user only when they are permitted.
    • New domain URLs have been enabled for EU data center:
      • creatorapp.zoho.eu for Creator applications,
      • creatorapp.zohopublic.eu for all published components
      • creatorapp.zoho.eu for all custom applications
    • As mentioned in last month’s update, default SMS connections are now deprecated and replaced. Any SMS Actions that use this connection, and the zoho.sms.send Deluge task, will no longer work and requires updates. Please let us know if we can analyze and correct any issues in your system impacted by this change.
  • 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.
  • Zoho announced the end-of-life for Creator v1 on February 3, 2021, and will require a migration to Zoho Creator 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.  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

  • Zoho CRM and Zoho Analytics Integration API Upgrades: This upgrade means that new features including sub-forms, linking modules, and customer fields in Users module will begin to be supported. As a result, some changes will occur in the fields permissions of Zoho CRM Admin who configured Zoho Analytics integration. The following will not be synced in Zoho Analytics: 
    • Modules or tabs marked as hidden in Zoho CRM, 
    • Modules or Fields with read or write restrictions, 
    • Fields in Zoho CRM that have been deleted or are unused.
  • You might have noticed an upgrade to the details view available in CRM. If you haven’t switched over already, please note that the old details view will be discontinued on November 10, 2020. 
  • Updates in CRM Wizards are available to all users. Now you can add Widgets to the Wizard layout, filter Wizards from the list view, reposition buttons, and include a file upload field in wizard layouts. 
  • Effective March 31, 2021 Zoho will sunset the Zoho CRM Plugin for Microsoft Outlook. Additionally from Zoho Corporation, on “October 15, 2020 users will be restricted from downloading the plugin, and will be redirected to download and use ‘Zoho CRM for email Outlook Add-in’ from the product.”

Zoho Books

  • New mini-dashboard available in Zoho Books invoices module. Now you can see a quick overview of invoices when you go to Sales > Invoices.
  • Update allows you to import files from various cloud storage applications including Zoho Drive, Google Drive, Dropbox, and more.
  • With public links, now it’s even easier to get signatures and estimate approvals  from clients without a portal. Enable this feature: Settings > Preferences > Estimates > Mark “Allow” on the public link option.
  • Now your templates can have customized address formats per template. Customize an address: Go to Settings > Templates > Choose the module and edit your template > Go to Header then edit the address format.
  • The Zoho Books Windows app and iOS 14 Windows app updates now allow you to have a more seamless experience between the web app and the Windows app or iOS 14 app.

Keep up to date on all the Books releases here.

 

Zoho BugsIssues Notices from Zoho

 Zoho Creator

  • Images uploaded via APIs in reports are now working.
  • Installing applications from the gallery bug fixed.
  • More specific controls within Deluge are now in place when working with and searching for encrypted datasets. Prior searches on encrypted fields commonly returned no results. For this reason only searches using the operators for “Equals,” “Not Equals,” and “isEmpty” are currently available.

 

 


 

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

 

designing solutions to business problems with Zoho

Transform Your Business with Zoho Solutions for Every Department

Regardless of your industry, there’s a good chance your organization has multiple departments working together to keep business rolling ahead. This includes Operations, Finance, Sales, Marketing, Customer Service, and maybe you have others, too. We’re here to share that it’s more straightforward than you might have thought to implement or design solutions to business problems for every department with Zoho applications.

 

You’ll see here an overview of the Zoho solutions offered for each department of your business; however, this quick article is just meant to get thoughts flowing. In other words, it’s just the start of what Zoho can do.  

 

If you could solve your business problems head on with a Zoho solution, how much time would open up for innovation in your organization?

 

Let’s take a look at what Zoho has to offer for each department in your organization:

Operations

It’s a hefty lift finding an all-in-one solution for operational problems; however, within Zoho’s more than 40 applications they exist. Certainly, there’s a good chance that you don’t need  – or really want – that many apps to run your business. This is where Zoho One comes into play. 

While the 40+ integrated applications encompass everything from CRM, finance, email newsletters, and 

documents, to project management, inventory, and more; you can choose which fit your business needs. You simply need a username and password, integrate your applications, and you’re set; one dashboard to rule all. In your operations department some highlight features include:

  • Project management style flexibility lets you choose from waterfall, agile, and kanban task boards. 
  • Team communication, collaboration, and client portal options ease keeping in touch with dispersed teams and customers.
  • Order fulfillment, multi-channel selling, and warehouse management tools.
  • The ability to create apps that meet the needs of specific business processes, like a  Zoho ERP app developed on Zoho Creator.
  • And we’ve only scratched the surface…

 

Finance

Zoho Books offers tax compliance, and is integrated with 40+ of Zoho’s applications – or whichever you choose to use –  for visibility across your business. You’ve got the basics and more covered in this full-scope solution including being able to see those details about your contacts, time tracking, banking, inventory, payables, receivables, and robust reporting.  

 

zoho sales toolsStreamline all of your back office duties with Zoho Books and organize all of your transactions in one place. If this isn’t the solution for you, Zoho also integrates with other solutions Quickbooks, but given this set of features you may want to take a closer look at Zoho Books:

  • Collect online payments securely and quickly.
  • Keep records of all your invoices, estimates, credit notes, and even recurring invoices in one place.
  • Convert estimates to invoices in just a few clicks.
  • Automatically remind overdue clients with payment reminders.
  • Never lose a minute of billable hours by monitoring and tracking how labor is spent in your company.
  • Manage inventory and even automate redundant tasks
  •  Capture and view all financial information related to your asset, liability, revenue, or expense accounts and organize them how you want.
  • Simplify tax season in just a few clicks to generate tax reports so you are set when tax season arrives.

Customer Service

Zoho Desk customer service app provides the platform you need for customer support teams ranging from startup to enterprise. Scaled capabilities make it easy to get the basics like customer feedback and a ticketing system, with the option to grow and add more. With small business features you gain even more capability such as:

 

  • Automate routine tasks using blueprint, 
  • Optimize resource management by connecting clients with the proper support agent, 
  • Improve customer experience with team collaboration,
  • And just like every Zoho app, the data is there and ready to meet your insights and analytics needs. 

marketing tools from Zoho

Marketing

Marketing departments are often called upon to design solutions to business problems, and the tools from Zoho certainly help! You’ll find an arsenal of applications in Zoho to support your marketing efforts from website creation and testing, to email marketing and social media. And because they integrate with CRM and the rest of the Zoho One suite, you’ll also get end-to-end data for a full story of lead to sale for every contact. With this sort of insight, Zoho makes answering big questions about your marketing strategy – and any adjustments you should consider – very direct. Learn more about marketing tools in Zoho One.

Sales

If your sales department is like any other we’ve met since starting ZBrains in 2012, you’re putting a lot of eggs into any CRM solution you choose. Don’t dig around looking for solutions only to wonder if they’ll work. We strongly recommend a partner for any CRM implementation involving this aspect of your organization and avoid common pitfalls:

  • Starting an implementation project without a planning roadmap in place.
  • You’ve got a new tool, but user adoption is poor.
  • You don’t have support – and this means internal training and external partnership.
  • You’re trying to do it on your own and it’s just not working out.

 

Trust in Zoho-certified CRM consultants at ZBrains to help you implement your new system and Zoho CRM in a way that truly complements your business. Our goal is to really invest time in getting to know your business so you get you all the tools you need to succeed. We even invented a name for how we do it – Business Process Analysis. Imagine the power you can put behind your sales team when a correctly implemented CRM is in place to foster your sales process from lead to sale, to cross-selling and upselling opps!

 

We hope this high level overview explaining how Zoho apps, and Zoho One can help you design solutions to business problems for every department in your organization has been informative. And as always, if there’s something you read that sparks an idea, there’s a pretty good chance that Zoho has a solution. At ZBrains we love the opportunity to address and solve those big questions whenever we partner with a new client. How can we help you?

 

Connect with a Consultant

 

zoho for manufacturing and distribution

Zoho Issues: Solving Problems for Manufacturing & Distribution

In this article, we’ll look at how to solve business problems around three common issues we’ve seen impact others in your industry and share some ideas that have been successful for them. Zoho solves business problems for many types of businesses, but Distribution and Manufacturing by the nature of their industry are especially suited for the use of Zoho CRM and other Zoho applications.

You might spend time trying to solve for traveling work orders, time tracking, asset management, RMA and MRP requirements. If you’re encountering them, these problems can take up a lot of time and inhibit innovation.

You’d rather be focusing on hard numbers, actionable steps, and measurable KPI efforts like:

  • operating efficiency
  • utilizing capacity to the fullest extent
  • keeping a keen eye on profitability
  • working to ensure that your shipping is staying on time

These days you may also be looking for even more in-depth functionality in order to do more with existing resources, including redeploying talent, improving productivity, and shifting operations. Let’s take a closer look at three problems in manufacturing and distribution that Zoho can help you solve.

Crushing Lean Manufacturing Goals? We’ve Got Solutions!

Lean manufacturing goals with ZohoAs a decision maker in the manufacturing industry you need to introduce and foster ideas and methods to increase sales, manage orders and the warehouse, and more. You do all of this while trying to keep a pulse on the end-to-end tracking of your process, too.

Zoho Inventory helps here:

  • So you can manage inventory in multiple warehouses.
  • It integrates with Zoho CRM and Zoho Books to automatically sync contacts and your orders.
  • You get a few steps closer to the financial data you need, while addressing lean wastes of waiting and extra processing.

Zoho Inventory not cutting it? No sweat, tools like FieldTech have been produced for more robust ERP requirements using Zoho Creator for things like inventory management, and to optimize your production routing.

These ideas scratch the surface of the data you can access with the Zoho ecosystem.  How else could organized and actionable data provide information to help guide your lean manufacturing efforts as you solve business problems you encounter?

Problem 2: Forecasting for your business is a foggy endeavor

forecasting for distribution and manufacturingYou need visibility to what’s being produced, purchased – and when –  in order to make the best inventory management decisions. And if you can get the information in a tidy dashboard with less data input, even better!

Zoho Inventory provides data-driven insights to help you understand your customers in a meaningful way. You gain a more accurate forecasting for production material needs.

Add Zia’s prediction tool in Zoho CRM to take advantage of key business indicators such as the likelihood of a lead converting to a deal, revenue forecasts, and how likely a site visitor is to purchase. Zia predictions can be implemented for both standard and custom modules so your business can take advantage of this tool.

What predictors would be most meaningful for your organization?

Creating a prediction using Zia is relatively straightforward, but you can also work with a ZBrains Zoho Certified Consultant to get a head start on taking advantage of your data.

Finally, in addition to predictions, Zia also looks for trends. Using the data you have, Zia relies on past experiences to offer predictions. Receive alerts for spikes or dips without having to check on a dashboard daily. Decide if you want notifications about leads, contacts, deals, tasks, events, calls, email, or something different depending on the components you select for Zia to watch.

Having the power to forecast and even predict business events in distribution and manufacturing is essential to smooth operations.

Problem 3: You need solve business problems more quickly and spend more time on innovation

people meeting with laptopUntangling from daily business operations and on-the-fly problem solving in your organization can be a daunting undertaking. In other words, it’s time to start solving those issues more quickly. You want to resolve them completely so you have time to devote to innovation.

Naturally, this is where a business can cut even more of the lean wastes. They can spend money less on operations, and begin to excel. If you had the time, what innovation would you put into place immediately for your organization?

Having a plan to remain adaptable, and the visibility to metrics you need to communicate for success starts with information architecture. Zoho’s CRM and streamlined ERP solution to manage your inventory and orders, along with the multitude of possible integrations to fit your process is a great place to start your journey. Consider this change if you currently:

  • Pay for several systems wherein a change to one affects the others resulting in development expenses.
  • You manage multiple vendors, and spend a lot of time reiterating the same business needs and goals.
  • Your teams are working from siloed data.
  • Existing systems make global reporting cost-prohibitive and time consuming.

Start with a Zoho solution that gives end-to-end visibility to your organization. Quit struggling to track, report, and act on data. Finally start solving problems for good so you can achieve a better, leaner business.

Begin solving business problems for your manufacturing or distribution organizations with Zoho solutions.  Don’t put it off any longer, contact us for an assessment that’s geared specifically to your business – our ZBrains team of Zoho Certified Consultants are eager to help!

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group in a problem solving session

Maximizing Business with Zoho Expert: Solutions for Tech & SaaS

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

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

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

Customer Segmentation

Customer Segmentation using RFM Model in Zoho CRM

Unlocking Marketing Success with RFM Customer Segmentation in Zoho CRM

Off the top of your head, you can probably think of a handful of your ‘best customers.’ Those that have purchased recently, purchase regularly, and spend a decent amount with your company. Have you considered using the RFM model widely applied to your entire book of business? RFM segmentation model allows you to segment or group your customer data for even deeper insights.  This means groupings like, “Best Customers,” “Loyal Customers,” and “At Risk Customers” are relatively straightforward to capture. And you can do it now in Zoho CRM! 

Keep reading to learn more about the RFM model and how you can put it to use in your business. 

 

What is the RFM model?

This acronym stands for Recency, Frequency, and Monetary value. This model, while not new, can provide you with new levels of customer information when using the data points in tandem.

  • Recency: how recently did your customer purchase from you?

  • Frequency: how frequently does your customer purchase from you?

  • Monetary: how much does your customer spend with your business?

The three dynamics of data in this model combine to give powerful information to your customer behaviors, and can help with strategy, planning and sales approach. In Zoho CRM, this model comes with some predefined and weighted values which makes implementation very straightforward. But first, let’s take a look at a little more about how the RFM model and customer segmentation can benefit your business. 

 

How does the RFM segmentation model benefit your business?

Segmenting RFM data can benefit your business in several ways across sales and marketing departments. At the crux of it is the value in knowing your customer. However, here are a few additional points that illustrate how RFM segment data can be beneficial:

  • You can speak to the right audiences at the right time (targeted marketing). When you ensure your promotions are timely and accurate, you improve customer satisfaction and retention. This can ultimately impact your Customer Lifetime Value (LTV), an important KPI for a lot of industries [link Saas & Tech KPI’s article].
  • Timely, targeted messaging ensures you avoid marketing fatigue among your audience.
  • When you know your customers and in which segment of the RFM model they reside, you can better allocate your marketing budget.
  • RFM data can show areas with growth opportunities. For example, that could look like incrementally increasing the frequency of orders a customer makes with your company. Or inversely, using recency data to identify and re-engage customers who may not have purchased recently.

Because the RFM model is numerical, straightforward, and intuitive you will find that its output is relatively easy to understand and interpret. The result is a high-level view of customer behavior that can be mixed and matched for new sales and marketing approaches that weren’t previously possible without the data.

 

Combining RFM with other Data for deeper insights

Customer groupOn its own, RFM segmentation data is powerful, but having these metrics to combine with other key performance indicators can provide even greater value. Use the data for the successful customers you already have to determine what you did to acquire them, and then apply this new knowledge to your next acquisition efforts to save time and money.

An example of this would be to take your highest performing segment (where Recency, Frequency, and Monetary value all rank highly), and overlay geographic data. From this you may be able to see which areas of the country, or world, your best customers reside. Then you can use this information to craft targeted messages to ‘look alikes’ for an acquisition campaign.

Similarly, you can combine RFM data with age, gender, title, products purchased, sales agents they interacted with, company size, and on and on. The result is you can answer such questions as:

  • Where are my best customers located? 
  • How big are their companies? 
  • What is the title of the person who converts? 
  • What does the product mix of our most successful customers look like?

And with those answers you can model your business to meet the needs of your best customers. 

We hope you’re convinced that the information RFM captures for marketing, sales segmentation, and business strategy can take you a long way.

 

Put RFM Scoring into Action with Zoho CRM

Zoho CRM introduced this new segmentation feature in 2020. The system comes with some widely applicable segments already defined, with the scoring matrix already completed. The scoring for each segment of R, F, and M ranges between 1-5 points. The number 1 indicates low performance and 5 is high performance. It is probably best to customize your segments based on your business. However, the predefined segments give you a good starting point.

An example of segments could include,  “A+ Customers”  or best customers who purchase recently, often, and have a high spend. Your “Loyal Customers” might have a good spend and be responsive to promotions. There are a few others in addition to “At Risk” or “Churned Customers” who generally had a high spend, but have not purchased in a while.

Finding these segments in your Zoho CRM is as simple as applying filters to your account list. At that point, you can apply tags, and use them in your sales and marketing campaigns. 

 

Interested in putting the RFM Model and customer segmentation to work in your Zoho CRM? Start a conversation with one of our Sales Architects.

Should you choose Zoho FSM or FieldTech?

Should you dive into Zoho FSM?

zoho fsm or fieldtech

In 2019, we got the first glimmerings of a new Zoho app called Zoho FSM, or Field Service Management.  Now over halfway through 2020, Zoho has been slowly–very slowly!–opening the gates to this app and allowing both Zoho partners and users to test it.

And of course, the testing phase is part of any successful app rollout, especially when it’s something brand-new like Zoho field service management.  Zoho has toed the ERP waters before with their combination of Zoho Books and Inventory.  However, Zoho FSM is their first foray into something even grander, something that could dovetail onto that stack and turn Zoho into a real ERP contender.  The question is: Is Zoho FSM enough?

If you’ve known Zoho for any length of time, you know that improving their software continuously is one of their strong points.  They’re one of the companies that seem to lead in this category, giving you real value every time you renew your monthly subscription to one of their apps.  As opposed to some companies, whose software you may use every month, but it’s basically the same software–and, additions of new fields in a module are cause for New Release! announcements.

Hot Take: How do we feel so far?

Even with knowing all this, it’s tough to say how quickly Zoho FSM will be able to deliver on its promise.  But, we at ZBrains are hoping Zoho is able to push this app out to market quickly.

Now… that may seem like a strange comment for someone unfamiliar with what we do at ZBrains.  But, to explain: we don’t just provide Zoho consulting services here.  We’ve actually developed a whole ERP framework for Zoho called FieldTech.

So, at first glance, it would appear that this field service management app from Zoho is in direct competition with the FieldTech offering.  And, sure, in some ways, it is.  But, not in all ways, as we’ll discuss soon.

zoho fsm or fieldtech

So, why is the addition of Zoho FSM a good thing?

It’s a good thing because it gives you, as someone who may want us to help you one day, one more potential option for your field services, construction, manufacturing, or tech business to use as a field service management platform.  Connect that to your Zoho CRM, and suddenly managing your entire business through Zoho doesn’t seem so insurmountable.

Of course, we’d love for you to use our FieldTech offering.  But, we understand it may not be for everyone.  Zoho Field Service Management seems to be geared more towards scheduling appointments or work orders, work order management, and invoices related to those WOs.  FieldTech, on the other hand, tackles those areas and adds the possibility of custom quoting, advanced inventory management, shop orders, job costing, and commission calculation.  So, whereas Zoho FSM is one single app, FieldTech has a Service Order Management component–and a suite of other, connected field service apps.

The costs of using FieldTech versus Zoho field service management are different, too.  Zoho Field Service Management offers a price per appointment model, whereas FieldTech’s pricing is per user.  If a company needed to decide between the two platforms based on pricing alone, it’s hard to see which way the org would go.  At least so far.

But, essentially, as long as you’re using a Zoho service to manage your field service business, that’s a victory for us.

Does this mean we’re going to stop developing FieldTech?

Quite the contrary!  We aren’t privy to Zoho’s overarching vision for this app, or vision for any other apps they may want to connect to it in the future.  If Zoho stopped at just field service management, that would be fine.  But, as you can probably tell by the host of other features inside FieldTech, we’ve never intended to stop there with that suite.  We improve the platform on a weekly basis, and it’s only a matter of time until we release some new apps for the suite.

We’re guessing that Zoho’s FSM app will work well for users with a simpler use case.  And, our FieldTech Service Order Management app will work better for organizations with more complicated needs–either just for field service management, or organization-wide.

Exploring whether Zoho FSM is a suitable choice for your business

The testing phase is a crucial aspect of a successful app rollout, particularly when it involves something as innovative as Zoho Field Service Management. Zoho, already known for its ERP tools like Zoho Books and Inventory, is taking a significant step forward with Zoho FSM, aiming to position itself as a formidable ERP contender.

Can Zoho FSM meet your needs effectively?

If you’re familiar with Zoho’s track record, you know that continuous improvement is at the core of their software development philosophy. Unlike some companies that offer stagnant software, Zoho consistently enhances its applications. This commitment ensures that Zoho FSM will evolve to meet the changing demands of businesses.

Considering Zoho’s commitment to improvement, what can you expect from Zoho FSM in the future?

To provide a clearer picture, let’s compare ZBrains‘ FieldTech and Zoho FSM. While Zoho FSM focuses on scheduling appointments, managing work orders, and related invoicing, FieldTech goes a step further. It offers features such as custom quoting, advanced inventory management, shop orders, job costing, and commission calculations.

The addition of Zoho FSM is a positive development for businesses. It offers an additional option for managing field services, whether your business is in construction, manufacturing, or technology. Integrating it with Zoho CRM simplifies the management of your entire operation.

How does the introduction of Zoho FSM benefit businesses?

Looking ahead, both Zoho FSM and FieldTech have their unique strengths. Zoho FSM may suit simpler use cases, while FieldTech excels in complex scenarios. Zoho’s vision for FSM may evolve, and the choice between the two depends on your organization’s specific requirements.

What should you keep in mind while picking between Zoho FSM and FieldTech?

It’s also critical to stay up to date with Zoho’s continuous improvements in this area. At ZBrains, we provide a free introductory consultation to help you make informed decisions about Zoho FSM, FieldTech, or any other Zoho service that may have an influence on your organization.Here are some actionable steps you can take regarding Zoho FSM.

In conclusion, the introduction of Zoho FSM represents a strategic move aligned with Zoho’s commitment to innovation and continuous improvement. It presents an opportunity for businesses to streamline their field service management processes and integrate them into a comprehensive ecosystem. Ultimately, your choice between Zoho FSM and FieldTech will depend on your organization’s unique needs and goals.

What should you do with regards to Zoho FSM?

zoho fsm or fieldtech

If you have access to the app, test it!  We’ll certainly be doing the same.  Any experience you have on the Zoho platform will help you make a more informed choice about which apps will work best for you.

As always, we will keep you in the loop about any Zoho FSM developments.  And, when the full version of the app finally comes out, rest assured we’ll provide a full breakdown of features, as well as an official comparison between FSM and FieldTech.

If you’re still a little in the dark about what to do, get in touch with us for a free introductory consultation, where we can talk about how FSM, FieldTech, or any other Zoho app would potentially affect your business.

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