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Many small businesses still use a spreadsheet, a generic database, or a general-purpose application such as Microsoft Outlook to keep track of contacts and prospective customers. But over a period of time, this becomes too difficult to handle. It becomes a repository of information and nothing more. The power lies in being able to mine this data and make it into something useful.
Here is where a CRM tool adds value. Zoho CRM is one such tool. Zoho CRM helps you keep track of your contacts, any follow up contacts with them, the activities associated with them like follow up calls, meetings, statuses of the same, related documents and collaterals, invoices, purchase orders, etc. One can remotely login and work too!
For those who have data in spreadsheets, they too can import their data into Zoho CRM.
When you log in to Zoho CRM, the Home Page displays the list of recent activity assigned to you so you know exactly what your Action Items for the day are.
It also lists the summary view of the system. You can even define what particular view of the system you would like to see in the Home Page when you login. These are called as Widgets in the Zoho CRM terminology.
Zoho CRM also provides an Outlook Plugin. So those who use Outlook Mail client, simply need to download the Plugin and signup to the server.
Using the Outlook Plugin, while residing in your Outlook Mail Client, one can do the following:
- bidirectional contact sync - You can add your Outlook contacts to Zoho CRM and vice-versa
- task sync - You can add your Outlook tasks to Zoho CRM and vice-versa
- activities sync - You can add your Outlook activities/meetings to Zoho CRM and vice-versa
Also, you can add emails related to a contact in Zoho CRM from the Outlook Mail Client to Zoho CRM.
The idea is to ensure that all data is centrally located and is easily accessible remotely. This greatly increases efficiency of an organization as data is centrally shared.
Zoho CRM also has a quick create option for Leads, Contacts, Accounts, etc. This reduces the time the Sales guy spends using the system. The idea is to make it easy to use for the Sales guy so that he enters/obtains the relevant info that he wants and gets to the field asap.
For the Upper Management, since the data is centrally organized, it helps in getting a 360 degree view of the business in any instant in time. Here is where the Dashboard feature comes to the fore. This is a great value add and performance multiplier. A one-shot view of the entire business at the press of a button!
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