Salesforce has been the leader in this space for a very long time, and with their new Sales+Service Lightning plan with integrated apps all using one database, they are near perfect. However due to the complexity of setup and high starting cost, I haven't made the plunge.

When I found out about Zoho One and read the marketing material online I got super excited because it was, and still is, being promoted as an all-in-one, affordable, low cost business suite that can integrate with major third party apps. Hallelujah right?! But having been disappointed many times in the past, my skepticism helped me dig further.

Upon researching more I found out (about five months ago now) that it isn't actually one database. Zoho CRM has it's own database and Zoho Desk also has it's own database and Zoho Books has it's own database, and so on for most of the apps, all with separate contact, company, etc. fields.

Now yes, some of the larger apps in the suite can "integrate", or, have one-way or two-way feeds to (hopefully) keep records in sync. Not quite the same as one database, but perhaps effectively the same thing? It sounded promising so I decided to do some testing.

When I tried setting up two apps with a two way sync, I found that while it can be done, some of the basic fields that sync together are not correct. For example, it would try and connect the Contact Name field in one app with the business Name field in the other app. Which, sadly, rendered the sync worse than manual updates, thus useless.

So my question is: Is there ever an intention to make Zoho One a true one database business suite, where all standard fields that all apps use, such as name, email, business, phone etc., are sourced from one database?