Zoho’s ‘CRM for Everyone’ – What’s Expected?

by | Sales Automation

In this blog, A2Z Cloud dives into Zoho’s latest announcement, CRM for Everyone, exploring the key features, benefits, and potential challenges. We’ll provide insights on how this new system can improve your organisation’s efficiency, collaboration, and customer satisfaction.

The lifeblood of any successful business is happy customers. Yet, for too long, the tools designed to understand and serve these customers have been locked away in the hands of the sales team. It’s time to ask: what about marketing, legal, or the solutions experts working behind the scenes? Shouldn’t they have a seat at the table too?

Imagine This:

Marketing: Say goodbye to generic campaigns. With CRM for Everyone, marketing teams can see what truly resonates with customers and tailor their messaging accordingly.

Solutions Experts: Fully prepared for implementation questions, armed with up-to-date customer data.

Legal: No more contract delays. Legal teams now have instant access to the latest deal information.

Well, Zoho’s new promise of an intuitive redesign of their CRM brings this old challenge into focus and offers a comprehensive solution.

What this means for your business

This isn’t just about giving everyone a login. It’s about transforming how teams manage their parts of the customer journey. Within a single, shared system, each team can handle their responsibilities more efficiently. This collaboration is the key to faster deal closures, fewer miscommunications, and, most importantly, making customers feel valued and understood. CRM for Everyone means better customer experiences, increased efficiency across the entire company, and ultimately, a healthier bottom line. Isn’t that something everyone can get behind?

Major aspects of the update

NextGen UI: Zoho introduces a major usability change with the NextGen UI, featuring a functional left sidebar replacing the top navigation bar. This reorganisation will need some time to adapt, but it promises a more streamlined and efficient user experience.

Team Modules: Expanding CRM from pure sales to include other customer-facing teams, such as onboarding and legal. These teams can now create their own modules within the CRM, fostering a truly collaborative environment.

Addressing controversies

Zoho’s “CRM for Everyone” brings a bold shift in how customer relationship management is approached, aiming to democratise access and empower every team. However, with this democratisation comes the risk of decentralisation chaos. Some organisations fear that giving various teams more control could lead to inconsistent data handling and process fragmentation.

Zoho addresses these concerns by introducing robust permission layers and clear, structured processes. The empowerment and decentralisation of CRM functionalities require trust-building and careful management to avoid anarchy. At A2Z Cloud, we see this as a pivotal moment for companies to improve their CRM strategies while maintaining necessary oversight and control.

Experts opinion 

“For me, the NextGen UI is particularly powerful. In an existing CRM system, navigating a module like the leads module involves your eyes moving from the top navigation bar down to the content. When you click on a record, this central navigation remains at the top, and users often intuitively scroll down for more detail. However, they frequently bypass the related list section on the left, breaking the left-to-right reading convention.

With the new UI, navigation starts centrally on the left of the screen, encouraging a natural left-to-right flow. When clicking on a record, this left-to-right mentality is maintained, preventing users from overlooking related lists. This improves user intuition, speeds up data access, and enhances usability. It’s a subtle UX trick, but it differentiates a good UI from a great UI.”

Dash Bunyan, Head of Innovation

Dash Bunyan

Most notable

The standout feature of Zoho’s new approach is the integration of various teams into a unified CRM system. Marketing, solutions experts, and legal teams can now work with the same customer data as the sales team, leading to more personalised marketing campaigns, better-prepared solutions experts, and faster contract processing. This holistic view of customer interactions can significantly improve the overall customer experience and streamline operations across the board.

Strategic implications

Zoho’s strategy with “CRM for Everyone” is to cater to larger organisations and integrate CRM functionalities across all customer operations. By bringing all customer-facing teams into the CRM, Zoho aims to improve overall customer experiences and operational efficiency. This move can help businesses break down silos, foster better inter-departmental collaboration, and ultimately drive growth and customer satisfaction. A strategic leap that aligns with the evolving needs of modern businesses.

Wrapping up

“CRM for Everyone” is based on the philosophy that every team contributing to customer success should have the same powerful insights and capabilities as the sales team. By promoting cross-team collaboration and ensuring robust control mechanisms, Zoho is setting a new standard in the CRM market.

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