Advanced Analytics for Zoho CRM

On 6th June 2012 Zoho announced some long awaited integration between ZohoCRM and Zoho Reports. Advanced Analytics for Zoho CRM brings the power of Zoho reports to your CRM data and provides a wealth of reports and dashboards 'out of the box'. Check the video for an overview.

Data is synced every 24hrs (admins can trigger a sync manually) and ensures that key modules are available for reporting. At launch this includes Leads, Contacts, Accounts, Potentials & Users. No word yet on other modules such as invoices, products, vendors or cases etc The addition of these modules would provide a really complete picture.

The synchronisation is a snip to set up and was completed very quickly. Your mileage may vary if you have tens of thousands of records.

Zoho have done a lot of the hard work for us in creating some pre-built reports and analysis from the CRM data. These reports align nicely under various headings:

In total Zoho have supplied 70+ reports on your CRM data, all of which can be tailored to your needs. Here are a few examples to try:

- Top 5 lead campaigns by revenue
- Leads to potentials drop out analysis
- Average sales cycle in days (by Quarter)
- Existing v's new business
- Quarter over quarter revenue across years
- Monthly sales report
- Pipeline by count/stage
- Salesperson performance last quarter
- Sales pipeline history (Dashboard)

All example reports and charts are interactive and allow examination of underlying data by clicking through on chart and data areas. ;-)



Now for the clever part. As all these data tables, reports and dashboards are just a Zoho Reports instance you could also upload other valuable business data using any of the import methods. (CSV / FEED / Reports Upload Tool / Zoho Creator Sync) Perhaps you store warranty information for equipment you have sold or licences for software you've developed? Simply import it into a new table in the same database. This data can now be 'related' to your CRM data very easily by linking the Customer fields in the new warranty/licence tables to the accounts name field in the CRM Accounts table.

Viola! You can now create reports based on business data that is logically external and separate from your core CRM data to show for instance..

1. Warranty expirations/renewals per account per month or quarter
2. Software licence versions/upgrades per customer
3. Maintenance visits and associated costs by customer, region or any time period

I hope this has been informative, if you have any questions please comment or contact me directly via the website

Congratulations!

I tip my hat to you...

If you or your business are already a Zoho CRM customer you have already made a great decision. Zoho CRM offers great features at even better value. I know; I would struggle to manage my business without it.

The longer you use Zoho CRM, the more you come to appreciate its usefulness and the nice touches that make it so powerful.

But wait, there's more...

CRM however, is just 1 out of 28 different business applications by Zoho. The list is long and pretty distinguished including Human Resources Management, Project Management, Office Productivity and very recently they even added a website creation tool kit.

Combine tools for more...well, everything!

Amongst the other 28 are a few that integrate nicely with Zoho CRM and really add value. Imagine being able to use CRM data as a part of daily operations tasks. 

For instance, your company, Widgets-R-Us produces and sells expensive widgets. The widgets, are all sold with a 12 month warranty and the option to extend this to 5 years of warranty cover.

How would you like to track and comprehensively report on the warranty claims brought by customers? To be able to track failing widgets and report on who bought them, how far into the warranty the average failure occurs, identify clusters of failures by batch numbers or other metric. - All of this, linked, in context to the client and account information as shown in CRM.

This falls outside of the capabilities of Zoho CRM in its vanilla, un-customised form and would stretch the capabilities of the platform to achieve it solely within Zoho CRM.

Meet my little friends, Zoho Creator and Zoho Reports...

Zoho Creator: A bit like Microsoft Access, coupled with VBScript, but all on      the web, with built in security and sharing. Create forms, collect data and save/display in simple easy ways accessible anywhere - even on your phone

Zoho Reports: A powerful reporting tool that takes data in many formats and from many sources and provides query, report and charting options. Create beautiful and powerful reports with drill down options that can be embedded, published and shared to your hears content.


These two in conjunction with Zoho CRM combine to create powerful business data and process workflow tool kit that can help your business in ways that Zoho CRM alone cannot.


The last piece of good news is that the Zoho Creator App and the Reorts generated by Zoho Reports can all be 'published' to new tabs within your CRM system for ease of access/ These new tabs can be secured, shared and managed just like any other.

ZohoCRM Road-Map - What's coming?

Zoho rarely divulge much detail around the upcoming features in their products. This can cause issues as existing customers are always hungry for more features, and have their own views about the relative importance of these.


Potential customers often wait in the wings, getting by until a certain feature set is announced, unable to make the transition to the cloud until this particular box is ticked. Transparency would be wonderful, but I can also see Zoho's problem with publishing a roadmap in detail.

So whats currently in store for CRM users in the coming weeks and months? Well Zoho updated the roadmap (here) in early January, and we're still awaiting for these updates.
Upcoming release:

• Enhancements in Pulse
• Multi-currency support
• Custom links as a related list view
• Workflow Summary view
• Zoho CRM Plug-in for Microsoft Outlook - Support for the Potential module | Support for Microsoft Outlook 2010, Support for 32/64-bit processors

The next release however is looking very interesting...
In development:

• Integration with Zoho Docs
• Integration with Zoho Reports
• Integration with Zoho Creator

I wonder, will Zoho Docs integration allow updates to a shared doc within CRM with synchronisation of edits to a master doc? 


Will Zoho Reports integration support writing queries against all the regular modules/files? Maybe it will support the same brilliant drag and drop report/dashboard builder as the full product? 

Will Zoho Creator integration allow programmatic control over CRM module pages. Hiding and showing fields based on user action or will this be implemented as an in-situ Creator App editor that allows admin users to create apps with CRM that use CRM data in great new ways? For example a product warranty tracker linked to a purchase date or Opportunity close date?


I have my views on this, but know nothing for sure. We'll have to wait and see what gets revealed in the coming weeks/months. I do forecast though that these upcoming developments are the ones that will either lift Zoho CRM to another level or leave it languishing as a merely excellent tool. ;-)

Life after Facebook

As a Google Apps user I was keen to try out Google Plus (G+ from here on) and felt frustrated that I as a paying customer had been left behind.


So a little over a week ago when Vic Gundotra threw the switch that opened the doors to another 40 million G+ users I was on it like a tramp on chips and am pleased to say it has been a great pleasure to use it. Every day.


Of course there is still that 'new social media' smell, and the number of photos I've uploaded barely number and dozen; but i really think this is where its at, at least for me.

Constant Improvements

One major benefit of 'cloud Computing' is the constant improvements. Traditional software improves only when you buy a new version, cloud computing though is radically different. its centralised nature allows for easy updating, keeping all users on the same version - e.g. the latest and greatest. 

This is very obvious with Google Chromebooks for instance. Regular incremental updates mean improved performance, usability and features and this really becomes noticable over a period of time.


The same can be said of Zoho's suite of online products and services. They are always getting tweaked, altered and improved.  A great benefit of this approach is that user feature requests that really add value can be implemented sooner rather than at the next release cycle.


Here are some recent Zoho improvements:


Zoho CRM:
Google Calendar/Contacts Sync for Zoho CRM Individual users
Zoho CRM for Google makes it easier for your business to collaborate, communicate and share information, all in one centralized place. If you are using Zoho  CRM with your Google email address, your Calendar and Contacts are all conveniently available in the same place.


Zoho Creator:
Build Order Forms, Increase Sales: Zoho Creator Payment Module
With the help of this module, users can set up a payment gateway using their PayPal account. Once this gateway is set up, users can build a variety of applications that involve collecting payments, donations, etc.

Zoho Creator - Zoho CRM Integration

Zoho Reports:

Conditional Formatting

Newly added Conditional formatting feature allows you to highlight cells of a column with different background color and font color to make them easily identifiable and unique. In conditional formatting, you have to specify the required conditions/criteria for formatting. When data in a cell meets the condition, Zoho Reports applies the corresponding formatting style that you have specified.


When did your software last improve?


Undoubtedly your business or enterprise uses mainstream or bespoke software. If you haven't yet evaluated the possibilities of replacing this software with an on-line version then may I suggest you give it some thought?


Many find they save money and acheive better performance with modern software built for today's connected world, especially when collaboration and sharing are important.


Don't feel too protective of these systems and software packages. They are NOT your business. Your products, services and customer experiences are the most important thing.

Zoho Creator as Middleware

So..., Credible Systems have been using the Zoho suite of tools now for about 2 and a half years. In that time we've seen a huge amount of improvement. Each app has grown in ability, with new features and usability improvements coming at regular intervals. Functionality is richer, deeper. Additionally the good people at Zoho have been digging tunnels sideways to connect many more applications, both with each other and with the ever present Google Apps.

This inter-connectedness, this integration has been beneficial for our customers and ourselves. Several of our internal applications now use data that is consumed by up to 3 Zoho services.


Why is this important?  Consider...

• The most common data held by a business relates to its customers (e.g. CRM)
• CRM data is (should be) clean, validated and regularly updated.
• Organisations perform various tasks and actions outside of CRM every day.
• Many of these are suitable for moving to Zoho Creator (simple yet unique)
• Each of these activities could benefit hugely from being related to CRM data.

Add value to existing business activities

Zoho Integration - Case Study

Integration means new possibilities

Skip straight to the case study here:


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.