Hi,

I want to give my first-time user experience of Zoho One. 

Having set up and configured many apps, systems and automation for our company and other companies over the years I am pretty competent at testing new solutions. 

This brings me to Zoho One. 

On the front end the app and solution range is extensive and seems to cover nearly every eventuality that a company may need. Which is very promising, especially with every app being created by the same company and Zoho One give you access to all apps. Great!

Then comes the real-world testing... 

Which in a nutshell is basically pure confusion as to which app to use for which purpose...

A few examples...

CRM: This handles all contacts and leads in your company, tags, deal pipelines and custom data, plus many many more options. It ie even marketed as an email marketing system https://www.zoho.com/crm/what-is-marketing-automation.html... This is great as a standalone product until you realise it doesn't really do email marketing. So you then need to use campaigns, which is great until you realise that there is a 1:1 sync (Both ways) for contacts. you can sync CRM to campaigns but updates to Campain contacts will not sync back... Which leaves you with a huge mess of different information. You could use Marketing Automation... which leads me to my next example

Marketing Automation: If you came to Zoho for email marketing your first stop would quite rightly be the Campaigns app. Because that makes perfect sense and all Zoho information points towards Campaigns as the go to app... This is fine until you realise that automation isn't great (and in this day and age, automation is key to streamlining a business and reducing human error) Which leads you to click on Marketing Automation....

Once clicked you quickly realise this is not what the name suggests. This is not an automation app for your marketing Campaigns app... No, this is a completely separate Email Marketing app which you can't use in conjunction with campaigns, infact you can't even sync your campaign contact data with this app! You have to start from scratch or try to figure out which of the many many syncs, automation, and journey services you need to cobble together to get information from one app to the other. If you do get your contacts to sync, which I've still not figured out (luckily I'm just testing) you start using MA app, which refers to all contacts as leads, unlike CRM these are not leads at all and there are no deal pipelines here. MA leads are basically any contact that has signed up to a newsletter etc... which is the very broad sense leads because you hope to eventually convert these to paying customers/ clients. But the choice of words here is very confusing. I have never seen an email marketing app refer to newsletter sign-ups as leads. What's more confusing is that MA has Lead stages, which are not to be confused with CRM pipeline stages. 

MA also has website tracking... not to be confused with SalesIQ which also has website tracking, but SiQ is more advanced and links to CRM. And again MA and SiQ site tracking are not synced. They each produce their own data on visitors. I am yet to find information on whether you need separate tracking codes for each app. But this is looking very likely. And as many of you know, more tracking codes with more website bloat, and slower speeds. I've not look into how different the data is from each app. But from a quick glance the SiQ has much better information and syncs with CRM.

MA then has Journeys (automation), forms, tags, popups. All of these functions are available in different app. And the latter all have better functions, so which one do we use? 

This leads me on to automation... CRM has 'Workflow Rules', MA has 'Journeys', Campaigns has 'Workflows' Then there is a completely separate app called Zoho Flow. And every single one of these has their own triggers but also share triggers, their own actions but also share actions. It is near impossible to know what you should be using. There is also sync, and webhooks. some apps have sync, some only sync one way, some have webhooks other don't. 

Then there is the sign app: It allows you to send documents for signing. You can add templates but this seems to just be an uploaded document which can't be edited... Pretty useless. You can send a custom document to be signed and signatured it just involves multiple apps and a little confusion. 1st: You create a document on the Writer app. 2nd: create a Form using forms. Then create the automation directly from the Writer doc... Not confusing at all... 

Then we have the Social app: Which looks great, but there is also a demi version of this is Marketing Automations. So which to use? and do they sync...? I am yet to find out as I have wasted far to much time trying to navigate this confusing App collection.

My belief is that Zoho has been built one app at a time over many years, by different dev teams, using different codes and practices. The core apps like CRM and campaigns were probably built long before interconnectivity was a thing.  Each app that has followed has been built to solve a particular problem but no-one has considered how each app will mesh and co-exist with previous apps. The apps feel like they connect via a basic form of Zapier. One that is missing core actions and triggers, like a loosely compacted ball of apps, all being held together by string and putty. 

It's a huge shame. There is such promise, but sadly the cohesiveness of the apps just isn't there. There is one path to achieve what you need, just many potential paths for you to walk down before eventually find the right path (Maybe) 

Someone needs to be appointed to a new role. One that tests the entire range as a user and not a developer, as developers know all the shortcuts, the custom codes and 'right way' to use things. 

Real user: " I can't get information from app1 to transfer to  app 2"

Developer: " Oh thats easy, you use app1, find this tiny little option, which links to app3, where you add this code, which sends information back to app1, when you can then send this to app4, which does this using this custom code, and you then get your information in app2, as needed," "See, Easy"

The above example is an exaggerated example of my time going through the Zoho forums to find solutions.

Zoho One 2.0 is needed. As it stands is feels like we have Zoho One 1.98728937. Instead of spending hundreds of hours creating patch after patch to satisfy an endless request of connectivity issue. Create Zoho 2.0, build a core program that every other app can be built upon. 

The Zoho one App suit is great! and they do cover every need of a business. But sadly is just confusing and too disjointed to use multiple apps.