Introducing Zia Strategy Influencer for Zoho CRM

Introducing Zia Strategy Influencer for Zoho CRM

(Last Modified on 22/08/2023): The Strategy Influencer feature is now available to all customers.

Hello everyone,

We are glad to launch Zia Strategy Influencer, an AI-derived strategy prediction analytics in Zoho CRM, for administrators, which provides prescriptive and descriptive insights on your organization's business trends and patterns. Using Zia's AI capabilities, it helps you understand the different factors affecting your business positively and negatively to take necessary corrective actions. It provides these insights in the form of 5 exclusive components to plan strategies, find anomalies affecting the target, and identify top contributing fields towards your goals.
 

Why Zia Strategy Influencer? 

Designing and implementing effective goals are key for your business to flourish. To set your goals, it is important to have a clear understanding of your organization and the respective metrics that impact its goals. Zia Strategy Influencer leverages the power of AI and provides a holistic picture of where your business stands with respect to your goals, as well as what you can do to achieve and exceed them.
 
The below gif provides you with a basic idea of how Zia Strategy Influencer can help you :


 Let us now explore the feature in a detailed manner.

Zia Strategy Influencer

Let us consider that you want to set a target for the total revenue from your deals in your organization. You would need relevant insights about your organization to set and achieve the most suitable target. You can create a Zia Strategy Influencer analytics as shown on the screen below :  
 


  • Strategy Influencer Name -  Define the name of the Zia Strategy Influencer
  • Select metric -  Select the module for which the Zia Strategy Influencer is to be created. Then select the criteria for which the prediction is to be done, in this case, the ''Sum of Amount''.
  • Associated date field -  Define the date field based on which the prediction is to be done for the intended time period, for example, this week. In this case, it is "Closing date'', and hence all the records having closing dates this week will be taken into consideration as part of the contributing factors.
  • Objective -  Select whether the increase in value should be considered as a positive or negative trend. For example, in this case, where the measure we have chosen is "Sum of Amount", you can select the increase in value to be positive, since an increase in value in this case would mean more revenue. Else, if we had another case, where the measure would have been "Sum of Lead Conversion Time", then an increase in value would mean the lead conversion consumed more time. In such a case, you can select the increase in value to be negative. 
Once you create it, Zia will scan through your existing records in the Deals module and provide you with insights by predicting an overall target and the various contributing factors that impact it. Let us now dive into how your Zia Strategy Influencer insights are displayed.
 

Components of Zia Strategy Influencer

The insights in the Zia Strategy Influencer are provided across 3 major components namely :
  • Target Contributors
  • Anomaly Finder
  • Gap Analyzer
  • Predictor
  • Prescriptor

Target Contributors 

The target contributors component breaks down and lists the individual contributing factors that impact the overall target to be achieved. It provides you with details of the expected target that each individual contributing factor needs to achieve, in combination with the rest of the contributing factors, for you to hit your overall target.
 
It also displays how much has actually been achieved against the expected target value for each contributing factor. This helps you analyze your performance and incorporate necessary actions required to achieve your target.



Apart from these, it also displays trend icons that represent the impact of those contributing factors on your overall target, either positive or negative. And in case you feel the predicted target or any of the contributing factors do not align with your actual business scenarios, you can manually adjust them in the target contributors component based on your requirements. Strategy influencer accordingly adjusts the main or contributing targets based on where you adjusted the value. 
 








You can edit your overall target, any of the individual contributing factors, the expected values for each factor, and also select which contributing factors should be part of your target contributors component.
 
Note : You can select only up to 15 contributing factors in the target contributors component.

Anomaly Finder

There might be cases when you wouldn't have achieved your desired target and it might have a significant negative impact on your business. On the other hand, there might also be instances where you would have well exceeded your expected performances. In such cases, it becomes important that you know the factors that were mainly responsible for these positive or negative deviations.
 
 
The anomaly finder component lists down the contributing factors from the target contributors component, that had caused a significant positive or negative trend relative to the predicted overall target. The anomaly finder provides details including the reasons for the anomaly, the expected and the achieved targets, and also the impact amount on the target, for the selected time period.
 
These insights help you in determining the reasons for the anomaly, analyzing the impacted aspects of your business, and implement suitable strategies to achieve your business targets.
 
Note : If all of your actual values met with the expected values of your target contributors component and your overall target is met for the duration, then the anomaly finder will report no anomalies for that duration.

Gap Analyzer 

The Gap Analyzer component identifies disparities between the projected and the real target values for a specific date, week, or month. It elaborately displays the reasons for gaps during a particular period of time based on the value of the gap. 


Predictor

The predictor provides you with the top picklist and lookup fields that contributed the most towards formulating the contributing factors that impact your overall target. This enables you to get a clear idea of the categories that impacted your target the most.
 


The predictor component displays the predicted and achieved targets for individual field values of the top-contributing picklist and lookup fields identified by Zia and its impact during different time duration. Similar to the target contributors component, you can edit individual contributing factors as per your needs. In this case, the "Customer Type" field is displayed.
 
It is also possible to include another top picklist or lookup field identified by Zia, by cloning the predictor component. In this case, we can additionally include the "Industry" picklist as well.
 
 



Notes :
  • The predictor component identifies up to 4 top picklist/lookup fields out of which you can use a maximum of 2 picklist/lookup fields for your predictions.
  • There can be a maximum of 15 values for each picklist/lookup field.
  • If there are no picklist/lookup fields that contribute to the target, the predictor component will not be generated.

Prescriptor 

The prescriptor component combines predictive and descriptive analytics for a target. It covers three main areas: 

  • what should be done each day to achieve a predicted target for a week/month/year

  • what went wrong in the previous data

  • what can be done to improvise in upcoming days if a daily target is missed.







Updating the Zia Strategy Influencer 

The overall target, the contributing factors, and the values do not auto-update themselves based on everyday business performance. You will have to retrain Zia to update the Zia Strategy Influencer with the latest insights.
 

 
The Retrain Zia option recomputes your data and updates your analytics with the latest insights. The option to retrain will be available once in every 15 days.

How is Zia Strategy Influencer different from Forecasts?

Both forecasts and business projections are used for futuristic predictions and goals. For both forecasts and strategy influencer, Zia suggests targets. But in the case of forecasts, it lets you set your own or Zia suggested targets and the corresponding prediction criteria to track organization performance.
 
While in the case of strategy influencer, it rather provides you a predicted target and insights on the factors affecting the target for the metric in an organization selected by you. It also allows you to play around these influencing factors in combination with other factors and their effect on the target. The strategy influencer is more like a referential information for you to know how to achieve your targets.
 
You can, in fact, make use of the insights from the Zia Strategy Influencer analytics to design suitable forecasts for your organization's needs. To make this easier, we will also be enhancing forecasts by tightly integrating strategy influencer with it.
 

How is Zia Strategy Influencer different from Prediction Builder and Recommendation?

Zia's prediction builder lets you build custom predictions for your business. It provides predictions based on the field in any module specified by you. In the case of Zia's recommendation, it uses AI to study and analyze customer behaviors and trends to provide relevant product recommendations.
 
The difference lies in the fact that both the prediction builder and recommendation provide record-level insights, i.e. based on the module and field selected, the predictions and recommendations are provided with respect to each individual record that is part of the selected module. These predictions are used when you need record-specific predictions, for example, when you want to refer to predictions for a specific customer based on their unique behaviors and patterns.
 
While in case of Zia Strategy Influencer, it provides organization-level analytical insights to achieve the target based on the module and field selected. You can use Zia Strategy Influencer when you need predictions, and prescriptive and descriptive insights for your organization as a whole.
 

Feature Requirements

  • You need a minimum of 5000 records spread across at least one year in your organization for Zia to assess your goals.
  • This feature is available only for customer accounts in Enterprise and Ultimate edition accounts with more than 20 users.
  • Only users with an Administrator profile can access this feature.
  • This feature is available only for English language users. The super admin and other admin users need to be English users.
 
We look forward to your feedback on your Zia Strategy Influencer experience. To explore the feature in detail, please refer to this help documentation.

    Access your files securely from anywhere


          All-in-one knowledge management and training platform for your employees and customers.







                                Zoho Developer Community




                                                      • Desk Community Learning Series


                                                      • Digest


                                                      • Functions


                                                      • Meetups


                                                      • Kbase


                                                      • Resources


                                                      • Glossary


                                                      • Desk Marketplace


                                                      • MVP Corner


                                                      • Word of the Day


                                                      • Ask the Experts





                                                                Manage your brands on social media



                                                                      Zoho TeamInbox Resources



                                                                          Zoho CRM Plus Resources

                                                                            Zoho Books Resources


                                                                              Zoho Subscriptions Resources

                                                                                Zoho Projects Resources


                                                                                  Zoho Sprints Resources


                                                                                    Qntrl Resources


                                                                                      Zoho Creator Resources



                                                                                          Zoho CRM Resources

                                                                                          • CRM Community Learning Series

                                                                                            CRM Community Learning Series


                                                                                          • Kaizen

                                                                                            Kaizen

                                                                                          • Functions

                                                                                            Functions

                                                                                          • Meetups

                                                                                            Meetups

                                                                                          • Kbase

                                                                                            Kbase

                                                                                          • Resources

                                                                                            Resources

                                                                                          • Digest

                                                                                            Digest

                                                                                          • CRM Marketplace

                                                                                            CRM Marketplace

                                                                                          • MVP Corner

                                                                                            MVP Corner









                                                                                              Design. Discuss. Deliver.

                                                                                              Create visually engaging stories with Zoho Show.

                                                                                              Get Started Now


                                                                                                Zoho Show Resources

                                                                                                  Zoho Writer

                                                                                                  Get Started. Write Away!

                                                                                                  Writer is a powerful online word processor, designed for collaborative work.

                                                                                                    Zoho CRM コンテンツ





                                                                                                      Nederlandse Hulpbronnen


                                                                                                          ご検討中の方





                                                                                                                    • Recent Topics

                                                                                                                    • Request to unblock user creation error (This user is not allowed to add in Zoho)

                                                                                                                      Hello Zoho Support Team, I am the Super Admin of my Zoho Mail organization. When I try to create a new business email user account, I encounter the following error message: "This user is not allowed to add in Zoho. Please contact support-as@zohocorp.com
                                                                                                                    • Zoho Mail account blocked after malware incident – request for review and unblock

                                                                                                                      Hi Zoho team and community, My Zoho Mail account has been blocked due to outgoing email activity that was detected as spam or unusual sending behavior. The root cause was a malware infection on my computer, which compromised several of my accounts, including
                                                                                                                    • creating an alias

                                                                                                                      your instructions for creating an alias are wrong. there is no add alias in my mail account. also i dont have a control panel link just a settings link how do i really make an alias
                                                                                                                    • IP Address blocked by many servers

                                                                                                                      hello team this is to inform you that the zoho ip address 103.117.158.51 has been marked spam and not trustworthy by outlook and many other company servers. kindly discontinue using this ip to maintain a healthy domain reputation for your clients. Regards
                                                                                                                    • Automatically set the default VAT percentage on a quote

                                                                                                                      Every time I create a quote, I have to manually adjust the VAT and activate the checkbox for 21%. But all of our quotes include 21% VAT. So now occasionally, it happens that the checkbox is forgotten, and the customer receives an incorrect quote (without
                                                                                                                    • What's New in Zoho Inventory | June 2026

                                                                                                                      Hello users, June 2026 introduces a range of exciting enhancements to Zoho Inventory. With the full rollout of the Zoho Inventory Windows application, the launch of Terminal Payments, and new tracking combinations in Advanced Inventory Tracking, you can
                                                                                                                    • Time Zone is incorrect

                                                                                                                      Time zone is not working properly...I've checked it twice.  I'm eastern U.S. time it's currently 12:22 pm EST.  CRM shows 3:22 pm EST.
                                                                                                                    • Send a converted Contact or Deal back to Leads using the Restore Lead extension for Zoho CRM

                                                                                                                      Hello everyone, This comes up more than people expect: a Lead gets converted into a Contact, and sometimes a Deal along with it, because at the time it looked ready. Then the situation changes the opportunity turns out to be much further off than expected,
                                                                                                                    • Zoho CRM mobile updates: Reports module, record tags, dynamic formula field, and more

                                                                                                                      Hello everyone, We've made a few updates to the Zoho CRM mobile app to enhance your mobile CRM experience and efficiency. Here's a quick look at what's new: Reports module (iOS ) Record tags (iOS) Dynamic formula field (Android) WhatsApp business deep
                                                                                                                    • Side scroll bar missing from "new editor"

                                                                                                                      The "new editor" simply lacks a side scroll bar. Unable to navigate long notes without using the keyboard. Bad upgrade... (using web version)
                                                                                                                    • Zoho Desk MCP doesn't expose all functions

                                                                                                                      Hello, I'd like to be able to draft (rather than send) ticket replies using Claude Cowork. However, the Zoho Desk MCP doesn't currently offer that, despite it being available in the API (https://desk.zoho.com/DeskAPIDocument#Threads#Threads_DraftEmailReply).
                                                                                                                    • Zoho Community Digest - July 2026 | Part 1

                                                                                                                      Hello everyone! Keeping up with everything across the Zoho ecosystem is a lot, so we're bringing back the Zoho Community Digest, now weekly. Each week we round up the need-to-know announcements from the Zoho Community Forums, four editions a month, so
                                                                                                                    • Canva Integration

                                                                                                                      Hello! As many marketing departments are streamlining their teams, many have begun utilizing Canva for all design mockups and approvals prior to its integration into Marketing automation software. While Zoho Social has this integration already accomplished,
                                                                                                                    • Feature Suggestion for Zoho Social: Auto-reply to Comments or Keywords

                                                                                                                      Hi Zoho team, I'd like to suggest a very specific feature that would be extremely helpful for customer engagement: the ability to automatically send a reply to comments on posts — either all comments or those containing specific keywords. For example,
                                                                                                                    • Format of data after export to spreadsheet

                                                                                                                      Dear Zoho, can you explain to me what is the point of a report exporting to XLSX if the format of the amounts that will be created there is in text format and not suitable for anything? Why do I need data in a sheet with which nothing more can be do
                                                                                                                    • Bring more clarity to your blueprints with color-coded transitions

                                                                                                                      As your hiring processes evolve, blueprints naturally become more detailed. When multiple transitions connect different stages, it can take extra effort to identify approvals, rejections, reviews, and other actions at a glance. With this enhancement,
                                                                                                                    • Zoho CRM gets a new email compose and lot more

                                                                                                                      Dear Customers,  [UPDATE October 21, 2021: We have started opening these features to some of the customers already. And, it will be available to all the customers before November 2nd Week, 2021. Sorry for the delay caused]  [UPDATE February 21, 2022:
                                                                                                                    • Create modules using natural language prompts

                                                                                                                      Hello all, We’ve introduced a new enhancement to Zia that allows you to create custom and team modules in Zoho CRM using plain language prompts. Why this enhancement? Creating a custom module traditionally involves multiple steps—choosing field types,
                                                                                                                    • Automatic Matching from Bank Statements / Feeds

                                                                                                                      Is it possible to have transactions from a feed or bank statement automatically match when certain criteria are met? My use case, which is pretty broadly applicable, is e-commerce transactions for merchant services accounts (clearing accounts). In these
                                                                                                                    • How emojis shape customer conversations

                                                                                                                      World Emoji Day is celebrated on July 17. Did you know that this date was inspired by the 📅 calendar emoji, which shows July 17 on most platforms? What started as a detail in the emoji's design has turned into a global celebration of these tiny emoticons.
                                                                                                                    • Custom Button Creation from Layout Editor in Zoho CRM

                                                                                                                      Hello All, Buttons in Zoho CRM act as triggers that perform a specific action when clicked. Zoho CRM includes a set of system buttons that help you carry out common actions with a single click. Beyond these, your organization can create custom buttons
                                                                                                                    • Displayed sample tracking for multi branch setup.

                                                                                                                      We have multiple branches and one of the biggest challenges for us to be able to track if a particular item is in display or not. I am shooting in the dark but I am wondering if there is a solution for the following : Each product used for display is
                                                                                                                    • Using IMAP configuration for shared email inboxes

                                                                                                                      Our customer service team utilizes shared email boxes to allow multiple people to view and handle incoming customer requests. For example, the customer sends an email to info@xxxx.com and multiple people can view it and handle the request. How can I configure
                                                                                                                    • Introducing Bulk Attachment Download from List View

                                                                                                                      We're excited to introduce an update to attachment management in Zoho Recruit that lets you download attachments associated with selected records directly from the List View page of any module. How do I download attachments in bulk? You can now select
                                                                                                                    • Advanced Group Settings: Customize and manage your email groups in Zoho Mail

                                                                                                                      Email groups in your organization often require more than basic configurations to function effectively. With Zoho Mail's Advanced Group Settings, administrators can configure and manage policies, notifications, and more with greater precision. This gives
                                                                                                                    • "code":3001 ["Failed to update data."]

                                                                                                                      I would like to seek your expertise - I might be wrong on my approach also.. I highly appreciate your advice. 1 problem remains is when a new row was added on the existing one [from another form that trigger upon Successful form submission ], it gets
                                                                                                                    • CRM gets location smart with the all new Map View: visualize records, locate records within any radius, and more

                                                                                                                      Hello all, We've introduced a new way to work with location data in Zoho CRM: the Map View. Instead of scrolling through endless lists, your records now appear as pins on a map. Built on top of the all-new address field and powered by Mappls (MapMyIndia),
                                                                                                                    • Workdrive on Android - Gallery Photo Backups

                                                                                                                      Hello, Is there any way of backing up the photos on my android phone directly to a specific folder on Workdrive? Assuming i have the workdrive app installed on the phone in question. Emma
                                                                                                                    • Auto sync Photo storage

                                                                                                                      Hello I am new to Zoho Workdrive and was wondering if the is a way of automatically syncing photos on my Android phone to my workdrive as want to move away from Google? Thanks
                                                                                                                    • List of Mail Merge Templates via Deluge

                                                                                                                      Hello, Is it possible to get a list of the mail merge templates I've created in CRM within a custom function? I want to retrieve them and put them in a dropdown list but all I get is a scopes error! Can anyone see where I'm going wrong? Is this even possible?
                                                                                                                    • Feature Request Improve parent-child relationship visibility

                                                                                                                      Hi team, The Parent-Child ticket feature is great, but I've struggled to see the relationship between tickets when using ticket list views. It would be a great quality of life enhancement for users if child tickets were nested under parent tickets in
                                                                                                                    • Displaying only unread tickets in ticket view

                                                                                                                      Hello, I was wondering if someone might be able to help me with this one. We use filters to display our ticket list, typically using a saved filter which displays the tickets which are overdue or due today. What I'd really like is another filter that
                                                                                                                    • Is there provision to charge the attendees to join the webinar?

                                                                                                                      We want to host some webinar of public interest and want to charge them to participate in this. Does this feature in-build in the application? Offcourse, we will be having Razor pay account activated for these purpose.
                                                                                                                    • Pricelists

                                                                                                                      So we have them in books but I cannot find them in commerce?
                                                                                                                    • Desktop app doesn't support notecards created on Android

                                                                                                                      Hi, Does anybody have same problem? Some of last notecards created on Android app (v. 6.6) doesn't show in desktop app (v. 3.5.5). I see these note cards but whith they appear with exclamation mark in yellow triangle (see screenshot) and when I try to
                                                                                                                    • Don't send customer email when creating a ticket

                                                                                                                      Hi Is there an easy way to stop the system sending an email to the customer when we manually create ticket.
                                                                                                                    • Connecting a contact with the deal + Emails not showing up under Deals

                                                                                                                      Hello. I have two problems. Im not sure if the problem is due to level of my subscription - Im on Proffessional plan. 1. I have a JotForm connected with ZohoCRM which automatically creates a contact and a new deal based on form submission. That is done
                                                                                                                    • How to add custom icons in Sites ?

                                                                                                                      I've been trying to upload some of my own icons (specific to my business) to my zoho Site draft, and can't find a way to do it. I guess the workaround could be to insert images instead of icons and upload my icons as images, but I was wondering if its possible to customize the icon library.
                                                                                                                    • Accessing GDPR Data Source metadata for workflows and Zoho Analytics

                                                                                                                      Hi everyone, We have GDPR compliance enabled in Zoho CRM, which has added the Data Source section within the Data Privacy tab for Leads and Contacts. This section shows useful information such as: Original creation source, for example Zoho Forms Form
                                                                                                                    • Tiktok

                                                                                                                      When will Tiktok be added to the Zoho Social Platform?
                                                                                                                    • Next Page