Announcing Early Access to "Zoho CRM for Everyone" — A new and exciting update to Zoho CRM

Announcing Early Access to "Zoho CRM for Everyone" — A new and exciting update to Zoho CRM

We are delighted to announce an Early Access to Zoho CRM for Everyone— a truly democratic approach to managing a CRM, gift-wrapped in an exciting and intuitive user interface. Here, multiple teams across an organization can coordinate among each other towards a singular objective —to delight their customers everyday.

Quote
Summary of this post: Zoho CRM for Everyone is a progressive and fundamental shift towards making the CRM a truly democratic system for every stakeholder that needs it in an organization. Zoho CRM for Everyone is not a new product, rather it is a new and visionary approach that tackles the challenge of disconnected processes by imbibing the philosophies of CRM democratization, team empowerment and coordination right into the DNA of a CRM. This is very much an updated version of the existing version of Zoho CRM. The key features in this release include Teamspaces, Team Module and Requests, all of which are presented in a reimagined user interface.

To learn more, please take some time to read this detailed post. Request Early Access Here

Why do you need Zoho CRM for Everyone?

Challenges of any current-day CRM

While CRM is indeed a powerful system that houses every piece of customer data, in most cases, it continues to be a system that is largely accessible by ONE primary section of an organization — Sales. While sales teams are indeed the champions that lead customer conversations and make the tough negotiations with prospects, the ultimate clinching of a business deal is the result of cumulative efforts of multiple minds.

Consider a deal convergence process. You are likely to have various stakeholders responsible for different parts of the process, where they come in, play their part, and pass the baton to the next team. For example, in a typical SaaS company, once the sales team starts pursuing a prospect, they may need the help of the marketing team to provide them with sales collateral to pique the prospect's initial interest. Then, they may need to work with the Presales team to showcase a well-tailored demo of the application to convey the value of the software. After negotiation, the salesperson will need the help of the legal team to draw up a deal contract and process it further.

So, as you can see, various stakeholders have an important role to play in the convergence of a single deal. However, when the CRM as a system is made accessible ONLY to the larger majority, that is the sales teams, there are quite a few undeniable challenges. Sales often has to spend time translating context and coordinating with these multiple teams offline— simply because these various customer operations teams do not have a place in the CRM system.

Think of the time and efforts that the sales teams have to put into:
  • Establishing customer context (which is already present in the CRM) to the other teams.
  • Coordinating and following up with each stakeholder for the convergence of a single deal.
In the following screenshots, the sales agent coordinates with marketing and pre-sales teams via communication platforms including say, email and chat.

Now at the receiving end of these emails and chat conversations, each of those customer ops teams may have their own separate gamut of apps and systems to process these deliverables. Once they understand the requirement from the sales teams, they swing into action using their own separate system or application, such as spreadsheets or project boards.


So in the end, the same customer context originally available in the CRM is now translated across different applications, in different ways by multiple stakeholders — in other words, this is a very disconnected process.
This way of working presents the following key challenges
  • All stakeholders work in silos. Different communication tools are used to achieve coordination, which could ultimately lead to a disconnected process.
  • The processes of stakeholders and related follow-ups are extremely fragmented.
  • There is a potential lack of customer context and communication gaps when teams have to coordinate with each other, but they are doing so across different apps and platforms.
These challenges lead to internal delays and poor coordination, which could ultimately impact the customer experience that the organization provides.

Here is where Zoho CRM for Everyone presents an all-new refreshing direction and exciting possibilities.

Zoho CRM for Everyone is a progressive and fundamental shift towards making the CRM a truly democratic system for every stakeholder that needs it in an organization. This new and visionary approach tackles the challenges of current-day CRM by imbibing the following philosophies right into the DNA of a CRM.
  • Democratization of CRM
  • Empowerment of teams
  • Achieving coordination as part of the CRM's process flows.

1. Democratization of CRM powered by Teamspaces

The ultimate goal of every business is to achieve customer delight—and as we noted above, achieving customer delight cannot happen with the effort of a single person or function. In such a case, why not empower all of these customer operations teams and processes with rich CRM capabilities?

Zoho CRM for Everyone effectively democratizes the CRM system by allowing a platform for all key stakeholders involved in an organization's customer-facing processes to get onboard the CRM system and have their dedicated, clutter-free space to organize their data and orchestrate their work.

This democratization of CRM is powered by what we call Teamspaces— which is quite simply a dedicated work area for every team that gets onboard the CRM system. Every team could have their own set of modules that are relevant to them. Teamspaces effectively offer this unique setup in which the teams are very much now part of the same CRM system where sales operates and which is rich with customer context—and at the same time, they are not overwhelmed with a hundred modules irrelevant to them. They are connected to CRM — at the same time, have their own private, clutter-free work area.

For example here are two Teamspaces — one for the Marketing team and one for Legal. Each team member will log into CRM and find that they are part of THEIR OWN Teamspace, with modules and data only relevant to them.



2. Empowerment of teams powered by Team Module.

Once you bring multiple teams onboard the CRM system, what next? Well, they need to set up and manage their own processes. Each team comes with accurate knowledge of their day-to-day activities and processes, and so they could be the best people to set up their workflows. So, in Zoho CRM for Everyone, teams are empowered to capture every unique process via what we call Team Modules.

Team Module is a bespoke module that, by design, is accessible only to a specific team and not across the organization.

Examples of Team Modules in the Marketing Teamspace for instance, could be "Sales Documents", "Win-loss analysis", "Beta-launch program" and more. Essentially every process of a team in question that needs to be systematically managed, can be set up using Team Modules.
Sales Documents Team Module (From Marketing Team)
Legal Reviews Team Module (Legal Team)
The unique attribute of Team Module is that it could have its own Team Module Admin. One of the main challenges of current-day CRM could be attributed to the fact that there is a huge dependency on central admins (with good reason). You don't want a chaotic setup, and you want the right people in control of the system's security and data.


However, consider this new proposition where an additional 50 teams will get on board the CRM system. If the central admins have to configure each and every aspect of each of those 50 teams, there is going to be a significant setback — an overall dependency on central admins not just by Sales but by a few other hundred members.

Therefore Zoho CRM for Everyone includes a possibility where the administrative activities of a Team Module, that is a module specific to a team's process, could be taken care by the senior leaders of that team themselves.



This is akin to delegating routine administrative tasks and entrusting responsibility to those teams. Not to forget that the central org admins continue to retain the highest authority across CRM— they can revoke a Team Module admin's access at any time. In fact this Team Module admin will be supervised and work with the central admins — it is just that the team need not wait on central admins now for minor admin tasks such as adding a new picklist field or a quick workflow. They are empowered in the system to organize their process flows the way they feel is needed, under the close supervision and guidance of the central admins.

Say hello to Team Modules, where every team's process can be captured via bespoke modules, complete with automation, process management and customization capabilities.



3. Achieving coordination among teams via Requests

Now that multiple teams are on board the CRM and able to setup and manage their own processes— the next thing to do is ensure a seamless coordination between them which is rich with context, and easy to execute without relying on third party platforms. "Requests" in Zoho CRM achieve exactly that.

A request is simply a record added by Team A directly in Team B's module so that their requirement is recorded in their module and ready to be processed. Instead of conveying a message to a colleague via phone, chat or email which could be fragmented, you now coordinate with them by directly leaving a record in their Team Module. This saves time in translating context and the fellow team in processing your requirement.

For example, Heather Woods, a salesperson can create a "Request" in the Marketing team's Team Module called "Sales Collateral". She can directly add a record which captures details of the particulars such as what she needs, the customer or deal that the document is for, by when it is needed and other important details. Then the marketing agent, say Tai Chang, can process the request directly from this Team Module and need not spend time in again organizing the requirement in a separate system. 

Sales team adding a request to the marketing team



Marketing team processing the request and handing the deliverable back to Sales



As you can see, the placing of a Request and the processing of the same are done in CRM. What's more, the "Requesters", that is the members who have placed the request can track them all in a consolidated manner via their My Requests tab.
My Requests
This way, follow-ups are far from fragmented, they are neatly consolidated and you can track various key aspects of your Requests such as the status, the stakeholders, the deal associated and so on.

So with these three pillars— that is democratization of CRM with Teamspaces, empowerment of teams via Team Modules and achieving coordination between teams via Requests, you essentially ensure a seamless experience AKA a CRM for Everyone!

Team Module — Quick information on Availability and Limits

Team Modules are available from the Standard Edition onwards, including all Free Trial editions.

For detailed Availability and Limits: Learn more

Now what's the incentive to bringing all of your team members on board the CRM?

Well, great news! You do not have to pay full price for using only a small portion of the CRM system. Introducing Team User Licenses, which acts a limited access to CRM at a subsidized rate. This is introduced in order to encourage more and more users to get onboard CRM, and leverage this powerful system for their specific processes at a nominal rate.

The fundamental difference between a Team User and an Org User is that a Team User by default will have access to only the Team Modules they are added into. They will not own any organization modules, nor be able to share them. They can view certain org modules as that may be needed as a reference point for their work, but they will not be able to modify org module data.

For example, while the sales team members in an organizaiton will use the full CRM license, the Presales team or the Legal team members could be added under the "Team User License". Here, they will have access only to their respective Team Modules. They could view Leads, Contacts and Accounts if their tasks call for it— however they won't be able to own or modify any of these org module data.


Here is the price breakdown for Team User licenses.
— $9 / user / month if billed annually.
— $11 / user /month if billed monthly.

As part of this announcement, we are thrilled to offer 100 free team user licenses for 100 days as a trial for all early access customers of Zoho CRM for Everyone. Post this 100 day period, the above prices will apply.

Public Fields:

In a different scenario, you may want to further restrict a Team User's access to the org modules. You don't want them to view the entire record but only a handful of fields. For example, you don't want to expose the contact details of a customer or their deal amounts, but you only want a legal executive or presales engineer to view the customer's industry and employee size to further understand how to tailor their work. In such a case you can mark these specific fields — such as Account Name, Industry, Employee Size etc as Public Fields. Public fields are those specific fields which you can make visibile to anyone across an organization on a read-only mode, while the rest of the fields in the record except for those public fields, remain hidden.

Introducing the Next Gen UI of Zoho CRM

The CRM user interface has been re-designed to accommodate the needs of multiple teams in an organization and support easier configuration of key settings such as modules, reports, and dashboards, apart from several other visually pleasing surprises!



Primary and Secondary sidebar:

The menu options from the top band menu bar have been moved to the left-hand side vertical sidebar. The sidebar is now an extremely functional piece of the UI with contextual shortcuts for quick settings, neat folders for better organization of modules and more. The sidebar now has two divisions— Primary Sidebar and the Secondary Sidebar.


  • The Primary Sidebar is for first-level navigation of the product. The top portion of the Primary Sidebar houses icons to view and work with Modules, Reports, Dashboards, Requests, Marketplace, and Global Search. The bottom portion of the Primary sidebar now contains intuitive utility icons such as Quick create record, Mail magnet, Calendar and more. (originally located on the top right corner of the UI).

  • The Secondary sidebar opens up quick-controls contextual to what you choose in the Primary sidebar. This is collapsible in order to allow you to maximize your right-hand side work area. 

    You have contextual shortcuts to Setup options on the Secondary sidebar. Ex: You can create a module, a report or a dashboard right from this location without having to navigate to the backend Setup. (While the backend Setup is still intact, the Secondary sidebar options offer a quick shortcut).

    You can also directly create layouts, webforms, wizards, canvas pages, etc from the Secondary sidebar.


    Besides, the Secondary sidebar houses folders for better sorting modules, reports, etc.Folders

Chart view alongside list views — where the records in a module can be organized in the list view space as a chart component.
Learn more. 

Chart View
An omni-channel Interactions tab — where you will be able to see the complete timeline of communication via multiple channels with a customer. Learn more

Interactions Tab

Well, what are you waiting for? We hope that this detailed elaboration gives you a fair idea of our directional progressive improvements with Zoho CRM for Everyone.

Notes
NOTE:
  • "Zoho CRM for Everyone" is NOT a new product from Zoho. This is the name of this latest release, which promises a host of features and possibilities that makes Zoho CRM a system that is easily accessible for "everyone" in an organization. Hence the name. Rest assured, these releases are part of the Zoho CRM product.
  • Early Access to Zoho CRM for Everyone including Team Module and Next Gen UI is being rolled out in a phased manner. This means, our customers will receive this option to try the new version in batches over the next few weeks.

That said, we are happy to enable this on priority to those who submit an early access request.
Submit your entry for EARLY ACCESS to the Zoho CRM for Everyone today. 
https://www.zoho.com/crm/ea/crm-for-everyone.html?drlnk=request-access


We are continuously innovating and adding feature sets to substantiate our claims as part of this release. We appreciate any suggestions, criticism and feedback on this direction.

Useful Links

Start your journey with Zoho CRM for Everyone by bookmarking the following useful links. 




        • Recent Topics

        • Sample Ticket - Created from Bot Preview

          Why is Zoho desk adding bot created tickets?

        • Webhook data is not being received

          We’ve set up the webhook with a public URL that returns a 200 status on Postman. However, when we ran a test, we didn’t receive anything in the req.body object or see any data from the POST request. As a team of freshers still learning the ropes of development,

        • Number of Workflow runs

          Is there a way in Zoho desk to see statistics regarding workflows, rules and other automation objects? Would be nice for several reasons: You could ensure that your workflows are actually running. You could determine which ones weren't being used so you

        • Mail is no longer populating CRM contacts

          Hi! For the last few days, my mail hasn't been populating my CRM contacts. Even people I email multiple times per day. In fact, it keeps trying to send mail to myself. Notice, I started typing Amy and only got as far as, "Am" and it suggested myself.

        • Zoho Support is indeed shocking and difficult to get a response with

          All our business emails have an auto-foward set up on them so that they also go to our GMAIL accounts so that we receive them to the relevenat people. The emails are indeed auto forwarding and arriving to our GMAIL accounts but when you log into your

        • How to get a list of selected records into a button-function? Here is how!

          So, you might know already how to get a button on a page somewhere and perform actions with a function when pressed, but how about a button that only works with the records you selected in the list view? The button selected is a custom button in the modules

        • How to Add Break line / Return on button click

          I need to return the text concate with difference field from lead with line break i try "\r" ,"\n" "<br>" return "ali \r\n <br> baba"; None of above work.  i expected result something like this  ali baba but got this  ali \r\n <br> baba so, how can i

        • How to get batch number of item by api?

          Hi there, Is there any way to get batch number of item by api? Batch number is the batch reference number in https://www.zoho.com/inventory/help/advanced-inventory-tracking/batch-tracking.html . When I call the https://www.zoho.com/books/api/v3/#Items_Get_an_item

        • Announcing new features in Trident for Windows (v.1.18.6.0)

          Hello Community, Trident for Windows is here with some new features to elevate your workplace communication. Let's take a quick look at what's new. Ask and send read receipts for emails You can now request read receipts for specific emails while composing,

        • Dialing Microsoft Teams Phone Service via Zoho CRM

          I am using the VOIP option in Microsoft teams for my office phone system. I was hoping to have a way to dial numbers directly from Zoho CRM, but don't see anything in the Teams Integration or in the Telephony integration that will enable this. Does anyone

        • Increase subscription prices for existing subscriptions

          Hi, Does anyone know how we could achieve the ability to increase the subscription fee for our existing customers based on a % increase. We are not yet using Zoho Billing (Subscriptions) and I'm not sure if it is a good fit for us. But we would need to

        • Why developing custom function development made so difficult for Zoho Projects!!

          Hi Zoho Team, I am trying to write function to automate a process but whatever API name or Column Name I use, the API isn't populating certain fields. Even the standard fields aren't getting populated through API. It's already exhausting to find all API

        • Data not visible in sheet cells

          I'm having an issue where my data is not visible in my sheet cells. If I click on an individual cell, the data does display above in the little "fx" box. But all the boxes in the sheet just look blank. My collaborators do not have this issue. I have checked

        • Function #20: Custom calculation in item table of invoices

          When you create an invoice in Zoho Books, the 'Amount' of a line item is typically calculated as the product of the "Quantity" and the "Rate" of the item. For instance, if an item has a sales rate of $50 and a quantity of 5 is sold, then the amount would

        • PO receive limitations

          It is VERY common to receive more or less that the PO quantity. It's totally ludicrous to limit the maximum receive to the PO quantity! What if the receive is 0.00001 less than the PO quantity - it leaves the PO as "Partially received" The current options are to edit the PO manually before finalizing the receive, an outrageous situation ! Please Zoho guys - this is an infuriating oversight & can be easily resolved by introducing the option as shown in the attached document ......

        • Why don't we have better integration with Mercado Pago or Pagseguro?

          Currently, the integration between Zoho Commerce and Mercado Pago for Brazil is very poor... Since it is old, it does not include the main payment method in Brazil today, which is PIX. Is there a date for this to finally be launched? There are numerous

        • Why is there no integration with native Brazilian shipping methods?

          Zoho Commerce is a powerful platform for e-commerce, but its lack of integration with native Brazilian shipping solutions is a significant limitation for users in Brazil. Integrating with popular shipping providers like Correios, Frenet, and Kangu would

        • Alert for Back Navigation in Zoho Creator Widgets on Mobile Apps

          In Zoho Creator widgets, when a user navigates back on mobile devices, the data within the widget is reset. This leads to a loss of any unsaved changes or inputs, causing frustration for users. To enhance user experience, we need to implement a confirmation

        • Mapping Zoho Projects into Cliq Channels

          why arent all the Zoho Projects listed from the drop down menu when trying to Map them into Zoho Cliq Channels. The system doesnt allow me to type the name of the project but gives a drop down of a list of projects however it doesnt give me a list of

        • Input GST Reversal for damaged goods

          In our line of business, some items are damaged and we are doing inventory adjustments to remove them from stock. However, as per GST guidelines, there is a specific rule that we have to reverse Input GST availed for such items and needs to be reported

        • Develop and publish a Zoho Recruit extension on the marketplace

          Hi, I'd like to develop a new extension for Zoho Recruit. I've started to use Zoho Developers creating a Zoho CRM extension. But when I try to create a new extension here https://sigma.zoho.com/workspace/testtesttestest/apps/new I d'ont see the option of Zoho Recruit (only CRM, Desk, Projects...). I do see extensions for Zoho Recruit in the marketplace. How would I go about to create one if the option is not available in sigma ? Cheers, Rémi.

        • Canadian Anti Spam Law

          In order to be able to comply with the new Canadian Anti Spam Law, I need to send out a Confirm Subscription email to all of our existing contacts. If I use the Subscribe tag, the user gets the following message: Registration Failed. Sorry! This contact is already present in the selected list. You can check this with your update profile link. If I include an 'Update Profile' link, it then sends an email which does not arrive immediately. Can you provide a tag or URL I can put in a Campaign Email

        • How to bulk update lookup fields

          "I have a primary key named Product SKU in one form called Master SKU (which contains details like price, color, size, etc.). I also have another form called FBA, which has the same primary key, Product SKU, and contains stock quantity information for

        • Change work hours per day for employees

          Hello, Is there a way to modify the work hours per day for employees in Zoho projects? This would be helpful for resource allocation to more accurately see when an employee who works 35 hours a week vs 40 hours has a full schedule. Thanks.

        • Record GST Paid for Imported Goods

          In Australia, goods that imported from overseas needs to pay GST per invocied value. In most case, the freight forwader (logistic agent) paid this on behalf of importer (us), and invoice us in together in their freight invocie.  How do we setup a proper

        • Unable to produce monthly P&L reports for previous years

          My company just migrated to Books this year. We have 5+ years financial data and need to generate a monthly P&L for 2019 and a monthly P&L YTD for 2020. The latter is easy, but I'm VERY surprised to learn that default reports in Zoho Books cannot create

        • Bulk Editing Multiple Invoices with Overwriting at time of upload

          Hello, I would like to edit a few 100 invoices. Only the HSN needs to be updated. When I am trying to upload the excel sheet with the data updated, I get an error: The Invoices are skipped as they already exist. I know the invoices exist but I would only

        • Oauth Redirects me to sign in page

          I am developing a postman script for me to securely get my credentials via Zoho Vault. With that, I need to authorize my postman to be able to access Zoho Vault. I am currently on Step 1 in this Zoho Vault | API Reference which redirects me to this guide

        • Here's why you should refrain from using EasyShip

          This is a screen recording which shows EasyShip performance issues. Note well! While we do use the Zoho-to-Easyship integration, the problems are wholly on the EasyShip side. The actual integration of data to EasyShip, and status updates back to Inventory,

        • How can I create a billable expense.?

          Hi, I've a bill of an expenses related to printing and stationary account but it recorded in non-billable expense category. How can I record this expense in billable category. Below is the pathway I've used to record the expense. Purchases. Expenses Click

        • Introducing Sub-Accounts in Zoho Books!

          Hello Everyone, Sub-Accounts is LIVE! Yes, you read it right. The much needed and most requested feature is now live in Zoho Books. The sub-accounts feature in Zoho Books will help you to classify your accounts further which will give you a more detailed view of your accounts while running reports. You can create sub-accounts for the below Accounts: Asset Cost of Goods Sold Expense Liability Fixed Asset Other Asset Other Current Asset Long Term Liability Other Current Liability Other Liability Other

        • How can I insert and update field data of a sub-form without adding data into the main form’s mandatory fields.

          1. I have a main form that contains a sub-form. I need to update the data of the sub-form from a function, but I am unable to do so. How can I achieve this in Zoho Creator? 2. How can I insert data into a sub-form without inserting data into the mandatory

        • How to autorespond for inactive users?

          Hi, we have a few inactive users that we would like to set up an autorespond to the sender telling that the email addresses are no longer active. How can we do that?

        • Cannot view or interact with polls on IOS

          When testing with Android the user will receive a pop up message when a poll is started and be able to access polls via the more menu. This is not the case when using IOS phones, there seems to be no way to view or interact at all.

        • Calendar view not working in Zoho Projects

          Hello Zoho team! Since this morning, clicking on the "Calendar" link in the Projects Menu doesn't do anything. It seems to refresh the page, but it doesn't open the calendar view for tasks. It affects every user in my company. Closing and opening the

        • Multi Select Filter off comma separated values

          Hey friends! I have a query table for a couple of dashboards/ charts. In one of the dashboards, I'm trying to create a multi select filter for the service that is being sold. The way we look at services is by a CRM field titled, "Mail Lead Entities,"

        • Dashboard filter applied to all reports but not visible on report

          Hi, I have two reports which shows sales transactions data - one is graph and the other a pivot table. Both reports use the same base table. There are no filters on the reports so it shows all transactions for the last 6 months. I want to create a dashboard that includes the graph and the pivot table report. However, I want the dashboard to have a fixed date filter that only shows the last 30 days of data i.e. filtering the underlying graph and pivot table to show the last 30 days of order data.

        • Equipment Scheduling for Efficient Field Service Operations

          Zoho FSM helps you nail the critical aspect of field service management, i.e., scheduling the right technicians to the service appointments. Ensuring that technicians have access to the right tools and machinery for their job is also of paramount importance.

        • Chat issues

          I am having a couple problems with the zoho chat feature. When I use Chat from the App bar, not everyone is getting messages (these are to different accounts, Yahoo & Gmail). I did finally get the Users to show up correctly. However, when in an active chat with someone, I only get one sound notification. No other notifications, pop up or otherwise, come through to alert if another message was sent. Also, the bottom Chat bar that shows Active chats while I am in email does not show any online contacts

        • Problem with multiple pages record template

          Hi, I have a record template with multiple pages. When I print, it has gaps between pages. How can i fix it?

        • Next Page