What Is CRM? | A Helpful Guide For Business Owners

Abhishek Sharma / crm consulting partner, crm implementation, crm services, online crm system, what is crm / CRM Services

CRM is an acronym for Customer Relationship Management. In other words, a technology that is used to manage interactions with present and potential customers is called CRM. It is an online system that enables the organizations to create reliable customer relationships and streamline processes that can not only increase sales but also improve customer service and eventually, profitability.

What is CRM?

The customer relationship system has been in the market back since the 1990s. However, the online CRM system has taken over and popularized itself over the last decade. CRM platforms are extremely powerful online systems that can connect all data from sales leads and customers in one place only. A CRM can be utilized for analyzing and recording all calls, meetings, improving sales, increasing revenue, and emails.

Other than this, CRM services enable one to get personal with customers and prospects with personalized messages. You can differentiate, slice, and track the data to make sales and marketing smarter, more effective, and efficient.

You can think of an online CRM system to be a literal depiction of serving and gaining the loyalty of customers. An online CRM system will not only enable you to stay focused on the relationships of your organization with people (customers, service users, suppliers or colleagues) but also allow you to embed sales, marketing, and HR processes in the business.

It is a single framework that is designed to enhance the entire business strategy while with an aim to bring your marketing, sales, and customer support activities together, streamline the processes, people, and policy in one platform.

Why does a CRM matter?

In case you want to make sure that your business lasts, you need to rely on a tangible business strategy for the upcoming future. You know that you already have targets for sales, profitability, and business objectives. However staying up to date along with implementing reliable information for the progress of your goals is something that can be tricky.

How can you translate the different data streams that come in from the sales team, marketers, social media teams, and customer service team into constructive business information? The answer to this question is the implementation of an online CRM system with the help of a CRM consulting partner. Using a CRM system has the capability to give you a clear overview of your customers.

You will be able to see and view all the important information at one place in a simple and customizable dashboard that will tell you about a customer’s previous history with you, the order status, outstanding customer service issues, and a lot more.

You can also decide to include important information from any public or social media activity, likes or dislikes, what people are saying and sharing, etc. Additionally, marketers can also use CRM for understanding the pipelines of sales or prospective work that might come in for making precise and effective forecasts. CRM services will give you clear visibility of every lead while showing you a clear path right from inquiry to sales.

Although CRM was traditionally used as a sales and marketing tool only, customer service teams are seeing exceptional benefits from the CRM systems. The customers of today might pick up an issue on one public platform while taking to a telephonic conversation for resolving the matter privately. A CRM platform is something that helps you in managing inquiry over all channels without losing any track.

What does an online CRM system do?

Enabling contact management on a large scale is the most important function of absolutely any customer information system, regardless of the fact if it is cloud-based CRM or just a CRM software on a server. The fundamental role of an online CRM system is to do the job of being a hub for organizing and making an absolute sense of important data and insights along with providing all tools needed to collect and manage information about people who are important for a business.

These functions can seem very different when they are worked out across multiple departments. For example; a CRM can assist in enabling the sales representatives to see past the interactions and purchases before anyone makes a phone call. It can also offer support teams of an organization with any credentials or contact details that might be required for offering better customer service. It can give marketers access to complete details that can help in targeting campaigns.

Understanding and organizing important data insights is an important responsibility for any company. However, just as the importance of audience information grows the number of details that a business needs grows as well. With so many online channels and ways of engagement, the data often gets looped in different tools while making it difficult to get a true picture of what the customers do or talk about.

Therefore, regardless of the size or the industry of business, turning to CRM tools can create a central hub for audience reports, gaining a better understanding of who the customers are, what they want, and build stronger relationships as they grow.

In fact, CRM is not just for the big businesses that make it to the list of Fortune companies. With the help of using statistics, one can improve customer relationships considerably and this has become an important feature of all kinds of organizations. In fact there the businesses that are just starting out have an even better chance because there is no better time for contact management as compared to the one in the beginning.

From the time one creates an online presence, the CRM services can help in gaining access to valuable information about the customers and potential customers. It can not only help in laying a strong foundation for building and updating the relationships with customers, collecting data, but it can also help in setting consistent automation and personalized touchpoints with time.

There is no need for CRM to be engaged in a full-time job. Regardless of whether it is about a small team, there is a solo entrepreneur, who relies on occasional marketing campaigns for selling the brand, CRM implementation done with the assistance of a CRM consultant can help in putting the data to work and save time. With its implementation, a person or a team can make valued decisions about where one should focus on reaching customers, which channel is preferable, and how to engage them for a long time.

Working of CRM:

More often than not, an online CRM system is just thought of as a technology. Whereas, the truth is that it is much more than that. Almost no technology, regardless of how sophisticated it might be can become successful without a good strategy for guiding implementation and use. It is important for the business strategy and technology to work together for bringing a customer-centric plan to life.

By understanding the work and the role played by CRM in customer-centric data management and automation, we will see how CRM is a world in itself.

– Making and Implementing Customer-Centric Strategy: The role of an online CRM system is to support a strategy that allows the customers to be the focus of everything. This customer-centric strategy should be such that it focuses clearly on the goals and visions of meaningful customer experience. Since valuable customer experience is significant, CRM implementation goes far in improving the customer experience.

Each time a customer gets in contact with a new organization or through a different channel, an opinion is likely to be formed. This opinion can either be good, indifferent, or bad. As time passes by, this set of customer experiences create a picture in the customer’s mind, which in turn plays a role in forming the brand image.

Any organization that is serious about CRM design and strives to form a quality experience because of understanding that poor customer experience can drive customers away is on the right path.

– Centralization of Customer Data: CRM software applications are responsible for combining all sales, customer service information, and marketing into one database. With so many businesses collecting data on customers and prospects, good access to data lying in the database means fewer problems in the organization, and better customer-centricity.

Customer information is a sum total of phone numbers, contacts, addresses, etc. Having a CRM partner to implement an online CRM system will lead to all that was discussed, the next follow update, the status of an open item, etc.

This is important information that can be used to measure, manage, and keep a track of sales, marketing, and the various customer service activities as they are all directly linked to the customers. Overall, this helps in building great customer loyalty and experience.

Since an online CRM system has the ability to centralize the entire customer-facing information, any unnecessary finger-pointing within an organization gets reduced substantially. The marketing team can no longer blame the sales team for not communicating and vice versa. No matter what department of the company is being talked about, they all have access to the same information.

– Automation of Business Processes: The companies that have streamlined business and customer-facing processes are the ones that make the business a lot more efficient. Different aspects such as budgeting and planning are an important part of customer-facing processes on which sales, marketing, and customer service rely. A good CRM strategy focused mostly on the customer-oriented processes helps in solving the needs of customers in a much better way.

In essence, the complete CRM process generally begins with a lead. In simple words, just the name of a person you can sell to. Mostly, a person is supposed to fill a web form that is provided with the contact information. Just after the lead is put in the system, the software takes one through the sales process.

An online CRM system reminds the salesperson to call at a mutually decided time. Each time one interacts with the prospects, it gets recorded in the CRM system and the same applies in case someone talks to the prospect. CRM keeps tracks of all the lead generation while bringing in more customers.

In addition to this, CRM works as a library of documents, emails, and phone calls that facilitate an effective interaction when a prospect is initiated. The team gets a prompt and an automated trail of communication because all the information is kept in one place. Regardless of whether you are in marketing, customer support, or sales, a CRM system can help in automating business processes while automating each process as it works with the other. However, it must be understood that each business should be well defined for getting good results.

Benefits of an online CRM system:

An online CRM system is available to marketing teams, salespeople, customer support specialists, and absolutely anyone who comes in contact with customers of large and small companies. However, we are going to list down the benefits in complete detail below:

1. Efficiently Organized Data: One of the biggest benefits of CRM is that it facilitates the effective organization of data. When you move to an online CRM system, you will be required to inculcate the practice of entering email addresses, phone numbers, and contact information. Just when the CRM system is up and running, users can follow and track information about every customer.

A CRM system is a central place for storing and managing all important information that makes working easy for everyone. Here, everyone is inclusive of customers who get better service and detailed attention just as you start to understand them a lot better.

2. Identify and Categorize the Leads: One of the most important benefits of an online CRM system is the fact it can enable you to identify and add new leads easily while categorizing them precisely. You can not only create customized pitch documents in less time, but you can also cut down the response time and enable the sales team to capitalize on the next opportunity.

With precise and completely held information about the clients and prospects, the sales staff can focus their complete attention and energy on the right clients while gaining a competitive advantage.

3. Better Sales Opportunities: Almost no one wants to stop after gaining a handful of customers or clients. However, sometimes, the problem lies in struggling with the idea generation that helps in increasing the customer base.

An important way is to learn more about creating better sales opportunities is by learning more about the people who are already customers. One way to learn more about the people who are customers already, an online CRM system can track the insights and patterns into the themes and trends.

This type of analytics can actually help in developing micro-targeted plans and different strategies for sales opportunities at particular times.

4. Tracking Sales Progress: In addition to the fact that CRM helps in managing the customer base, it also helps in tracking the progress of the sales for the entire organization. In case you are a one-person business, you can also get the assistance you need for tracking the leads and following up.

Additionally, if you have a large sales team, every new set of leads gets assigned to you as a sales rep and their journey gets tracked from that point onwards. Just as the journey progresses, the CRM platform offers a starting point for acting on the sales trends and close gaps. This is an easy way to track the performance of your sales team.

5. Effective Communication: Besides the fact that CRM can be an efficient use of sales resources, it can also allow your customers to benefit from the personalization features that many CRM tools offer. An important advantage of effective and personalized communication is that it improves the productivity and efficiency of an organization.

All of this can be used in the CRM database for building better customer relationships with the help of personalized communications. An effective way to do this is by addressing the customers with their first name in the emails or creating marketing campaigns based on different industries.

6. Increasing Referrals from Existing Customers: CRM services enable you to understand your customers better, create up-selling and cross-selling opportunities that can ultimately help in winning new business from existing customers.

Just after the CRM consultant helps you with the implementation, you can have access to better information that will eventually become the reason for keeping your customers happy. Since happy customers are more than likely to return more often and when they return they will spend more. Hence, this is an exceptional benefit.

7. Better Retention Rate: A way in which CRM can benefit the sales processes is the fact that it reveals all customers who generate the highest revenue or are the most engaged. You can find the most lucrative customers by gaining a much better understanding of who attends your online seminars, webinars, and open all your emails with the help of a CRM.

When you start reaching out to them to advocate your brand more, you can increase the retention rate of your customers. The ability of a CRM to understand customer behavior can ultimately help you come up with reliable solutions. A better insight into customer behavior will always help you develop a plan or a program that retains the customers who are on the verge of leaving.

8. Tracking Tasks: The CRM services further helps in the integration of a company’s typical workflow while saving more time spent on everyday tasks. Automation helps in boosting customer engagement and offering an added consistency.

The fact of the matter is that consistency is one of the best benefits of a CRM system. When all the important tasks are tracked in the right way, the overall productivity is increased a lot more.

9. Improved Products and Services: A very commonly overlooked benefit of the CRM software is the fact it gathers information from a wide range of sources across the business. This gives organizations an accurate and rather useful insight into how the customers think, feel and what do they say about an organization.

This improves the products and services of an organization because it actually ends up giving valuable insights for the improvement of what is offered, spotting problems, and identifying the gaps.

10. Reporting and Analytics: A business culture that is essentially driven with an analytics-driven working style can actually go a long way in transforming an organization from instinct-based to being data-driven.

Implementation of an online CRM system provides the necessary business intelligence that processes important data from multiple sources and works on significant insights. From the fundamental charts to the advanced analytics insights like looking for problems in the business with an inbuilt analytics engine embedded in the CRM can help the organizations gain an important business advantage.

Related Read: Why CRM Systems Fail?

CONCLUSION:

All the information that has been mentioned above sums up the meaning of CRM in the true sense. CRM services can enable a customer to leave all chaos out of the interactions that happen with the workforce and customers while letting you focus on your goal.

For someone who is just starting out, an online CRM system might come across as intimidating, but when you go further with using it, it is not complicated at all. In fact, it is pretty much like standard automated processes. When you get the hang of this software and learn to rely on it, you will discover that it takes a relatively lesser time to use as compared to your old search habits.

As a market leader in the implementation of CRM services, Encaptechno comes with years of experience that can help you begin your journey of online customer relationship management. Get in touch with us for assistance and allow us to become your partners in unprecedented growth with the help of the best online CRM system.

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CRM Servicescrm consulting partner, crm implementation, crm services, online crm system, what is crm

Leverage Marketing With Salesforce Marketing Cloud

Ashok Sharma / marketing automation, Salesforce implementation, salesforce marketing cloud, salesforce partners / CRM Services

What do you think are some of the significant requisites needed for doing a successful business? Monetary assets are most definitely important, but a business is not just about selling products or services. The success of a business depends a lot on the kind of relationships you have with your clients. Customer relationship management or CRM is the fundamental on which the success of a business depends and good CRM is directly linked with marketing.

Naturally, having good CRM for your business is liked by having the best tools as well. This is right where the Salesforce marketing cloud comes into the picture as it is a tool that is designed to boost the overall business activities.

With its technologically advanced features, the Salesforce marketing cloud enables a client in having a better understanding of customers, which then helps in increasing the profits. In this blog, we will do an in-depth discussion on the Salesforce marketing cloud and the benefits that it brings.

Besides helping you gain a better understanding of this tool, this blog will also help you leverage your marketing with a Salesforce marketing cloud. So let’s begin:

What is Salesforce Marketing Cloud?

Salesforce marketing cloud is a marketing automation software, which enables businesses to enhance their efficiency of marketing activities. According to a study, Salesforce implementation leads to a 27% increase in the lead volumes, a 30% increase in the lead conversion, and over 25% increase in the marketing ROI.

If we have to summarize what Salesforce does, we can say that brings companies and their customers together. It has an integrated platform that helps in managing sales, commerce, and services at one point in time. The marketing cloud is a product offered by Salesforce that helps in delivering relevant and personalized journeys to your target audience across all the right channels and devices.

With the assistance of Salesforce implementation partners, marketers are able to deliver the right messages at the right time and to the right users, which ultimately helps in building better client relationships. Within Marketing Cloud, users can take benefits of integrated solutions such as email studio, mobile studio, social studio, web personalization, advertising, content management and creation, data analysis, customer journey management, etc.

All these integrations work together and help in achieving primary objectives, work for new goals, and have a clear visualization of the journey of a customer. With the Salesforce marketing cloud, every possible customer engagement and interaction gets covered.

Now that we have a basic understanding of Salesforce, let us understand the steps to leverage your marketing with the Salesforce marketing cloud.

1. Appropriate communication to customers: A CRM solution such as that of the Salesforce marketing cloud can offer a much needed and precise customer-centric view of businesses. All, more importantly, it can also provide a comprehensive view of every customer. This begins with data because data can be pulled from numerous sources or spread over multiple platforms that can eventually be tied to prospects, leads, and customers.

With the help of SFMC’s powerful data management platform called Audience Studio, the marketers and leaders can record, store, and unify the data to gain in-depth insight into the target audience. This is something that ends up empowering the marketers to collaborate and engage with customers that they prefer and at the right time.

Most importantly, they can do this on a large scale and over a long period of time that leads to customer loyalty and creates meaningful relationships over the long term. In essence, the marketing cloud helps in giving the right communications at the right time and to the right fans all at a scale, which further helps in achieving a better return on marketing investment.

2. Cross-functional marketing: In the present dynamic business landscape, it is important to engage in cross-functional and cross channel marketing. Salesforce marketing cloud is a tool that enables organizations to create extremely targeted and functional marketing campaigns by connecting the dots over important touchpoints such as emails, mobile, the web, direct mail, sales, commerce, advertising, and services.

Marketers can also make dynamic adjustments to their campaigns based on the present and predicted behavior of the customers, their interests, attributes, and what resonates best with them while increasing customer satisfaction and engagement. For the organizations that are looking forward to creating personalized and targeted mail, SFMC’s Email Studio provides an extensive set of functionalities that are not available in any other CRM solution.

On the other hand, larger organizations that have an advertising budget, Advertising Studio provide an ability to integrate personalized advertising across search, social media, and display into the marketing strategy. This does not only help in making important content available to customers on their preferred device or channel but also helps in increasing marketing ROI for organizations.

3. Predictive analysis: An important tool that shapes the customer experience is called predictive analysis. Salesforce marketing cloud assesses the behavioral history of a customer for predicting future actions in the right way. Everything that a customer has done in the past informs the steps that they will be taking next, such as unsubscribe, share with a friend or buy.

The marketing cloud helps in delivering a customized journey based on that particular knowledge. In case, a customer always purchases items on a sale then they will always receive notifications about the latest upcoming or ongoing sale.

Marketers can drive the customer experience according to all their preferences and thus, enjoy an enhanced response rate that ultimately makes the brand successful.

4. Reaching a new audience with Data Studio: With the help of Salesforce implementation partners, organizations can get access to Data Studio. This is a tool that acts as a data-sharing solution and creates a safe environment for data owners and purchasers to connect directly and exchange information.

Fundamentally, Data Studio is considered as a marketplace of second-party data. This also means that marketers have a great opportunity to explore new audiences and include them in marketing activities.

A fashion wear retailer could purchase an entire database of subscribers to an online workout resource and launch a campaign providing them fashion wear.

5. Building social media presence: Social Studio tool in the Salesforce Marketing Cloud enables companies to effectively build a good social media presence. This is how the Social Studio is helpful to companies:

Marketers can develop corporate profiles, create user-oriented content, promote marketing campaigns, and communicate with the audience. Meanwhile, the marketing managers can keep an eye on the big picture and evaluate if a company’s effort in social media pays off or not.
A sales team might also start nurturing prospects by tracking the posts with an information request and a purchase intention.
Additionally, the service agents may also follow the same logic, once they see a complaint or negative feedback on social media because this allows them to contact a customer and set an issue.

6. Integrating personalized advertising into marketing strategy: In case you are going to invest in advertising then the Advertising Studio will most likely be increasing your ROI. With the help of leveraging the customer data stored in Salesforce, the marketers can advertise relevant content to customers in Google Search and on other social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, etc.

For instance, in Advertising Studio, a person can create upsell ads that can be customized to the purchase history of customers. As a result of this, customers are more than likely to click and move on to shopping while helping in materializing the aim of marketers.

7. Security: The Salesforce platforms offer trust and protection against any misuse of data. With the correct analysis of data, one can protect a business from any kind of potential harm. Additionally, this also helps in the encryption of data between a company and a customer.

Furthermore, Salesforce is all about having a safe platform through which you can use and protect your customers from any kind of unfair circumstances. Additionally, the better the security, the more accustomed will be the business and will offer more benefits in the long run.

Therefore, security is one of the most important roles that must be counted in the customer and company management and you can get it at its best with the Salesforce implementation.

8. Personalized and automated marketing: With the help of Salesforce marketing cloud’s full suite of marketing automation tools like Pardot, organizations can increase their flow of prospects and high-quality leads by boosting the overall conversions and strengthening the customer relationships.

Even better than this, organizations can also automate the complete process so they can have more opportunities for developing a deeper understanding of their customer needs, maximize their marketing investments and get more investments for their money invested in the marketing processes.

With the automation of common marketing and sales tasks, the organizations can focus on all that really matters. From creating personalized and engaging customer experiences at almost every touchpoint to improving the buyer journey and enhancing the overall revenue, that is what matters the most and that is what Salesforce marketing cloud does.

9. Innovation: Anytime when you are not worried about sales and have plenty of time to engage with the customers, it is only then that innovation is possible. For this reason, the marketing automation brought about with the assistance of Salesforce implementation partners is important.

With the use of Salesforce, customers can have innovative ideas and implement them straight away for understanding the optimal returns expected on ideas. It is commonly said that innovation can be born at almost any place in the hierarchy.

When you keep this in mind, this platform gives many opportunities at different levels to many users. When the users are presented with innovation, it ends up benefitting the overall community and business remarkably.

10. Competitive edge: With the Salesforce marketing cloud, organizations are no longer dependent on the traditional channels or legacy systems for meeting the client expectations and staying ahead of their competition. In fact, they can easily develop one on one relationships based on the interactions that are both personalized and intelligent.

Basically, marketers can get a bird’s eye view of how every marketing campaign is doing by using the power of AI and take important data-driven actions for enhancing client expectations. The Interaction Studio of Salesforce allows in capturing every customer interaction across all touchpoints in real-time and making accurate decisions while increasing conversions, boosting lifetime value, and creating brand advocates.

Irrespective of whether the customer is B2B or B2C, SFMC offers a comprehensive platform that allows the firms to address the changing needs before the competitors which is an important factor to survive and thrive in the present business landscape.

Conclusion:

In sum, we can say that Salesforce is not only about buying or selling, but it is about spreading happiness with the help of connectivity. Salesforce tools are like assets that work behind the scenes and play a big role in making marketing all the more purposeful.

You can leverage your marketing with the assistance of Salesforce implementation partners like Encaptechno. We come with years of experience in offering the best Salesforce services.

Let us assist you with our services, today!

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CRM Servicesmarketing automation, Salesforce implementation, salesforce marketing cloud, salesforce partners

Why Should Organizations Opt For Zoho Creator?

Abhinav Bhalla / zoho creator app development, zoho creator applications, Zoho Creator Certified Developer, zoho creator consultant, zoho creator developers / CRM Services

The internet is a hub of multiple businesses displaying their products and services. The Internet is made up of numerous software and solutions designed to cater to different needs. However, if you are seeking effective assistance that offers complete database application life cycle development to rescue on a sole platform then Zoho Creator can be of great help.

If a business aims to stay competitive in a stiff environment then it is necessary to continuously enhance processes. Fortunately, the business process management software applications help in fine-tuning all processes important for attaining great performance, preventing higher costs, preventing less motivated workforce, reducing revenues, and lesser satisfied customers.

Although there is no shortage of business process management software applications in the market, Zoho Creator is the one that stands out and stays on the top with the prominent features and functionalities that it offers. A Zoho Creator consultant can assist any organization in the implementation of the Zoho Creator while taking the business processes far.

Zoho Creator is a multi-platform builder for businesses that supports to create and manage a wide range of business applications. Integrated with a drag and drop feature interface along with a scripting language, the BPM tool creates applications incredibly fast and simple. Organizations can take the assistance of Zoho creator app developers to build custom applications based on different business needs.

In this blog, we will see and understand why should organizations opt for Zoho Creator? This will give us a better insight into what makes Zoho Creator a value addition for organizations.

1. Increases Speed of Web Development: Zoho Creator comes with a serverless back end that enables the team of an organization to build, run, and test applications without stressing about servers. Enriched with a battle-tested production environment, the Zoho Creator environment includes tech stack including app servers, infrastructure, databases, network, security, operating systems, and all platforms and interfaces that help in building the applications in the right way.

With the combination of visual tools and a traditional coding environment, Zoho Creator app developers leverage the low code platform to configure the difficulty and code the interesting parts. Most of the low code platforms provide visual builders for both front-end and back-end web development.

With the help of these builders, app developers can fast forward the creation of common UI elements such as pages, forms, and dashboards as easily as a virtual Lego set while configuring back end components like workflows, integrations, and customer portals in a few clicks.

2. Fair Pricing and Community Access: Zoho Creator is workflow management software that uses a pay-as-you-go service. There is no need for making periodic payments as well as long term contracts. With a normal and accessible price every month, the system is accessible for businesses of all scales and user bases.

Using the platform does not need any costly hardware, which enables organizations to save a lot of money. No extra charges are expected from the users as well because all features needed by businesses are included in the selected package.

Other than this, Zoho Creator allows the app development to be done with much-needed ease because of the wide community access. The users are able to participate in a big community that is independent of software vendors and developers and would allow obtaining valuable expertise in many relevant fields.

3. Secure Sharing, Accessing, and Collaboration: Zoho Creator app developers can collaborate in order to access and edit the applications. They have the option to share input forms, reports, and dashboards via a URL. Anyone can view, access, and change the data in the forms and reports from their mobile devices.

The users are always keen on making their database applications available for use in a safe manner. In addition to the role-based access, the business process management tool handles other security functions for ensuring security and accessing the applications.

Besides this, encryption of sensitive data, multi-factor authentication options, HTTPs for complete pages, and the data back up in various locations are some of the security functions that Zoho Creator comes with.

4. Zoho Creator Developer Toolkit: Some of the best low code platforms preserve the coding space for a high degree of customization. In Zoho Creator, the IDE verifies all code lines one type, helps in detecting them, and fixes the issues in that moment itself.

An agile model in which the programs are divided into modules enables a Zoho Creator consultant to make changes in modules with the conviction that the rest of the program will not get changed. One can also reuse code across different applications. For example; the goal-setting function can be used from a sales management app on a habit tracker application.

Other than this, Zoho Creator also supports web and mobile widgets, SDKs, and other extensions. One can extend applications using JavaScript and any JavaScript library like Angular, React, and Dojo through the widgets.

Even though agile development can be a great option, but some time-saving tools are always needed in an organization to ensure rapid delivery. Zoho Creator equips one with all that is needed to take an application from conception and design to testing, delivery, and roll out. Some of the popular tools from the Zoho Creator developer toolkit are Data connectors, Sandbox, Version control, app templates, built-in authentication and authorization, APIs and SDKs, etc.

5. Quick Deployment: Zoho creator comes with many built-in capabilities that take all the stress away from the shoulders of app developers after an application has been built. It aids app development with the help of quick deployment.

One can push even the most difficult changes into production with just a single click using Zoho Creator. Other than this, the web app gets automatically available on all devices including mobiles, desktop, tablets, and wearable because of the native mobile features and complete offline capabilities.

An application that is created and tested to work for one team can be scaled up for work in the entire organization without any need for change to the architecture. Plus, Zoho Creator comes with certified security features that ensure great availability and security. This takes care of compliance and disaster recovery, so one can focus only on building applications.

6. Easy to Use and Accessible: Another thing that makes Zoho Creator stand out is the fact that it is simple to use the software. In addition to the fact that it doesn’t require complex installation, employees do not have to undergo extensive training for the sake of using the system efficiently.

Zoho Creator is highly flexible and comes with the benefit of personalization that fits the particular needs of a business. A cloud-based platform that enables all operations and data to be accessed through mobile devices, Zoho Creator eases the processes of organizations considerably.

It’s easy to use and accessible features are great for decentralizing the team members because being in various remote locations is no longer a problem while doing work.

7. Advanced Mobile App Capabilities: Mobility is an important factor in business. Zoho Creator provides mobile apps for iOS and Android devices while letting the users handle their applications and access data on mobile devices. The advanced mobile app capabilities that Zoho Creator comes with enables the users to access the Creator apps including workplaces, personal and shared apps.

In addition, the Mobile App Creator modules automatically make the existing application as mobile-enabled. The Zoho Creator developers can add, delete, and edit data within the mobile application.

Besides this, they can search, sort, filter, group and apply custom activities on data, receive notifications from applications, approve requests on the applications, accept payments from the phone, analyze reports on top of data, support offline data submission and support typical features of mobile phones such as Cameras, Microphones, Location Services and Gestures.

8. After Deployment Ease: Zoho Creator is designed to be a future proof tech. The applications will never go obsolete because the platform is continuously updated. For instance; desktop software built in the year 2006 on Zoho Creator was automatically available as an iOS app when the iPhones are launched in the market.

If you need a new feature then Zoho Creator applications are always customizable. You can fulfill new requirements just as soon as they pop up because you have already established a robust foundation with the assistance of Zoho Creator.

The Zoho Creator developers find Zoho Creator to be a low code development platform that doesn’t create problems but helps in fast innovation without getting stuck on outdated coding practices. As the digital transformation projects cloud over today’s enterprise, low code can become a powerful way for developers to deliver applications on time without sacrificing quality.

9. Zoho Creator Integration: The Zoho Creator features a unified database for its custom application and hence all applications created in that tool share the same database. The users can look up and add details across the apps without additional integration.

Zoho Creator integrates with a number of applications like Zoho CRM, Zoho Books, Zoho Reports, Zoho Recruit, Zoho Campaigns, Zoho Invoice, Zoho Calendar, and so on. Similarly, it also integrates with many third-party applications like Salesforce, Zapier, QuickBooks, and Google Apps.

With the help of an architecture called “One Virtual Database”, Zoho Creator supports content and data flow all across applications. This support makes the integration much easier, productive and effective.

10. Graphical Interface Layer: Zoho creator also enables the users to build tables and forms on Zoho forms just with a clicking a component and using drag and drop to the form. The business process management tool provides many options as to the various types of components and fields to create a database.

Additionally, it also includes dropdowns, checkboxes, lookup, radio buttons and input fields to keep single and multi-line texts, numbers, email IDs, and percentages. All this can be done without any programming knowledge, but only with a little guidance on the process that must be followed.

Related Read: Build Custom Applications using Zoho Creator!

CONCLUSION:

With all the features that are mentioned above, Zoho Creator is the right tool for your business if you are looking for affordable ways to enhance the efficiency of your business operations. It is a tool that not only offers solutions with workflow capabilities but also eases the use and secures cloud storage with a great price point.

Therefore, organizations should get the most of benefits that are offered by the Zoho Creator. This can be done by getting in touch with a credible Zoho Creator Consultant to implement and get the best of Zoho Creator benefits.

Encaptechno comes with extensive experience in providing the Zoho Creator implementation services. If you are looking forward to partner with a dedicated, experienced and credible consultant, then reach out to the team of Encaptechno for the best support as your Zoho Creator Consultants.

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CRM Serviceszoho creator app development, zoho creator applications, Zoho Creator Certified Developer, zoho creator consultant, zoho creator developers

Benefits Of Hiring a Certified Salesforce Consulting Partner

Abhishek Sharma / certified salesforce consultants, salesforce cloud, salesforce consultant, salesforce consulting partner, Salesforce implementation, salesforce partner / CRM Services

As a business that is on the verge of growing, the foremost priority is to enhance the operations of the business in a way that generates faster and greater ROI. For ensuring a constant growth of your business, you must chart out a suitable customer satisfaction strategy because the customers tend to be the force responsible behind making or breaking a business. One of the most important aspects of this strategy is to have a robust system in place that can offer a single view of almost all customer-related data.

Salesforce cloud comes with great functionalities, features, and an ever-advancing setup, which has made it the most natural choice for all business owners looking to manage their business. The implementation of the Salesforce in partnership with the certified Salesforce consultant not only manages the scattered business processes but also enhances efficiency and productivity.

Although this cloud-based platform is highly flexible, simple to use, and widely accepted all across the globe, the real challenge is its implementation. A salesforce implementation requires complete focus, technical knowledge, and dedication, which is not possible while handling different important business activities.

In case businesses want to maximize the complete potential of Salesforce then they must hire a Salesforce consultant that is capable of delivering comprehensive consulting services while facing the important business challenges. Successful implementation must be done keeping proper strategies and implementation plans in the mind and if you choose your Salesforce partners rightly then getting the job done at the right time and within the right budget will become easy.

The team of Salesforce consultants works with an aim to assess the present business practices and processes. After the evaluation of business processes is done, the Salesforce consultant suggests the best implementation strategies for meeting organizational goals.

In this blog, we will make an attempt to understand the benefits of hiring a certified salesforce consulting partner. However, before making an attempt to understand all the benefits, we will understand how Salesforce CRM helps in increasing the ROI?

How Does Salesforce CRM Help In Increasing the ROI?

Salesforce is one of the most popular leaders in the field of CRM and this is pretty clear for the companies that have chosen it in the past. We will try to explain this little better with the help of an example.

For instance; if a business wants to use the Salesforce sales cloud or the marketing platform for managing promotions, the usability is not just restricted to the marketing area, but the CRM can be tailored for suiting business needs precisely. It has the capability to boost the overall sales by creating new markets, optimizing conversions, and analyzing data by reporting or dashboards.

With the implementation of Salesforce, document generation becomes easy based on the different criteria and filters that enhance the overall efficiency of business processes. You can also use the case management for prompt delivery by setting priorities and delegating them one by one to the concerned people. Basically, the Salesforce partner has a solution every time there is a problem.

How Does Salesforce Business Consultant Increase ROI?

Let’s just say that you are able to implement Salesforce on your own to complete potential. However, if you want to see what an ideal implementation looks like within a time period and budget, we would always recommend that you employ a Salesforce specialist for getting the work done in a way that the ROI gets increased. This is because:

Hiring a Salesforce consultant can help in saving the employee productivity time that can then be used for other things.
The Salesforce experts have a solution for almost every complex problem and it is easy to set up, customize, and even configure. All of these things help in increasing the ROI.
Salesforce partners use the best coding standards and implementation practices. Hence, the possibility of failure is very less because even the quality and stability of a product will get improved.
Salesforce consultants will offer ongoing support and flexibility for the development and productivity of a company.
This will also enable in encouraging adoption and pipeline business opportunities with goals that maximize ROI and improve the performance.

Now that we have a basic understanding of Salesforce implementation, we will now look at the benefits of hiring a certified Salesforce consulting partner in order to understand everything a lot better.

1. Simple Set-up and Execution: Salesforce is relatively simple to set up and configure if it is done with the help of an expert. A good Salesforce consultant will always know where to make the changes, the methods to change the required settings, configuring the security settings for better access to CRM, and making everything more private. What’s more, is that all of this can be achieved very quickly.

At the time when a Salesforce implementation is being done, many people think that upgrading software will be a relatively simple step to take up and execute. At the end of the day, it is just the next version of the software. Although some people might not have an assumption there are still many misconceptions that are associated with the Salesforce implementation and execution.

The fact of the matter is that the salesforce implementation is not just about moving from one version to the next. It actually comes with a whole new system with an entirely new design, new features, and different ways of doing business. In case a CRM system is not implemented in the right way, there is absolutely no point in implementing it.

If the implementation is done by an experienced salesforce consultant, then the execution also becomes a lot easier. From streamlined workflow, improved communications, enhanced productivity, reduced operational expenses, better security to customer experience, everything comes out great.

2. Saves Time Considerably: After appointing a Salesforce consultant, your organization will get easy access to seamless and some of the most reliable solutions for all kinds of problems that a business can face. A salesforce consultant will not only help in saving a lot of time, but it will also help in making the organization much more productive and close more deals successfully.

A qualified and experienced salesforce consultant is always well aware of the technical details involved in the implementation process. All through the implementation process, the salesforce consultant establishes clear milestones that can help in tracking the progress of CRM implementation.

Organizations can access the best of features and get customizable solutions quickly at a very affordable price with the assistance of Salesforce consultants. This is one of the most important reasons for hiring a salesforce consultant. In addition to helping deliver on time and accurate solutions linked with the salesforce implementation for meeting the growing demands of a business, companies can actually have a comprehensive view of the clients that can help the sales team strategize better marketing efforts.

3. Efficient Problem Solving: Regardless of whether you need to migrate large amounts of data from a legacy system or integrate your CRM system with any other application, a professional Salesforce consultant makes sure that necessary steps are taken for avoiding any data loss or even other problems.

When it is the time of strategizing and implementing the strategic plan, a dedicated salesforce partner will most definitely provide an impartial opinion just so that the business owners can make the right business decisions easily. A dedicated Salesforce partner cab offers quick, accurate, and efficient solutions required for solving the most important business issues.

4. Improved Decision Making: Just as a business grows and expands, one needs to make bigger decisions while potentially making changes to the present customer relationship management system. The Salesforce consultant collaborates with the team at the level of strategizing and designing the implementation process for fitting the needs of a business.

The reason why different business organizations should leverage consulting services is that that can definitely help in making better decisions related to the growth and operations. Irrespective of whether you are a small organization or a large one, investing in the best salesforce consulting services will pay off and ensure business growth.

It doesn’t matter if your goal is to expand your business, changing the existing CRM software, or choosing the right implementation strategy, every business needs a substantial amount of decision making. Where the right decision can expand your business without any bounds, a wrong one can demolish your empire.

Hence, a certified salesforce consultant by your side can definitely help in making the best choices. The team of experts can help in enhancing the brand image and adding value to the business.

5. Experienced Service Providers: When you complete the Salesforce set-up and start working different customizations then you will be caught up. There might come a point when you will get stress out about managing different business procedures and handling the workload in the right sense.

One of the best ideas to go forward is by hiring a Salesforce partner who can offer streamlined, expert, and dedicated consulting services. This will ensure that all assignments are completed at the right time without any possible distractions or excuses.

The salesforce cloud consultant facilitates implementation right from the scratch enabling your business to perform all the tasks extremely precisely and effectively. In fact, the team of salesforce consultants can offer key training and support for helping staff members get an answer to specific questions. This training focuses on many areas like automation, dashboard management, and project tracking.

6. Increased ROI: With a reliable Salesforce consultant, you can ensure that your business objectives are met and contributed to the effective running of the business. An experienced salesforce consultant will not only design your system for having an adoption rate but also ensure that you get Salesforce working right in the manner in which it is required by a business for improving the rate of investment.

In addition, an efficient Salesforce consultant will offer a roadmap for the smooth functioning of business operations and construct a system that does only good for the business. Salesforce consultants come with the best and entirely trustworthy competencies needed to solve difficult business problems.

Hence, hiring a certified salesforce partner can help in holding the lead for availing the maximum benefits of salesforce software. This eventually leads to effective implementation and accelerates the business ROI as well.

CONCLUSION:

Undoubtedly, Salesforce is an extremely powerful CRM tool that can be used in enhancing the overall efficiency of your business. Regardless of whether it is about implementing a new system or updating a current one, an experienced and dedicated salesforce consultant can guide you in creating the right pathway for your organization.

It wouldn’t be wrong to claim that the integration of the salesforce CRM is like a significant strategy that needs the right roadmap for achieving predetermined milestones. Hence, in case you are planning for salesforce implementation then you must find a certified salesforce partner who can offer both technical and non-technical assistance needed for executing an effective CRM system.

Encaptechno is one of the most well-known salesforce partners that provide the best and unique business solutions fitting almost every business model. A wide range of experience has allowed Encaptechno to develop in-depth industry knowledge and technical competency of leading-edge technology for delivering the best customer experience.

Get in touch with us to get the best and most suitable Salesforce implementation services needed for your business.

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CRM Servicescertified salesforce consultants, salesforce cloud, salesforce consultant, salesforce consulting partner, Salesforce implementation, salesforce partner

How Zoho One is a Game Changer for Your Business?

Abhishek Sharma / zoho one, zoho one apps, zoho one implementation, zoho one login / CRM Services

An operating system designed for businesses, Zoho One is actually business process management software that organizations can use at an affordable price. In addition to offering a wide range of innovative business solutions that help the business owners and administrators to have complete control over their data, Zoho One also handles a lot from security processes to employee management and a lot more.

The sophisticated and streamlined approach of Zoho One gives the client an integrated and customizable system to work in a much smarter and faster way. The integrated online applications that are included in Zoho One help in managing and automating business processes all across an organization. One can choose applications that address important features and deploy them to employees because each app comes with a mobile version that enables the customers to work wherever they go.

Zoho One comes with native applications for iOS and Android so that the users can implement all the functionalities of this app from their mobile devices and work on the go. A tested method that helps employees become much more efficient and productive, Zoho One enables employees to access data anytime and anywhere they need it.

In this blog, we will attempt to understand everything about Zoho One in complete detail. Along with the fact that how Zoho One is a Game Changer for Your Business?

What is Zoho One?

Zoho One is a set of broad and cohesive applications that work collectively for running an entire business on the cloud. It includes more than 35-40 web applications along with an equal number of mobile apps under a single sign-on done with centralized administration and provisioning, which makes it a true operating system for any business. Although each app serves to be entirely functional, the Zoho one apps collectively enhance the business operations considerably.

After a dedicated period of working hard to make Zoho One a success, the team of Zoho has come up with business applications that make business operations a lot more efficient. Through Zoho One, all of the applications that are needed by a company are put together in one unit.

The Zoho One apps are all that a company acquires and serves its customers with when it comes to marketing, support apps, and sales run its operations such as finance, recruiting, HR, and offers all tools for its employees to work collaboratively while getting their work done. Every business has these needs and therefore, Zoho One is made to change the course of how work is done in an organization.

Besides features such as creator and drag and drop app builder, the customers can even build various custom applications that serve unique business needs such as logistic scheduling and putting applications under the same umbrella that forms a single operating system for businesses. Plus, since it is all available both on the web and mobile, the business is accessible anywhere you go.

Innovation That Goes Beyond Software Capabilities:

The introduction of Zoho One is such that it looks way past the individual applications for finding special ways to create a lot more value. This is why Zoho One implements over more than 400 integrations all across these applications just so that relevant business information can be put in the right places.

Connecting sales, marketing, customer care processes, Zoho One is an innovation that lets the companies know everything about their customers. It enables all the important information to flow back into the customer’s back-office just so that the orders are fulfilled, payments get collected, invoices are tracked and the account stays balanced, all automatically.

In addition, Zoho One comes integrated with multiple leading third-party software applications that preserve one’s choice and flexibility, rather than restricting everything. If one wants to earn the business in the right way then Zoho One is the answer because the innovation with which it is made does not just stop with the software, rather goes after the procurement experience.

Zoho One is available under a single and simple contract with one service agreement that covers the entire suite. The customers can buy it from a renowned company that offers Zoho One implementation services. Just after the software is procured, Zoho One requires setting up, provisioned, and administered.

Since everyone can have a different way of doing this, this means that multiple credentials, settings, and accounts for each employee. This can very often seem like a burden of tasks and headaches. Zoho One presents a single administrative console for all of the account management and administration activities. With a single Zoho One login, policies related to the service, organizational, departmental and individual levels can be set up comfortably.

Breakthrough Technology At An Amazing Price:

Zoho One is available at an incredibly reasonable price at an International level. When you breakdown the cost, it comes out to be entirely legit for one day and one employee. However, it is important to get a license for each of the employees.

In terms of being justified, the price of Zoho One offers sophisticated business software for everyone. The team of Zoho One understands well that software is not really a scarce resource that must be rationed or apportioned; rather it is more like a utility that everyone who is into business must-have. Just as the electric power, Zoho One can be put on every desk.

There must be no glitches, if and buts, or any type of forced multi-year contracts. Hence, with Zoho One can get the enterprise or a high-end edition of every application in a way that all capabilities end up just as likely as the customers need. It comes with no hidden prices for different upgrades or any clauses. The customers can get everything they need to run their business at just that one price.

Now that we have got a clear and precise understanding of the thought process that was invested behind making Zoho One, we will now understand how Zoho one is a Game Changer for your business?

1. All in One Business Suite: Zoho One offers all businesses with applications that are needed to acquire and serve customers. In addition to helping with operations that are a prerequisite for every business such as marketing, sales, and communication, Zoho one also offers apps that run finance, HR, and recruiting-related tasks.

In fact, Zoho One provides all tools for employees that enable working collaboratively by getting different types of work done related to an office suite, personal productivity, mail, collaboration applications, etc.

Customers using Zoho One can also build custom applications for unique business needs and put these apps under one operating system that governs the entire business. With almost 38 applications, various complementary mobile applications along with several browser extensions and extras, Zoho One is one of the broadest suites of business applications in the market that comes with an administrative panel for centralized administration and provisioning.

2. High-quality Integration: Any company that implements the Zoho One has the option of using it easily with the third-party applications to ensure the seamless running of businesses because Zoho One offers multiple integration points all across its applications.

These integration points are the ones that connect sales, marketing, accounting, customer support, human resources, and other activities while making communication and collaboration amongst colleagues, vendors, and customers possible.

The Zoho One apps also come with a feature of integrating with hundreds of leading third-party software applications that preserve customer choice and flexibility. It actually breaks the traditional approach to integration involving large budgets and units of expensive IT consultants needed for integrating with application silos from numerous vendors to set up IT set up. This is essentially what de-rationing of IT is all about. Zoho One is easy to use and access for everyone, not just for the large companies with deep pockets.

3. Centralized Control: Zoho One provides a rather secure account and needs just a single sign-on to the entire suite. A single admin panel allows and controls the access that greatly simplifies provisioning, access, and audit. Zoho One allows the users to be provisioned, groups to be created and shared across different applications and enabling and disabling of applications all from a single place.

The policies on the Zoho app can be defined company-wide. From enforcing two-factor authentication for all employees to implementing secure access, the central control can be enforced and delegated through the service admins for individual departments and the groups.

The single Zoho One login enables the customers to integrate the third-party apps onto their accounts since the Zoho single sign-on supports around 50 third party applications keeps growing every day.

Not only does the Single sign-on makes it more convenient to manage both the Zoho and third-party applications, but since Zoho works with third party systems like the active directory, it also proves to be scalable for mid to large-sized businesses. Zoho One admins can also enforce authentication as an added factor for increased security on top of existing multi-factor authentication that is supported already.

4. Transparent Pricing Models: The operating system of Zoho One is such that it dispenses with the traditional vendor pricing strategies like upgrades, add-ons, usage restrictions, multi-year contracts, etc. that are designed to make the real pricing pretty opaque.

Zoho One includes the enterprise-level editions of almost all Zoho business applications along with mobile, native apps, and extensions. This system is such that it does not tie the business owners into a multi-year contractual requirement and makes the entire pricing model extremely easy and transparent.

The complexity of running multiple applications when taken out of their way can lead customers to focus on their core business. With the help of Zoho One, the customers are not just licensing the applications they think are important for running the business but they are also licensing peace for a long time.

5. Communication Ease: Zoho One facilitates an ease in communication that instills a rather clear flow of information amongst the team members. Zoho’s telephony platform known as PhoneBridge enables the integration of around 50 vendors on one side and several other applications on the other side, which is all available within Zoho One now.

PhoneBridge also enables telephony in the Zoho apps with the help of Recruit and CRM. This further allows making calls from Zoho apps and provides contextual information on the incoming calls. Enabling PhoneBridge gives all users context for all the incoming calls from Zoho Mail, CRM, and other apps.

6. App Management and Provisioning: Presently, Zoho One enables the provisioning of over 45+ applications, which is now being extended to custom applications through Zoho creator and external apps available through the Zoho marketplace.

The Zoho third party, SSO, and custom applications can be provisioned either independently to the users or as groups that conditionally provision with the custom criteria.

The Admin Panel of Zoho One with the different dashboards and reports allow different admins to monitor the user activity and app usage while helping to find and manage the underutilized resources. The admins also get a fairly extensive report on user management, sign-in activity, app usage, and account security.

7. Business Workflow Management: Facilitating a seamless business workflow management, Zoho One presents an intuitive drag and drop interface that enables managers with no coding skills to define processes with very little effort.

With the help of Orchestly, managers and the administrators can run and automate their regular workflows including cross-departmental operations such as content publishing, asset management, onboarding, purchase approvals, etc.

In case there is a need for onboarding a new employee then the interview, recruitment, offer submission, and the onboarding is handled across the recruiting, legal, HR departments, etc. Due to the fact that so many departments and applications are involved in this process, Orchestly is able to cut across different teams and applications to create comprehensive workflows and automated processes.

8. Product and Service Innovation: With the enhanced Zoho Sign now, an additional level of security is provided for customers who want to adopt blockchain-based time stamping through Ethereum – a globally accepted and open-source platform.

Anytime when a document is signed using the Zoho Sign, an Ethereum transaction will happen in the background to which hash of the signed document will be added in the transaction notes.

Other than this, Zoho One offers Concierge service where the potential customers can consult with the Zoho team for a better understanding of how Zoho One can help businesses. Furthermore, Jumpstart for Zoho One helps the customers to get through the initial implementation. Overall, Zoho’s support offered to the Zoho One customers makes implementing it completely worthwhile.

CONCLUSION:

As it has been explained above, Zoho One is a suite of over 35-40 applications that are offered under one umbrella at an extremely attractive price. It provides evaluation, deployment, implementation, and support services for all Zoho One clients all over the world. It enables one to run the entire business with just one suite of business applications in sales, marketing, productivity and collaboration, support, finance, business processes, HR, etc.

In addition to offering so many business applications under one system, Zoho One allows integration between various applications, a centralized administration management console for apps, clients get all apps for one price, and one bill for all in one licensing model at an affordable price.

Owing to all these benefits, organizations must consider the implementation of Zoho One as a fit for their needs. To make this possible, getting in touch with the Zoho One implementation partners such as Encaptechno can enable organizations to get a wide range of services from implementation, integration, and customization of apps to meet the business needs.

From working with clients to tell them if Zoho One is right for their business to help them get an evaluation of the package based on specific requirements, we work with clients to deploy the applications and provide post-implementation support. The team of Encap is trained to perform an in-depth insight of over 40 applications that can be useful for the organization while implementing a blueprint for deploying these applications.

Get in touch with us to know more about our Zoho One implementation and Zoho One support services. Our team of dedicated professionals is ready and waiting to assist you.

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CRM Serviceszoho one, zoho one apps, zoho one implementation, zoho one login

Why CRM Systems Fail?

Abhishek Sharma / crm consultant, crm consulting partner, crm system, salesforce partner, zoho crm / CRM Services

CRM – A brief

CRM holds true potential to be a game-changer for many businesses. However, while selecting, be aware that most CRM system implementations may fall short of the desired objectives, and it could be argued that many fail in entirety.

SCOTT K. EDINGER, founder of Edinger Consulting Group, is recognized as an expert in helping organizations achieve measurable business results. Coauthor of The Inspiring Leader, he blogs for Harvard Business Review and Forbes. He has rightly quoted “In my work with clients, when I ask executives if their CRM system is helping their business grow, the failure rate is close to 90%.”

What is CRM?

According to Wikipedia, “Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is an approach to managing a company’s interaction with current and potential customers. It uses data analysis about customers’ history with a company to improve business relationships with customers, specifically focusing on customer retention and ultimately driving sales growth.

One important aspect of the CRM approach is the systems of CRM that compile data from a range of different communication channels, including a company’s website, telephone, email, live chat, marketing materials and more recently, social media. Through the CRM approach and the systems used to facilitate it, businesses learn more about their target audiences and how to best care their needs”

Irrespective of your designation CRM’s today assist ranging from an executive in Sales, to Marketing, to HR, to the Customer Relations Department, to Operations Team, to the Productions Team, to the Accounts Department etc. and finally ranging to the Top Management and the IT Department.

If anyone who is using the CRM and not utilizing the data optimally, there is no incentive to keep up the data- the data quality deteriorates and becomes less reliable as time passes. For any company Sales is the center of revenue and Sales department must be happy and in total alignment with the CRM. If they are not, it is imminent that CRM failure is looming.

How do we avoid this disaster? Let us understand the common reasons why CRM project fail.

How CRM projects become a disaster?

1. Not knowing the goal from the very beginning

There’s no rule that says CRM system objectives must include revenue improvements. However, by definition, if you can’t measure revenue impact, you can’t calculate CRM ROI. A successful software implementation, especially CRM, begins with understanding your desired business goals. What are the important success indicators or KPI’s for my business and sales teams? How do you wish to see your business to look like in the coming 12 to 24 months? And 5 years from now & 10 years from now. You need a clear horizon.

Take your time to invest in your vision, and document it.

How do you foresee your success?

What are the targets you wish to achieve? Make sure you are specific about them in planning which will reap great returns in your CRM implementation.

A few key pointers of CRM objectives that are easily related to improve the ROI are:

Increased customer acquisitions
Decreased customer acquisition cost
Shortened sales cycle
Increased revenue per customer

In addition, it is important that your CRM objectives align with and support the company’s business strategy. Your CRM strategy needs to show how strategy, people, processes and software are doctored to directly impact the business customers, team coordination, effort, performance and contribution of each employee in achieving revenue objectives. By setting quantifiable objectives and having a clear strategic vision of where your company should be after successful implementation, you will have a clear guide to follow.

2. Poor User adoption

Most of the times, it’s in a human tendency not to accept the change. We are so used to working in the style we have been working traditionally. At times the team members feel they are being spied, there performance is under continuous surveillance

A new CRM system brings new processes, automation, information, roles, responsibilities and control. Notably, a new CRM system oftentimes brings an actual or perceived loss of control. There might be a few people who feel they will lose their jobs and some staff may not understand why a CRM is needed in the first place.

Poor user adoption will create an unpleasant atmosphere where management drive adoption but CRM is resisted by the team members. Resistance to change is in human nature and it is a given situation in most CRM implementations, but it needs to be managed effectively.

When it fails to be quickly and properly addressed resistance will result in a less than 100% productive CRM. Wrong data entry is highly expected in these cases; a majority of the CRM failures happen due to wrong data entry.

3.Not Selecting the Right CRM Solution provider

Ensure your Solution Provider can train your teams on the tools he is offering and the ongoing support, he can offer if you need it. And chances are that you really will because after the switches are flipped, your teams need to be ready to go.

Your solution provider is well equipped to provide you with the support which is crucial when taking into consideration the plan for your CRM and your business goals. Have you selected the right software and the right solution partner?

It cannot be stressed enough: CRM implementation shouldn’t be considered a one-off project. Look for a partnership that aligns with the right Solution Provider enhances your business.

Know your internal champions and whether or not you have executive support for a CRM project is paramount to its success. In your planning phase, identify internal champions keeping in mind you may have more than one depending on the complexity of your business and the teams who will use your new CRM.

Additionally, executive support will be indispensable when it comes to your implementation. Strategy and execution – can make or break an implementation. And 50% of the CRMs fail due to signing a wrong choice of selecting the solution provider.

To implement a CRM system on a lower budget, and blinded by an attractive price point, businesses often make the mistake of not doing proper research on the vendor. In addition, businesses sometimes err on the other side and over-spec’ the CRM by paying for features that they don’t want or even need.

Key features one should look forward while designing the tools

What is the total years of experience of the solution provider?
Which other businesses like ours have you supplied with a similar CRM tool?
Does it need complex training?
How much help will you provide to us within the price?
How easily does it integrate with our existing tools?
Can we get started easily?
What is the support the solution provider extends after sales?

4. Unorganized Data

In case your data is not well organized or largely incomplete, just because you put it into CRM doesn’t mean you’ll get great results. Knowing what data your business is tracking and why will help you understand the best way to organize it.

Knowing what you wish to reap out of a CRM tools will be an absolute impact of what needs to go in, both in terms of the implementation and the data you input in itself. CRM is often expected to be a single source of truth. This means that all of your resources must be on board within the standards of governance that should be deployed, and training is an essential part so that all of your teams be in sync of the data being entered, and how the data is intended to be used. It is rightly said Garbage in, garbage out. When you have data integrity, your CRM implementation and results will shine even greater and in case things are not organized nothing would help you.

Keep the CRM simple and only buy into features that you really need. There is a large temptation during the vendor selection process to deliver to the vendor an exhaustive list of features that covers a range of departments and functions at the business. Don’t make this mistake.

Define the business outcomes before you begin to meet with CRM solution providers.

Go for the most user-friendly and intuitive interface. Hitting your team with a new CRM tools, and with a difficult to use interface all in one go – much of which is not required – will only put them off.

5. Does your Solution provider really know what you wish to achieve?

Have you found the right vendor for your CRM implementation? Each industry be it construction, manufacturing, warehouse, suppliers or a retailer has a different parameter, and a different set of requirements to meet.

Does your solution provider understand and is the solution provider sensitive towards your language? They will use their time getting to understand your unique business needs even better. Here are some things to look for (and avoid) in a partner:

Avoid solutions providers who won’t take the time to meet and understand your standard operations procedures.
If planning isn’t a priority for them, buyer beware.
Be sure to ask your software solution providers for references from businesses in industries like yours. Contact them, take a feedback about their experience with the solution provider. Get the hang of the after sales services support of the solution provider from the past clients.
Select a partner who wants to celebrate your growth and successes. Going through your CRM solution provider selection process get your senior management involved. Don’t do it alone. Involve the various departments, users since it will be needed to drive the adoption across the various departments.

Conclusion

Implementing CRM system is a challenging task. Doing it without expert guidance can lead to a chaotic situation in the future. You need to plan the objectives and goals before you start CRM implementation. It is suggested to hire a trustworthy CRM consultant who can understand your goals and help you with best possible solutions.

Related Read – Why do you need to Hire a CRM Consultant?

Encaptechno is a recognized Salesforce and Zoho certified CRM consultant has globally delivered more than 500 solutions globally. Share your CRM requirements and let our team do the CRM Implementation for you.

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CRM Servicescrm consultant, crm consulting partner, crm system, salesforce partner, zoho crm

How Is Salesforce Einstein Revolutionizing The B2B Market?

Abhishek Sharma / artificial intelligence, robotic process automation, salesforce consultant, Salesforce einstein, Salesforce einstein analytics / CRM Services

What if we told you that Einstein, Leonardo, Sensei, and Watson were alive?

They indeed are, but as Artificial Intelligence suites patented by the leading Global Enterprises and Technology vendors.

Before we spill the beans on ‘what is Salesforce Einstein?’, let’s take a step back and understand the significance of Artificial intelligence in our everyday life.

Today, you can call up Google Assistant, or Siri for the latest movie recommendations; let major music streaming platforms curate personalized playlists as per your likings, and add friends on Social Media with similar personality traits.

Have you ever wondered how these platforms offer you such a personalized experience?

The answer you’re looking for is Artificial Intelligence.

Startups and global enterprises today are employing complex artificial intelligence (AI) and Machine learning algorithms in everyday operations to personalize your experience, and make it richer, and smarter.

Let’s take Global corporations for instance.

These enterprises are implementing new radical automation technologies with the likes of Robotic Process Automation to assist their employees with overnight adoption to the new normal- Work from home environment.

But that’s a story for another time. Let’s kickstart this blog by answering the most essential question.

What is Salesforce Einstein AI Suite?

Salesforce Einstein is naught but an Artificial Intelligence suite developed by Salesforce to closely visualize, and present the information regarding all the sales activities in your Salesforce environment.

How does Salesforce defines its game-changing Salesforce Einstein AI?

According to Salesforce,

‘Salesforce Einstein is a set of best-in-class platform services that bring advanced AI capabilities into the core of the Customer Success Platform, making Salesforce the world’s smartest CRM’.

Now that we’ve established a basic understanding, let’s move to the crucial bits entailing Salesforce Einstein AI.

What’s included in Salesforce Einstein AI Suite?

The 2019 Gartner’s study of Customer and Relationship Management clearly indicates that Salesforce has the #1 market share amongst the top CRM providers globally.

If we study the trend, Salesforce has always been amongst the early adopters of radical new inventions, and technologies- and it’s the same story this time around.

Salesforce acquired a few AI and deep-learning startups, including PredictionIO, MetaMind, and RelateIO to bring you the smartest CRM platform in the world- Salesforce Einstein.

The Salesforce Einstein AI Suite is comprised of multiple tools that are powered by automation technologies including:

Deep learning,
Predictive analysis,
Artificial neural networks,
Machine learning,
Data recovery, and more.

However, a few apps in the Salesforce Einstein AI Suite are offered as add-ons; meaning, you can choose to opt-in and customize them as per your business’ requirements.

Salesforce Einstein App Categories

Einstein AI app suite can be majorly classified into three categories:

1. Out-of-the-box

These are pre-built applications that can be added with a single click. Here outlines are key examples that fall under this particular category:

Lead and opportunity scoring,
And Email auto-segmentation

2. Point-click solutions

These aren’t as simple and direct as the ‘Out-of-the-box’ category.

Point and click solutions require Salesforce administrators to configure and create certain models and offer the required training to the users.

Here are key examples:

Service chatbots,
Visual analytics and insights,
And Custom Predictions.

3.Programmatic AI services

Automation is the future, but automating processes to source unstructured data from multiple integrated apps require special training, complex machine learning algorithms, and extensive model creations.

That’s exactly what programmatic AI Services offers to your business’ Salesforce CRM.

Customer Intent analysis,
Object identification,
And Classifying different images under sections.

What are the benefits of Salesforce Einstein?

The list of Salesforce Einstein AI benefits for your business is inexhaustive- but we’d like to highlight a peculiar one:
Salesforce Einstein AI is compatible with all the major CRM suites available globally. That means, even if your business isn’t currently employing the Salesforce CRM, it can still benefit from the Einstein AI tools and platform.

However, we’ve outlined the key highlights of Salesforce Einstein, giving you a glimpse of the benefits it can deliver to your business, and how it is different from other compelling alternatives:

1. Easy Integration

Since Einstein is built itself into the Salesforce platform, it works seamlessly with all your current apps and processes.

2. No to little experience

Einstein AI capabilities handle intensive lifting of data processes, making it possible for Salesforce Admins to employ Einstien without any preliminary training.

3. Customization

With Einstein AI, CRM admins can introduce advanced customization to their current apps, and processes via coding.

4. Data-centric

Leveraging different automation technologies, Einstein AI cross-checks for the errors in data models, whilst ensuring that they’re updated at all times.

5. Predictive Analytics

Employing predictive analysis, you can automate manual data entries and unstructured workflows with Einstein AI.

Application of Salesforce Einstein AI in B2B Marketplace

Although Salesforce Einstein’s apps are offered in three different categories, starting with the default ‘out-of-the-box’ category (the one we discussed above) often seems plausible to start-ups, enterprises, and individuals alike.

Why?

For your business can embrace new capabilities, and get up-and-running in literally no-time.

But before we highlight the cloud-based apps, let’s briefly understand Salesforce Einstein Analytics.

What is Salesforce Einstein Analytics?

Salesforce Einstein Analytics, also formerly known as ‘Salesforce Wave’ is a powerful CRM app used to visually analyze the user-activities within your Salesforce or other CRM environment.

Why is Salesforce Einstein Analytics important to your business?

Whether you use Salesforce CRM for sales, marketing, managing accounts, or running campaigns, Einstein Analytics assists your CRM admins to study insights from the data entered by your active users into your CRM applications.

Incorporating visual tools like graphs, reports, and intuitive dashboards, these in-depth user insights help you mark out the value touchpoints, and understand how your users are engaging with the Salesforce CRM platform.

With that said, let’s outline the Salesforce Einstein’s default apps, grouped by the Salesforce cloud.

Einstein Cloud Apps:

Einstein AI Sales Cloud

Einstein offers the sales representative with prudent product predictions and the future demand/supply analysis, enabling them to sell more products/services and often exceed the set quota.

There’s a boost in productivity too, for Einstein AI not only automates the repetitive tasks but enhances the current CRM processes with its predictive capabilities.

1. Einstein Email Insights

Salesforce Einstein AI collects and studies your entire users’ email data, opening and CTR rates to check your content for relevancy, and recommend optimal send times.

2. Einstein lead Scoring

Leveraging the AI technologies, Salesforce Einstein assigns a unique score to your leads, helping your sales personnel to prioritize accordingly. The scoring structure is based on your individual lead’s history, current lead score, and conversion rates.

Einstein AI Marketing Cloud

Companies employ Artificial Intelligence in marketing to study the customers’ trends, predict their journeys, and personalize their overall experience.

Delivering the right personalized experience helps your marketers to boost engagement across multiple social channels by delivering the right content, to the right audience, at the right time.

1. Predictive Engagement Score

Einstein AI analyzes the customer data for all your buyers, to estimate, and often predict how they engage with your content including email, links, CTAs, and more.

2. Social Studio

Salesforce Einstein AI leverages different social listening tools to sort social media posts that refer to or mention your brand- directly or indirectly.

It even enables your marketers to put in specified filters, for instance: Identifying posts highlighting your brand with negative sentiment.

3. Market Segmentation

Einstein analyzes your market and creates different buyer personas, assisting your marketers to create separate audience groups with common behaviors.

This promotes effective engagement by personalizing your customers’ experience as they come across different touchpoints.

Einstein AI Service Cloud

Companies are dramatically enhancing their customer experience and after-sale services- courtesy chatbots. Salesforce Einstein AI improves the current service sector by facilitating the service agents to collect customer insights and deliver contextual answers in real-time.

1. Einstein Chatbots

Einstein bots originally couldn’t start automatically, but with recent Salesforce updates, that’s a thing of the past.

Once launched, Salesforce Einstein AI chatbots can deal with the influx of general queries, relieving your customer representatives to handle critical requests, and provide inputs on high-value tasks.

2. Einstein Supervisor

Einstein powered chatbots collects, combines, and produces real-time reports of operational insights, wait-times, and agent availability- assisting service managers in taking smart situation-oriented actions.

Einstein AI Commerce Cloud

Offering a personalized experience to customers across all the shopping channels is quintessential to modern-day eCommerce businesses.

Salesforce Einstein AI is aptly designed to handle a vast amount of user interactions, and deliver a highly personalized experience across all touchpoints.

1. Einstein Search Dictionaries

You can only host too many products on your website. This particular Einstein tool helps you identify the missing products in your catalog by registering the users’ site searches- including both the site box and storefront browsing.

2. Einstein Sort Predictions

To offer a unified experience, you can leverage Einstein commerce apps to search and category product pages according to your customers’ search history.

This helps your customer find the right products- irrespective of the fact whether they’re browsing your store on the web, or a mobile app.

Well, that’s just a comprehensive overview of Salesforce Einstein Suite’s offering. The list of Salesforce CRM cloud applications and categories is merely endless.

Investing in Salesforce Einstein should be an inherent factor whilst formulating your online budget- for it gives your business the much-needed competitive edge.

Robotic Process Automation and Salesforce: Automate Non-API Systems

We mentioned RPA sometime earlier in this blog but before we wrap things up, we’d like to touch up a little on this particular automation technology and its application in Salesforce Einstein.

So, what is Robotic Process Automation?

In plain simple language, RPA is an automation technology that employs software robots to imitate humans actions with a particular system to automate repetitive tasks and free your business’ time and limited resources.

The substantial upside of RPA is that it allows you to automate processes and systems that are not yet compatible with modern-day APIs.

If you’re ready to implement and invest in a robust service strategy, the combination of RPA and Salesforce Einstein can bring incredible benefits to your business.

With this in mind, check out the key RPA providers for 2020 listed underneath:

UiPath

Featuring a drag and drop intuitive UI, Uipath is a user-friendly automation tool for both developers and non-developers.

Automation Anywhere

Automation Anywhere offers a plethora of RPA and other simple yet effective automation tools for building robust RPA service systems.

Signity Software Solutions

Signity Solutions offer an amalgamation of AI technology stack with Robotic Process Automation, which sets it apart from other RPA vendors.

Kofax

Kofax virtually works with any application, and can be easily implemented- irrespective of the individual’s coding skills.

The automation sphere has hundreds of vendors, with each one different from another in one automation aspect or other. You’d have to do your due diligence to correctly identify your enterprise’s automation needs, and select the right RPA vendor for automating your business processes.

Salesforce Einstein: A Must-Need in Covid-19?

After the World Health organization declared Covid-19 as a pandemic, businesses had to adopt new technologies and remote working almost overnight to stay afloat in the market.

If you’d enter the keyword ‘Salesforce’ in Google Trends, you’d notice that the demand had rather been increasing since the information regarding the novel Coronavirus first started to float around in the B2B community.

It’d be naive to comment that companies weren’t prepared for the radical shift to remote working- that thing was already in motion.

But planning and execution are two very different scenarios.

Quarantined or not, individuals are more active online today- more than ever! And businesses simply can’t let go of this tremendous opportunity.

Investing now in Salesforce Einstein AI would provide your business with service centers that run on auto-pilot, digital workforce, easy migration to remote working, powerful and updated CRM apps, extensions, and a lot more.

Get Einstein AI today and be more resilient in the face of significant shifts- one that’s not irreversible in our wise opinion.

How Is Salesforce Einstein Revolutionizing The B2B Market? Read More »

CRM Servicesartificial intelligence, robotic process automation, salesforce consultant, Salesforce einstein, Salesforce einstein analytics

Why Do You Need To Hire A CRM Consultant?

Abhishek Sharma / crm consultants, crm implementation consultant, crm system, salesforce consulting services, zoho consulting partner / CRM Services

Is your company starting up with a new CRM system or has already adapted to a new CRM system? So, what’s your implementation strategy? Even for companies that want to take on complete ownership of a CRM system, it can make sense to engage an external consulting party for the initial CRM implementation.

Implementing CRM into your company system can sometimes be challenging; that’s where the need for an expert consultant arises.

Why CRM?

CRM (Customer Relationship Management) software is getting progressively important in today’s business world. Right from collecting customer information to managing it efficiently, CRM allows companies to administer an array of important front-office activities, including sales processes, lead acquisition and conversion, tracking of customer interactions, and marketing.

As companies can streamline their operations using this software, all varied processes and responsibilities can be more integrated; it results in superior levels of sales and customer satisfaction.

Reasons to Hire a CRM Certified Consultant

Whether your company is implementing a CRM system or already has one, you’ve possibly realized how vast an undertaking it is. From selecting which CRM platform best suits your needs to encourage employee adoption, there are various aspects that can fall short if not handled correctly. Hiring CRM consultants can help you make the most out of your CRM investment and ensure a smooth implementation process.

1. Selecting the Suitable CRM Platform

Since CRM systems support various departments with different requirements, choosing a platform that assures all of them can be difficult. So CRM Consultants can facilitate your decision-making process by helping you to identify your business needs and matching them to the different leading CRM platforms. They help you to select the best matches and evaluate its usage as per the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO).

2. Time and Cost Resource

It is worth considering that internal resources will likely take more time to execute a CRM package than external consultants. A company can pay more per hour for an external CRM Consultant, but the benefit of having skilled people come in for quicker implementation. As a result, the company gets a sooner return on its investment in the new CRM system.

3. Customizing and Optimizing after Installation

Once you have installed and configured the right CRM application, you’ll want to include any extra customizations and adjustments to tackle any challenges. CRM consultants will help you out at this stage as well. After the setup, consultants inquire the customer to discover the key initiatives and problems with the solution. Then they produce a plan and an ROI and then create a multi-year plan according to your budget.

At the initial stage, many customers don’t understand that CRM can be integrated with third-party applications that can improve their platform’s functionality. The consultants will also develop custom solutions for clients based on their particular requirements. So, whether you want to unite back-office systems, insert document viewing and signing, or automate manual processes, a CRM consultant can direct you in the right direction.

4. Exposure to Best Practices

One of the major reasons to hire CRM consultants is their massive knowledge of a variety of CRM best practices. When you hire an external consulting team, you don’t just engage people who are technically certified in your chosen CRM system. But you hire a team of professional personnel who have come across a wide variety of real-time world business situations with many years of expertise, and who know which strategies and technical approaches work the best, and which ones don’t.

5. Information about Subtleties

Just as some restaurants that have a secret menu, some CRM retailers have unexposed, free functionalities that can be made accessible on request. Most of the professional consultants will possibly have information about some of these hidden gems.

Additionally, today’s CRM systems have such profound functionalities that it’s sometimes even harder to find out the well- known features. A CRM consultant will help you to distinguish which type of features you should give a high priority.

6. Creating Past Solutions for Similar Problems

When you employ special IT staff to implement CRM applications in your organization, they will need to spend time learning about your company’s exact business profile. When you hire an experienced consultant, It can be possible that they have encountered some similar business problems to those of your company during their preceding consulting engagements. Therefore, the consultant can then recommend the best-proven approaches to resolve those business issues within a CRM solution.

7. Pre-Developed Code

For more advanced functionality and integrations, expert consultants often have pre-developed code collections that can accelerate the speed of CRM development. If an in-house developer is new to the selected development environment of the CRM system, he or she will require developing every single line of code from scratch, or spending time researching some smart and time-saver techniques or public code samples.

8. Pre-Developed Data Migration Strategies

If you need to migrate the data from a legacy contact manager to a CRM system, a CRM consulting partner will already have experience and knowledge of transferring data from the same legacy application that relates to your existing company system. While data migration can often be a complex process, even when the understanding of a legacy application comes into practice, there can still be considerable time saving and an improved outcome from leveraging an external consulting team’s former experience.

9. Third-Party Product Recommendations

It might be possible that a single CRM system does not have all the features you need in your organization, but they consist of hundreds of different apps you can use to function more resourcefully. Opting for the multi-company experience, a professional CRM consultant can recommend which third-party add-ons you can take into consideration. Some enhanced functionalities may include partner portal, email marketing, marketing automation, data, and app integration, or legacy system integration, which can save a significant quantity of internal research time.

10. Training Team to Use New CRM System

Consultants will support your company employees and propose technical training and rollout plans that will make the transition easier. They will analyze and evaluate the company’s processes and workflows to make suggestions for working out ways for streamlining processes using the CRM system.

External professional CRM consultants are the best option to provide more effective end-user training than internal resources that are relatively new to the CRM solution. The proposed user training may include the knowledge and guidance of all sets of best practices that can help the users in CRM adoption.

Choosing the Right CRM Consultant

As explained above, a CRM Consultant does more than helping you and your company in choosing the right customer relationship management solution for your business. They can support you create content systems and processes, train your staff to use the new system, and recommend the best practices for future growth. Therefore, selecting the right consultant can make a significant difference in your productivity and outcome. Before you employ a consultant, it’s essential to check out a few key points to make your decision easier.

Total Experience in CRM Consulting
Expertise with Multiple CRM Platforms
CRM Product Development Experience
Specialties and Industry Focus
Delivery capacity
CRM Implementation Approach
Expertise in Your Niche
User Experience
Customization and Training
Cost-Effectiveness

So when you approach a CRM consultant, don’t forget to consider the above-stated points, so you end up with a well-experienced and professional consultant at your corner.

Also Read: Why is CRM So Important for Business Success?

Wrapping Up

Sometimes, users do not understand that when they start transiting to new CRM, requirements will also change, and new requirements will be there. And the companies fail to recognize those needs, which can lead to failure of adoption and lose out the CRM project.

As you have read, CRM implementation is a hard job to do, and you may confront a lot of organizational and technical challenges on the way. But relationships with the customers conclude the success of any business, and that means you need CRM. In most of the cases, it’s pretty logical to consider hiring a qualified external CRM consultant who can give you superior advice on selecting the best option for your custom needs and provide technical guidance on CRM implementation.

Consultants actively participate in the complete implementation process and can help you at different levels, including business process planning, choosing an appropriate configuration, and developing system integration strategies. Your consultant can provide recommendations on how you should optimize the application and ensure its security. Besides, they will also help you choose the right methods to capture, extract, and transfer your business data and analyze it.

Zoho and Salesforce are the leading CRM service providers that are serving millions of users around the world. It all depends on the specific needs of your business to conclude which platform goes well with your business. If you are looking for a highly-advanced system with an abundance of scope to scale, Salesforce Consulting Services will guide you to get the complete guidance and the basic price quote. And if you’re starting over with some fundamentals and want to save on costs, you will don’t regret contacting a Zoho Consulting Partner.

Usually, the thing that matters the most is not “Which one is better?”; but is “Finding the one that better supports your needs and budget” If you’re getting any difficulty in deciding, we’d like to help you.

Why Do You Need To Hire A CRM Consultant? Read More »

CRM Servicescrm consultants, crm implementation consultant, crm system, salesforce consulting services, zoho consulting partner

HubSpot vs. Zoho CRM – Choose Your CRM Wisely!

Abhishek Sharma / crm consultants, crm system, hubspot crm, zoho consulting, zoho crm / CRM Services

A sophisticated Customer Relationship Management (CRM) includes all the activities, technologies, and strategies that a company uses to manage its customer interactions. CRM System assists businesses to build a better relationship with their customers and increase customer loyalty and retention, which in turn affects a company’s revenue. Hence, a CRM tool creates an easy user interface for collecting data that help businesses to identify and communicate with customers at a scale.

Why Does a Business Need CRM System?

In today’s universal economy, if you aren’t on the pinnacle of your game in aspects of customer experience, you risk losing out. When it comes to regulating customer interactions and lead conversion, spreadsheets won’t work well for long. Without appropriate software, your sales and marketing staff will have a tough time following up on leads and keeping on top of customers.

For a reputable organization, working without a CRM solution is like throwing caution to the wind. If your sales team is losing its competence, CRM is a great deal to help.

There are plentiful reasons why you should invest in CRM software:

Enhances Your Internal Communication
Reduces IT Cost
Increase Productivity
Understand Your Customers Better
Automate Daily Tasks
Eliminate Risks of Miscalculations

Also Read: Why Is CRM So Important For Business Success?

What are HubSpot and Zoho CRM?

HubSpot and Zoho CRM are Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software solutions designed to help businesses keep track of their customer relationships, manage leads, and identify opportunities for converting leads to sales.

HubSpot CRM

HubSpot CRM is the free CRM presented by HubSpot, which is a sales and marketing SaaS (Software as a Service) company. Besides being free, HubSpot claims its CRM as a simple way to augment lead conversion and keep a grasp on sales opportunities.

Another key aspect of HubSpot CRM is quick implementation without making much changes to your existing workflow. Many users of HubSpot have realized that the software also provides a good user experience (UX).

Zoho CRM

Zoho CRM is the CRM solution designed by Zoho, a leading business software company that builds software for everything from sales and marketing to human resources to finance. Zoho claims to create automated workflows with independence for customization as one of the major benefits of its CRM. This solution enables you to work smarter, not harder, so Zoho CRM also embraces an AI-powered sales assistant called Zia that responds to voice commands similar to Amazon’s Alexa or Apple’s Siri.

The Comparison – HubSpot vs. Zoho CRM

Both HubSpot CRM and Zoho CRM state themselves as substitutes for one another, but who would you consider?

Both CRM Consultants provide powerful solutions for small to medium-sized companies, and though one is free and the other is not, it doesn’t essentially mean it is better.

Well, before you decide or conclude which one is better, let’s drill down into both HubSpot and Zoho CRM, comparing them side-by-side based on some key factors will help you to make a more well-versed decision.

Side-By-Side Comparison Table

In a single scan, HubSpot appears to be a lighter alternative to Zoho, which is definitely a feature-rich CRM. But you cannot conclude based on the features alone. Or you may require some more functionalities than what HubSpot offers. There are several factors that you need to consider when choosing CRM software. Check out the table below to compare both solutions side-by-side to ensure they fulfill your requirements across multiple standards.

Standard	HubSpot CRM	Zoho CRM
Average user rating	4.5/5	4.5/5
Pricing	Free	low-end
Works best for	SMBs	Any-sized business
*** CRM FEATURES ***
Calendar/Reminder System	Yes	Yes
Document Storage	Yes	Yes
Email Marketing	Yes	Yes
Internal Chat Integration	No	Yes
Lead Scoring	Yes	Yes
Marketing Automation Integration	Yes	Yes
Mobile Access	No	Yes
Quotes/Proposals	No	Yes
Segmentation	Yes	Yes
Social Media Integration	No	Yes
Task Management	Yes	Yes
Territory Management	No	Yes
*** PROMINENT INTEGRATIONS ***
Google Drive	Yes	Yes
Social media	Yes	Yes
eCommerce	Yes	No
Microsoft Outlook	Yes	No
Zapier	Yes	Yes
Gmail	Yes	No
Google Calendar	Yes	Yes
*** PLATFORM FEATURES ***
Analytics	Yes	Yes
Cloud platform	Yes	Yes
Document management/sharing	Yes	No
Access control	Yes	No
Dashboards	Yes	Yes
Mobile application	No	Yes
API	No	No
Automatic notifications	Yes	No

1. PRICING

Undoubtedly, the major point of differentiation between HubSpot and Zoho CRM is pricing. HubSpot CRM is 100% free forever, according to its website. But if you actually want to get the most out of HubSpot CRM, you’ll probably need to spend some from your pocket. Zoho CRM also offers a free version of its software with limited features, which is only useful for teams of three users or less.

The additional sales features for HubSpot CRM are actually comprised in HubSpot’s Marketing Hub, which includes live chat, conversational bots, forms, email marketing, marketing automation, and an events API, based on the type of tier you choose. Even if you don’t need any additional features, its CRM does have many essential CRM features. Therefore, it’s not bad considering it for free.

On the other hand, Zoho is free only if you opt for the three-user plan for home businesses, but it is available at a very affordable range. As compared to other leading CRM solutions, such as Salesforce and Insightly, the cost of Zoho CRM is unbeatable. Zoho also offers Zoho CRM Plus at one per-user, per-month rate, or billed either monthly or yearly if none of its fixed pricing options suit you.

2. FEATURES

Comparing all the features of HubSpot and Zoho CRM is complicated because both solutions have a diverse range of features they offer. For example, HubSpot CRM offers task management, and Zoho CRM does not; Zoho CRM offers sales forecasting, whereas HubSpot CRM does not.

HubSpot CRM fulfills the need for all basic features, and if you want to work smartly, additional features of Zoho CRM will be a great choice. Here is a contrast between both for the two most essential features they offer:

3. Contact and Lead Management

Contact and lead management in HubSpot CRM allows you to keep up to one million contacts and company records, either manually or retrieved from email or contact forms. A contact’s information shows the history of your relationship with that contact, including a complete list of sales information. HubSpot CRM automatically produces a company record whenever you add a contact from a new company, drawing the company information from HubSpot’s exclusive business database. Its dashboard and reporting features are accessible as a paid add-on.

Zoho CRM’s contact management feature allows you to store up to 100,000 contact records in every standard edition. Similar to HubSpot CRM, Zoho CRM offers its account management facility to store information about the associated companies. You can view the contact information on a dashboard, leave notes, and view overviews of your communication history. Zoho CRM also offers social hearing, so that you can view details right from the CRM every time a contact reaches out via social media.`

In aspects of lead management, Zoho CRM presents more functionalities than HubSpot CRM. With Zoho, you can assign leads to various sales personnel based on different criteria, allowing them to create own lead scoring procedures, and convert leads to deals. You can also produce leads from web forms, from Zoho CRM’s Leads mobile app, live chat, and social media.

4. SALES TOOLS

HubSpot comes with some limited sales tools, which include the deal pipeline, standard sales reports, live chat, one personal meeting link, 200 notifications per month for email tracing, and mail scheduling. Upgrading to HubSpot Sales Hub provides features like email sequences, advanced analytics, and additional capabilities for all sales features of free CRM. HubSpot’s free CRM includes essential sales tools you require for sales teams of one or two people.

Zoho CRM offers sales tools for all of its pricing plans, including scoring rules, email insights, SalesSignals, SalesInbox, etc., while none of these features are available in Zoho CRM’s Free Edition. The Enterprise level of Zoho CRM comprises most sales tools, such as SalesInbox, which enables you to manage your sales inbox without leaving Zoho CRM. So you can organize your inbox by contact type, view email interactions in the contact management, and define notification triggers for important messages.

5. IMPLEMENTATION

Another key consideration that you must make when selecting between HubSpot and Zoho CRM is implementation time for migrating from your old CRM to a new one. The implementation time for HubSpot CRM is significantly lower than Zoho CRM. It depends on the number of records you have and the type of tier you choose.

The expected time for implementing the HubSpot CRM can take about a day to a couple of weeks. While Zoho CRM technically takes 30 days or more for complete implementation.

Wrapping Up

When comparing Zoho vs. HubSpot, it is vital to remember that both are quality contact management systems having their own strengths. While HubSpot is suitable for teams on a budget that need a permanently free CRM with a basic set of key features, on the other hand, Zoho positions itself as an affordable package of features that also contain social integration tools for Twitter and Facebook.

Every business has differentiated needs and customs; therefore, the software solutions they need will also be different. Firstly, you have to analyze and evaluate your software needs, then review the features described above and decide the best one for your organization.

Do you need help in selecting appropriate CRM software? Contact for Zoho Consulting today!

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CRM Servicescrm consultants, crm system, hubspot crm, zoho consulting, zoho crm

Build Custom Applications using Zoho Creator!

Abhinav Bhalla / custom applications, zoho consulting, zoho creator app development, Zoho Creator Certified Developer, zoho creator consultant / CRM Services

Zoho Creator is a low-code app development platform that enables you to build custom, mobile-ready apps. You can create your own applications to automate workflows, in-house processes, and manage databases. Zoho Creator App Development delivers a first of its kind drag-n-drop interface to generate tables, forms, design, schedule workflows, and run an assortment of automated tasks. It’s powerful tools for data collection, management, analysis, reporting, and collaboration make it a smart choice for organizations of varying sizes to run their business online without investing any additional costs for infrastructure or software.

“More than 65% of application development activities will be executed by Low-code application development, by 2024”, according to Gartner.

Quite a number of businesses have already started to realize the potential of Zoho Creator and successfully implementing its power to embark on their digital transformation journey.

Build Custom Apps with Advanced Features of Zoho Creator

With over 10 years of experience in low-code app development, Zoho Creator enables everyone to build apps without any prior experience in coding. So, if you want to leverage this low-code development platform for building Custom Apps, it’s important to know about the following features:

1. Visual Modeling

The visual modeling interface allows you to view how your application will look when it is built. These visual models are easier to understand than any other traditional coding language, which allows non-developers to take hold of application design quickly. This scenario helps business users to try something unique, as they always have a sense of what they are creating.

2. Drag and Drop Configuration

Zoho Creator comes with a simple drag and drop interface that helps the users and developers to create applications visually, which results in faster deployment. This feature is the most prominent one as a low-code platform and something that is actually helpful to build apps without hiring a professional developer. It lets you manage code easily through visual models.

3. Security

Zoho Creator presents all the necessary features that make your apps safer. Customers won’t find it appealing if the application isn’t reliable, regardless of how useful or aesthetically pleasant it may be. When managing critical data, you can’t take a risk to use something that can probably give access to hackers. Zoho platform has all the necessary security framework certifications and proven experience of a decade in large-scale projects. Its built-in security features make this safer and dependable solution for internal processes in industries that handle sensitive data assets.

4. Multi-Device Deployment

Creating an app with multichannel compatibility lets your employees access it any time and from anywhere in the world. Zoho Creator Certified Developer will build an app once, and it will be handy on any device. Cross-functionality is vital since not all of your users work on the same device or platform. And with low-code app development, you don’t need to code for every single platform and operating system once you have created an app.

5. Scalability

Another important feature of Zoho Creator that is worth noticing is scalability. The applications built on it allow you to add more users, with the growth of your organization. It gets difficult to manage and control the access of each person when there are a large number of employees in your company. Zoho Creator makes this easy for you by enabling you to monitor access of users based on their job roles.

In addition to this, you can control what end users can perform at both broad and minor levels. You can authorize whether the user is an administrator, an expert user, or an end-user, and consign roles and permissions based on the employees’ designation in your company.

Benefits of Implementing Zoho Creator Apps

It can be confusing for a business to identify whether they need a custom app for their business, or they can pick any random one from the ready-made lot. Zoho Creator Consultant will help you understand how this low-code app development platform is beneficial to business users who want to create an application and developers who are looking for a faster development method.

Here are a few benefits of using Zoho Creator apps in your organization:

Faster Development
Improved Productivity
Risk Management
Flexibility
Enhanced Customer Experience
Mobility
Task Automation
Apps Integration
Smooth Data Flow

Manage Your Business Easily With Zoho Creator

In this hastily evolving business world, whether your business will rise or turn down depends on how capably you recognize and respond to digital modernization prospects than your competitors.

Low-code platforms are transforming the way applications are developed, and Zoho Creator has elevated as a key software delivery platform in recent years. It is actually expensive to hire professional resources to develop business apps constantly in conventional coding languages.

Zoho Creator helps you build custom apps to run your entire business; from daily tasks to compound process automation, you can do everything with this multi-platform app builder. You can create a customized one to match your business profile, or you can get started with a ready-made one. If you pick a ready-made one, you can easily install and customize a specific app from the App Deck of 50+ ready-to-use business apps. From managing administration to sales and marketing to distribution, you’ll find pre-built solutions that cater to every part of your business.

Conclusion

If you are trying to build an app for your organizational processes, you can start by choosing the right platform having the exact features that you need to create a customized application for your organization. As a low-code app development platform, Zoho Creator empowers every user with the least technical expertise to create, edit, and run their automated processes. It was also marked as a Challenger in Gartner Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Low-Code Application Platforms (LCAP) in 2019. And its insightful interface and ready-to-deploy code models make it easy for anyone to supervise the processes that matter most.

Zoho Creator helps the organization to embrace the digital world and enhance the approach of how they handle their business. Clear your thoughts about the platform by contacting a Zoho Consulting expert today!

Build Custom Applications using Zoho Creator! Read More »

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SERVICES

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Salesforce

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CRM Services

What is CRM?

Related Read: Why CRM Systems Fail?

What is Salesforce Marketing Cloud?

Related Read: Build Custom Applications using Zoho Creator!

What is Zoho One?

Innovation That Goes Beyond Software Capabilities:

Breakthrough Technology At An Amazing Price:

CONCLUSION:

CRM – A brief

What is CRM?

How CRM projects become a disaster?

Conclusion

Related Read – Why do you need to Hire a CRM Consultant?

What if we told you that Einstein, Leonardo, Sensei, and Watson were alive?

What is Salesforce Einstein AI Suite?

What’s included in Salesforce Einstein AI Suite?

Salesforce Einstein App Categories

What are the benefits of Salesforce Einstein?

Application of Salesforce Einstein AI in B2B Marketplace

What is Salesforce Einstein Analytics?

Why is Salesforce Einstein Analytics important to your business?

Einstein Cloud Apps:

Robotic Process Automation and Salesforce: Automate Non-API Systems

Salesforce Einstein: A Must-Need in Covid-19?

Why CRM?

Reasons to Hire a CRM Certified Consultant

1. Selecting the Suitable CRM Platform

2. Time and Cost Resource

3. Customizing and Optimizing after Installation

4. Exposure to Best Practices

5. Information about Subtleties

6. Creating Past Solutions for Similar Problems

7. Pre-Developed Code

8. Pre-Developed Data Migration Strategies

9. Third-Party Product Recommendations

10. Training Team to Use New CRM System

Choosing the Right CRM Consultant

Wrapping Up

Why Does a Business Need CRM System?

What are HubSpot and Zoho CRM?

The Comparison – HubSpot vs. Zoho CRM

Side-By-Side Comparison Table

1. PRICING

2. FEATURES

3. Contact and Lead Management

4. SALES TOOLS

5. IMPLEMENTATION

Wrapping Up

Build Custom Apps with Advanced Features of Zoho Creator

1. Visual Modeling

2. Drag and Drop Configuration

3. Security

4. Multi-Device Deployment

5. Scalability

Benefits of Implementing Zoho Creator Apps

Manage Your Business Easily With Zoho Creator

Conclusion