We are coming to the end of our second year of using Zoho CRM. I figured some of the people in the forums might appreciate some frank comments from someone who has been through a fairly sizable implementation over a longer timeframe.

As background, our company has 30 seats of ZCRM. We sell high end capital equipment B2B. We have users that include Outside Sales (located remotely), Company Management, Customer Service, Inside Sales and Finance. The primary modules we use are Accounts, Contacts, Reports and Potentials. In the last 6 months we have converted the Vendors module to track activity of sales channel partners and we have decided to take the plunge and start using the leads module as well.  We now use a web form to allow channel partners to register leads for the purpose of exclusivity.

In terms of Core functionality, ZCRM continues to deliver a robust feature set that is as good as anything out there. The ability to customize each module is a strong feature. ZCRM continues to work on development and they have added a number of features to the core product.  For our company ZCRM continues to hit about 85% of our immediate needs, which is far ahead of the other products I have seen in the market. I foresee that we will be able to expand the use of ZCRM to use the Cases module and the Quotes Module as we start to use this tool more frequently in our Customer Service group.

The GOOD Stuff

•            Tons of customization
•            Admin is very simple
•            Ongoing product development and improvement
•            Easy to collect data and generate reports to track your KPIs/metrics and spot trends.
•            The system has the capability of growing and evolving to adapt to our changing needs. Over our two years of use we have modified some of our processes and the way that we use ZCRM. The software has been able to handle those changes quickly and easily.
•            The new Log a Call feature is an excellent start. Now we just need the ability to customize a few of the drop downs in that screen.
•            The New Workflow Rule Enhancements are a big improvement
•            The Auto-responders are much more useable now with the change to dynamic date settings.
•            Although our company does not use Google Apps, I see great potential for pursuing that and I am testing the Zoho-Google Apps Integration.
•            The New Web tabs could be a game changer (If I can figure out how to program in Creator). I see great potential here for specialty apps at a very affordable price.
•            Good API support to allow us to share data between ZCRM and other enterprise applications.

The ANNOYING STUFF

•            2011 needs to be the “Year of Usability” for ZCRM. The system is not as intuitive as it could be and it often takes more “clicks” than are really necessary to perform functions. User adoption is directly related to ease of use. I suggest getting your developers out in the field to see how actual end users are working with the product.
•             E-mail integration is still a work in process. After doing some testing I recommended that we continue to use Outlook without the add-in because it was too awkward and unreliable. I have held off on looking at Gmail or Zohomail because of the many issues I see reported in the forums.
•            I wish the development team would tell us how they set their priorities for working on the things in the famous Zoho “Roadmap”. I am just not confident that they are listening to the right people and working on the right things.
•       Although Peter told us that 2010 was the “Year of Customer Service” my opinion is that ZCRM fell quite a bit short on that promise. I still see too many generic responses from Zoho employees in the forums. And for some reason Zoho employees seem to forget that even if they work out a solution with someone on the phone, they still need to respond to the forums so the people with the same problem who are tracking that issue can get the information too.

•  The Mobile apps are really, really, really rough. There is no ability to customize views in the available modules. You cannot log calls to records (Which is probably the #2 feature of a mobile CRM app – besides data visibility).
• Navigation is rapidly becoming a big issue as we use more and more of the features of ZCRM. Instead opening new pages in the browser, perhaps Zoho should look at using Pop-ups instead. When you navigate forward and backward between pages you end up in the default page views and you have to scroll through lists or click on tabs to get back to the page you want. This adds WAY too much time and is one of the most annoying things about the service.
• An offline version that Syncs when reconnected to the internet is becoming urgent for us. Our salespeople and field service staff would like to be able to make updates to records while they are travelling on planes or in places without an internet connection. The Blackberry BETA app looks be developing this, but it needs to be available for the “full” version as well.
• You need to be able to create leads from existing contacts and accounts. We sell a broad product line. A person can be a customer for product X, but a prospect or lead for product Y. We don’t want to create a Potential record until an opportunity is properly qualified. The problem comes when you “Convert” a lead to a potential and you end up with duplicate contacts and accounts. I can’t understand why the system is designed so it encourages creating duplicate records and adding potential for corrupting data.
• PLEASE give us the ability to have workflow triggers operate in the background. I cannot set a workflow task to trigger based on a date unless I actually open a record and edit it on the date the trigger is supposed to fire. The auto-responders can track dates in the background – why not workflow? This is probably my #1 complaint right now in terms of the product itself.

All, in all, I am still happy that we chose Zoho. Each solution in the cloud has strengths and weaknesses. For me Zoho continues to have the most flexibility and the well-rounded feature set currently available to help us run our business. And I see how it can be customized to fit most B2B situations and many B2C situations as well. I continue to recommend ZCRM overall, despite the imperfections.

But Zoho needs to do a better job of listening and communicating with their users. Failure to do so will probably result in mass defections over time. There are some promising alternatives out there. Right now the services I have my eyes on are Solve 360 by Norada, WorkETC, and the recently introduced Basecamp Suite from 37 Signals. And even though they are big and kludgy, Microsoft Dynamics and Salesforce are still very strong alternatives when price is no object.