Overall Feedback after 35 days of trial period with lots of ups and downs.

Overall Feedback after 35 days of trial period with lots of ups and downs.

Hey Guys,
with this post I want to give you an overall feedback of what I recognized during the past 35 Days of trial.
This feedback is written by someone who worked for more than 10 years as trainer and consultant for one of leading CRM providers for veterinary hospitals and I have a very good IT understanding.

First of all: The Suite provided by Zoho One and its apps are awesome. I've never before seen such a wide range of apps with great features! Very big complement! I did really deep dives into CRM, Desk, Project, Marketing Hub, Campaigns, Flow, Creator and Books. Further I played around with SalesIQ, Sitebuilder, Social, Mail and PageSense.

Each of those do a really good job - even so I recognized some critical weaknesses here and there. - I guess some of the supporters of each App are already afraid if they read my name, I raised a lot of requests and suggestions within the last weeks.

I'm a nerd, so my understanding of software is usually very well and its easy to get my hands on it. But for sure, such a wide range of functionality can't be always self explaining. Therefore I like, that most applications are very well documented, even the API description are well maintained. Webinars, YT Videos and the help resources as well as this forum helped me a lot to gain a good understanding. 

However, with all the good things, there are two major weaknesses which relate to the whole suite of Zoho One:
"ZOHO One is not one!"
I guess you guys work with very independent teams on sprints or something similar and from being 10 years in software business I know it is not easy. BUT:
Please take care of these both points for your future development. Whenever I got really upset or frustrated, it was because of one these points:
1. Unique user experience
2. Persistant Integration of other Zoho Services

In Details
1. Using different apps is a nightmare, because every app is has a different user interface. Best example is the individual way into the settings menu: Sometimes it's a gear ⚙️ icon on the right top corner, sometimes on the left top corner, sometimes you need to lookout for two crossed tools and as this is not enough sometimes you need to click on your account picture to get to the settings. Similar behavior you can find for switching between the applications. Those are just very easy examples, but it continues with how lists and forms are displayed.

For another example compare the functionality and capabilities of creating a Modul in CRM vs creating a Module in Creator. I know it makes sense to give someone more flexibilities in Zoho Creator but why don't you provide the same events and trigger? Why can't I add a "on Form Load" event in Zoho CRM? Why cant I populate the entries of a dropdown field via Deluge function like in Creator? Why cant I provide a filter for Lookup field in CRM?

Why can't I see my tasks from Zoho Desk in Zoho CRM?

Why does addresses have sometimes different Labels? like: Zip and Postcode? Sometimes there is Street1 and Street2, sometimes Address1 and Address2. 

Why is there a PHP wrapper for CRM, but for most other Apps not? Why does Marketing Hub not provide an API?

2. The integration of the different apps is a nightmare at least (but most-likely not only) for beginners who want to have an intense hands on on the whole suite of apps. At first, I thought there is just one Client Record where each application references its individual informations to. But it is ridicules bad: It is a nighmare of one-way sync, two-way sync, push and pull operations. Some in realtime, some with several hours in between of two sync. For some I can quiet good configure the field mapping and can even provide custom data (e.g. the leadsource) and for some I just can enable some random style "add lead to crm". As leads and contacts are coming from different sources and are edited from different interfaces all those connections are terrible to understand (in their dependences) and get fucked up very easily.


Many thanks for reading till here! Even so there are questions above, I'm not asking for individual answers. Please just take this feedback as a very qualified suggestion list for the future. I kind of know why the things are as they are (individual product development, independent teams, outdated and new technology in older and newer developments). Whoever this does not prevent you from being able to work on both points if you decide to.
From my point of view this is very critical as your app universe wont shrink, it will grow further but if you forget the baseline you won't be able to provide a better universe than the self created Zapier-integration-multi-provider-app-universes out there.

Even so I don't want individual answers, please correct me if i'm wrong at some point.
Last but not least, if you as User/Consultant/Partner share my opinion, please comment and like  

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