Zoho Integration - Case Study

Integration means new possibilities

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Zoho CRM customers keep all their account and contact information in one place. This makes adding new Potentials, Quotes, Invoices etc a breeze. As it should. This is best practice for many organisations.

So what happens when you need to do something unrelated to CRM tasks but want to tap into that CRM data silo because its verified, current and related to your everyday business activities?

e.g. You may have specific account management tasks that are performed based on variable criteria such as Quality control checks at periods that vary on a customer by customer basis.

Some Great Chrome Web Apps

I'm new to Chromebooks, as are most of us, but I am not new to Chrome and as such I am very familiar with the Chrome Web Store. More and more it is becoming my go to place for extending the functionality of the browser in my personal war on local storage.

Not that the Chromebook doesn't have some local storage, it does. (The fast SSD hard drive is 16Gb and it also supports SD cards and USB drives.) But my aim is to wean myself off it as much as possible. Less local data means more mobility and lower hardware requirements.

So here are a couple of my favourite Web Apps with more to come as I discover them

1. Kindle cloudreader

Read all your Kindle books in the browser thanks to good ole HTML5. Kindle is available on a variety of platforms and devices including IOS. Recently Apple decided in their way (read stupid) that they would demand 30% of all 'In-App' purchases that users make on the platform. This would have had the effect of increasing costs for customers or lowering profits publishers and authors... Sort of like a Troll under a bridge asking for payment...anyhoo...

Local Storage - Weaning myself off it.

World Wide Everthing

Most of my work is web based. The balance has shifted in the last 18 months from desktop work being the majority and I would bet all the money in my pocket right now that yours has shifted towards the web as well. Unless that is you are a heavy AutoCad user, in which case I have just lost £1.26. (I never said it was a lot of money)

This week the web as we know it turned 20 years old. And it certainly seems to have grown up. So what better time to evaluate the notion of a web centric life. My email, office and all my line of business apps are now all web based. Google Apps working in tandem with Zoho CRM, Zoho Reports and several bespoke Credible Systems applications written on Zoho Creator platform are pretty much all I need.

Samsung 3G Chromebook

The last step is to try doing all this on a device that embraces the web completely. Yep, a Chromebook, a device that doesn't just embrace the web, but gets down and dirty with it from the get go.

My friend Alex at Nerds-Central has been trying one on for size and has been pretty impressed. My old clunker of a laptop has failed me several times in the last week so I ordered one yesterday and it arrived today. This post is being written on it as I type.

First impressions are...lovely keyboard, good screen, and so easy my mum could use it. Scratch that, my dog could use this.

Highlights:

• Incredible boot time - typically 6-8 seconds
• Super simple set up, all my faves/passwords/apps were waiting for me.
• Instant on from standby
• Web focused keyboard with special keyboard functions

Lowlights:

• Still trying to overcome the urge to minimize and see my desktop
• No SIM in the box!

I went for a 3G enabled Samsung Chromebook in manly grey rather than a girlish white. Whilst I don't have a SIM for it (There should be a free SIM from Three with 3Gb of data allowance) I will tether this from my Nexus 1 Android phone until I really need anything else.

Three are doing a SIM only deal with data only (no voice) for £5.11/month providing 2Gb/month. Plenty I should think as this will mostly get used on my office wi-fi.

More to come....much more.