Productivity Hacks

ZOHO Online Contact Management Software for SMB

Your business’s success depends on your customer base and your ability to communicate with them. Nothing is more important to your sales and services than being able to reach your clients. Which is why contact management is a key element to any small business’s growth.

What are contacts? Contacts are your business’s clients, its lifeblood. Whether its other businesses or vendors in a B2B capacity or straight to the consumer market with B2C, each distinct communication builds a relationship that if managed properly will your business opportunities for years.

What is contact management? In the digital age, a Rolodex simply isn’t practical. Neither is a piece of software for each aspect of dealing with clients. Zoho CRM’s Contact Management software streamlines the most important elements of client communication including basic contact information, calls, emails, meetings and even website interactions, making it all easy to access. Whether growing your contact list, creating procurement channels with vendors or maintaining ongoing sales Zoho CRM Contact Management software offers a “one stop” solution.

Contact Manager – Follow up Contact: Building relationships with clients means building trust and accountability. Knowing the details of previous communications with a client, be it by phone, email, meeting or website, makes that accountability possible for your business, allowing for follow up contacts and regular up-dating of valuable client resources.

What do I gain from Zoho CRM’s Contact Manager Software? To use client contact information to its fullest, you have to be able to access it in an easy and understandable manner that integrates client data with a management system that allows your sales force to focus on the customer’s experience. Zoho CRM’s Contact Manager Software provides you the perfect solution.

Your Benefits with Zoho CRM’s Contact Manager Software

• A common database allows a single source for client data including past client contact records, open and closed cases, and sales activity.
• The ability to establish and maintain a hierarchy of contacts allows you to prioritize future client contacts.
• Import Wizard, Web Forms or Zoho CRM API all offer opportunities to add third party business application data to your growing client contact list.
• Create assignment rules for client data that assigns contacts to specific sales individuals to insure a consistent experience for the client.
• Customizing the tools your business needs is as easy as using a drag and drop customization wizard.
• POP enabled email such as Gmail, Hotmail and Yahoo! are a snap to integrate with the Zoho Mail Add-on for CRM.
• Outlook users can easily synchronize contacts, task and calendars with Zoho CRM using the Zoho CRM Plug-in for Microsoft Outlook.
• Zoho CRM Plug-in for Microsoft Office makes mail merge and mailing labels a snap with up-to-date contact information.
• Free Edition is available for 3 users with 100,000 records storage.

Contact Manager Software Features for Small Businesses

• Web to Contact Forms
• Marketing Campaigns
• Email Marketing
• Auto-responders
• Reports & Dashboards
• Sales Opportunities
• Email Integration
• Google Apps Integration
• Microsoft Outlook Synchronization
• Mail Merge Documents with Microsoft Office

**Features List with Additional Information Available at Zoho**

Another service for contact management in addition to ZOHO is Scrubly.

ZOHO’s Reports & Dashboards

Zoho CRM features sales, marketing, support and inventory modules that grant users easy access to report generation. Each module offers fully customizable reports and more than 25 standard reports come pre-loaded in various modules. These ready-made reports provide the user with an easy reference point for creating documents from scratch and easily modify the layout for maximum flexibility. Moreover, the flexible interface allows for easy cross-linking of modules, generate arithmetic operations, group in 3-level columns, create public and private folders, schedule reports generation and even deliver results to other users or any other recipient through email. Ultimately, businesses discover that generating and managing reports tailored to the specific needs of the organization comes with flexibility and scalability through the use of Zoho CRM.

Users also gain access to a real-time snapshot of the organization’s key metrics with the CRM Dashboard. The dashboard interface offers a graphical representation of all sales, marketing, support and inventory-related data. Through the use of graphs, analyzing trends and patterns takes just seconds, enabling users to make key decisions without wading through pages of data. CRM Dashboard generates charts in two-dimensional (2D) or three-dimensional (3D) formats, created dynamically and served to the user with Adobe Flash technology. Additionally, users have access to a unique Funnel chart used to intuitively analyze the sales pipeline at all stages. With CRM Dashboard, an instantaneous visual analysis of relevant business data allows any organization to easily and quickly develop key strategies for CRM improvements.

CRM Sales Reports and the CRM Dashboard work together in real-time to bring each organization both a quick overview and detailed analysis of all aspects of customer relationships. The flexibility offered means the software suitable for all applications and all organizations. Certainly, premium features such as the ability to easily view and send out information through today’s technologies, like email, makes Soho CRM an invaluable tool for any business. Try it at no cost or request a personalized demo today.

Key Features (per Zoho Online CRM Analytics)

CRM Reports

• 40+ standard CRM reports in sales, marketing, customer support, and inventory management modules
• Create cross-link reports spanning multiple modules
• Create tabular, summary, and matrix type reports
• Perform arithmetical operations using aggregate functions (sum, average, min and max)
• Store reports in various types of public/private folders and enable access to users according to privileges
• Schedule the report generation mechanism and send printer-friendly reports to specified users including non-Zoho CRM users
• Export sales report data to user-friendly formats such as PDF, HTML, XLS and CSV

Standard CRM & Sales Reports

• Sales Force Automation
• Sales by Lead Source
• Potentials Closing by Current Month
• Pipeline by Stage & Probability
• Current Month Sales Report
• Accounts by Industry
• Marketing Automation
• Leads by Source Report
• Campaigns Revenue Report
• Campaign Leads
• Potentials by Campaign
• Customer Support
• Products by Cases
• Cases by Origin
• Cases by Priority
• Popular Solutions
• Inventory Management
• Purchase Orders by Status
• Quotes by Stage
• Invoices by Accounts
• Sales Orders by Status
• Products by Support Termination Date

CRM Dashboards

• Flash-based, interactive CRM dashboards with an aesthetically pleasing layout and quick loading capability
• Fully customizable Sales dashboards with various types of Bar, Funnel, Pie, and Line charts
• Drill down Sales charts for further data analysis
• Display charts in a customized home page

Standard CRM & Sales Dashboards

• Sales Force Automation
• Sales by Lead Source Chart
• Potentials by Type
• Sales Pipeline by Stage Chart
• Sales by Accounts
• Marketing Automation
• Campaign Leads
• Campaign vs. Revenue Chart
• Leads by Source & Status
• Leads by Industry Chart
• Customer Support
• Cases by Origin Chart, Priority, or Status
• Inventory Management
• Purchase Orders by Status
• Quotes by Accounts
• Invoices by Status
• Sales Orders by Status

ZOHO’s modular reporting system is great to improve productivity! Check out ZOHO’s Contact Management offerings next!

ZOHO’s Inventory Management

The Zoho CRM goes beyond what you would get with more traditional CRM. The difference here is the amount of tools and options available to the user. It seems that the Zoho CRM is all about ease and flexibility for the consumer. As a starting business owner, I feel that the last thing you would want to deal with is with an impossible-to-use-CRM.

PRODUCT-PAGE

The Zoho CRM is capable of handling both Pre-sale and Post-sale activities into one single application unlike the products of other vendors. This seamless integration is also present in many other options. The Zoho CRM gives you the option to manage your products with complete control. The product page layout is customized in any desired fashion to fit the needs of your business. These options include the following:

• Product-specific documents are integrated into the page layout.
• The ability to export your product information to more widely used programs such as Microsoft Excel and Open Office.
• Product links to Price Book, which, as the name implies, gives you the price information on all your products specific to each vendor.

SALES QUOTE SYSTEM

Additionally, the Zoho CRM has a fairly advanced Sales Quote system. The system will allow you to track sales quotes and select different prices based on the vendor. Printer friendliness is always an issue with CRM systems, but the Zoho allows for very streamlined and easy printing experience. From the Sales Quote page you can:

• Create an Invoice or Sales Order very easily.
• Automatically display the Terms of Condition and the Shipping and Handling information to avoid duplication.
• Customize the page layout which allows a company to give itself a unique appearance, is fully supported.

ORDER MANAGEMENT

Again, integration and feasibility is key. The Order Management page allows you to track your orders with great ease so you know what is shipped and what needs to be shipped. This page also allows you to:

• Manage up-to-date stock in an integrated fashion.
• Customize your page according to your company’s image and purpose.
• Use similar options that are also available on the Sales Quote page such as the single-click Invoice option.
• Keep the stock available to share-holders, for a more organized and streamlined process.
• To print with ease.

INVOICE MANAGEMENT

The purpose of the Zoho CRM is to give a workable, comprehensible, and enjoyable experience to small business consumers who are looking to get organized and integrate themselves fully in the business world. Finally, there is the Invoice Management page which allows you to make and distribute invoices with great ease. This page allows you to:

• Track your invoices in a very straightforward and clear way. No need to search among thousands of files to find one invoice.
• Customize your invoices in any fashion, from the way it’s printed to the watermark you use.
• Include Billing and Shipment information and the Terms of Condition

In conclusion, the Zoho CRM seems like a very good option for people looking to start a business or to small business owners wishing to organize themselves. Each page of the Zoho CRM has features designed to create an easy experience for the consumer and promote the well-being of the business.

In addition to Inventory Management, ZOHO also provides a variety of reports and configurable dashboards.

Zoho CRM Software For Your Small Business

As a business owner and operator, you probably know how critical it is to have proper communication and interaction with your customers. Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is of the utmost importance when it comes to running a successful business operation. This not only involves the personal side of dealing with your customers, but also the technical side, which is sometimes the most difficult to keep organized and up to date.

In addition to many other features, the Zoho Office Suite, a web-based office management package, has a feature that deals with CRM. This section of Zoho’s office suite now allows you to integrate e-mail conversations with your customers right into your CRM software, instead of having to run the two independent of each other. You are able to integrate your Zoho CRM software with any of your e-mail accounts, whether it is Yahoo, Gmail, Hotmail, or any other POP-based e-mail service.

One of the coolest features in the Zoho CRM software is a plug-in that works directly with Microsoft Outlook, making it possible to synchronize all of your customer contacts, calendars, and e-mails with the CRM program. Not only that, but you are able to share customer e-mails with your colleagues, and see a thread view of your e-mail conversations, all without leaving Zoho. Rather than having to use the CC feature in e-mail, you will be able to track your conversations with your customers within your CRM software. If there are only particular e-mails that you would like to share, you may do so, or keep certain messages private.

The following are many of the benefits that you will experience when using Zoho CRM with the Microsoft Outlook plug-in:

1. Sales Force Automation

• *Leads
• *Accounts
• *Contacts
• *Opportunities
• *Sales pipeline
• *Tasks
• *Calendar
• *Reminders

2. Marketing Automation

• Campaigns
• E-mail marketing
• E-mail opt-out
• Auto-responders

3. Customer Support and Service

• Cases
• Solutions
• Business hours
• Case escalation rules

4. Product Customization

• Drag and drop page layouts
• Standard industry fields
• Custom fields
• Search layouts

5. Reports and Dashboards

• Pre-defined reports
• Dashboards
• Schedule
• Reports
• Customization of reports and dashboards

6. Web Forms

• Capture leads
• Contacts
• Cases
• Spam control
• Multiple forms
• Personalized-mail notifications

You can check out Zoho’s Office Suite for yourself, and see how it will improve the quality, efficiency, and productivity of your business, by checking out their website at: http://www.zoho.com/.

In addition to email integration, ZOHO also allows for Inventory Management for your small business.