Introducing Connected Records in Zoho CRM : Bringing customer context to every aspect of your business process

Hello Everyone,

#Earlyaccessfeature

We are excited to unveil phase one of a powerful enhancement to CRM for Everyone. This is a huge step forward in our efforts to achieve our vision of democratizing Zoho CRM for all with the introduction of Connected Records.

With CRM for Everyone, businesses can onboard all customer-facing teams onto the CRM platform to provide the best services for their customers. Teams work in their own designated spaces on the platform, and more often than not, customer context gets lost as tasks transition from one team to another. To address this challenge, we have introduced Connected Records - a powerful feature that will help multiple teams coordinate seamlessly. Connected records enable teams to focus on their processes while the CRM handles coordination, delivering the right customer context to the right team at the right time.

So what are connected records?

Connected records help users link records between two modules in their CRM system to get customer context while executing processes. This feature helps improve coordination by bridging the gap between team modules and organization modules.

Whether it's linking a contact to a product demo and then linking the product demo to a contract or linking an account to a contract, or linking a deal to a training service, this feature ensures all related data in records is easily available for different teams at the right time to execute their processes. (See image below)

From the above image, we can understand that the connection for each record will differ depending on the specific task or use case, making it unique to that record.

How can you create connected records?

You can create connected records in two ways :

Manual creation : Create connected records manually from within an organization module linking it to a record in the team module or from within a team module linking it to another team module.
Auto-connect records using workflows : When you have a clear outline of the various steps in your sales process, you can connect records from one step to another automatically using a workflow rule. This will help maintain continuity between the two steps and also provide the teams working on these records at both steps with clear customer context.

What else do connected records offer?

With connected records,requesters can raise requests from any module instead of navigating to the My Requests tab every time.
When records are linked between two modules, users can use public fields to display record details to team members who are not part of the module, so essential information is available for those members to complete their process efficiently.

When can you use connected records across modules?

Let's understand how to use connected records with a use case. Say, a sales executive is working to close a deal ( Zylker ) with a promising prospect.

The sales pipeline created by the sales team is listed below:

Step 1 - Analysis : The marketing team will need to develop and provide effective sales collateral to convince the prospect.
Step 2 - Product demo : The pre-sales team will need to provide a product demonstration for the prospect.
Step3 - Deal Won : The pre-sales team will need to assist the customer with onboarding once the prospect purchases the product.
Step 4 - Training : Finally, the training team will need to provide training and assistance for the customer.

From the above scenario, it’s clear that multiple teams coordinate across four distinct steps from within their respective modules to successfully close a single deal. With team members working together in the Zylker deal closure process, each team requires access to relevant data about the deal to carry out their tasks. This is precisely where connected records come into play, providing a seamless way to link and share critical information across teams.

Manual creation of connected records

The sales executive who is working on the prospect for the Zylker deal manages to convince them with a sales collateral and move them to the Product demo step. To deliver detailed demos, the pre-sales executive needs access to some deal-related data like whether the customer is new or existing, the organization's size, and the prospect's industry.

The sales executive can provide this information to the pre-sales by marking only those fields as Public and connecting this record to the Product Demo module. He can simply raise a request to the pre-sales team directly from the Zylker Deals record of the Deals module asking them to provide a product demo for the customer, thus connecting an org module with a team module.

After the pre-sales executive has completed his task of providing a demo for the Zylker record, the next step would be to draft a contract for the same customer. Here, the pre-sales executive can raise a new request from within the Demo module to the legal team asking them to get a contract ready for the Zylker deal. Thus, connecting two team modules - the Demo module & the Legal Module.

From this, we understand that each record's connection will be different. They will differ on a record level based on the use case or task at hand. Connected records will achieve connections between org modules and team modules or between two team modules.

Auto-creation of connected records

It is a predefined process to arrange onboarding guidance for every customer who's purchased a product. Manually creating an onboarding request for every record that reaches the Deal won stage can be time-consuming and repetitive for the sales team. So they can simply automate this process. This can be done by setting up a workflow rule to automatically connect records from one module to another.

The sales executive sets up a workflow rule saying whenever a new record is created with the deal won stage, create a new connected record in the pre-sales team module, thus automatically raising a request to assist the customer in setting up their account.

Thus, when you know your sales pipeline, you can create a connected record from within a workflow to link a record from one step to the next.

With connected records, users can raise requests directly from any module, eliminating the need to navigate to the My Requests tab. From the above use case, after onboarding the customer, the sales executive would need to raise a training request to the training team. The sales executive can simply raise the request from within the Zylker record of the team module itself instead of raising this request from the My Request tab.

Benefits of using Connected Records :

1. Connected records over Look up : The key difference between a Look-up and Connected Record relationship is flexibility. Connected Records are dynamic and can link any two modules anytime, whereas Look-up relationships are fixed, typically linking only Contacts or Accounts without providing deal-specific context.

2. Easy Data Access: Instantly view all relevant information for any record without jumping between modules.

3. Improved Coordination: Teams can share a unified view of data, reducing silos and enhancing coordination.

4. Contextual Understanding: Provide context for interactions, helping teams deliver personalized service or informed responses.

5. Data Consistency: Maintain consistency by ensuring updates to one record propagate to its connections where applicable.

We hope this new enhancement brings you as much excitement as it does to us, and that your work is simplified as you navigate through the new version of CRM. Please reach out to us in the comments below if you have questions about this enhancement.