Close-up of the logo at the headquarters of software company Zoho, Pleasanton, California, July 2, 2019. … [+]
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Paul Greenberg is a well-known author and expert on customer relationship management systems. He is also the founder and Managing Principal of The 56 Group, LLC a CRM consulting firm that, for nearly two decades, has published a list of the best CRM applications of the year. The list is closely monitored by people in the know and is a great resource for anyone in any size business looking to purchase or enhance their company’s CRM system.
A vast amount of work goes into preparing the list. For this year’s study, the Greenberg company received applications from 60 of the leading CRM providers and analyzed more than 4,000 pages of data. CRMs are classified into different categories, but Greenberg’s focus isn’t just on features or functions. For him, it’s about strategy.
“To win the award you have to show that in the year immediately before submission (in the same year) you had a huge impact on the market,” he wrote in ZDNet. “And you have the infrastructure, strategy, and company resources to sustain that impact over the next three years.”
So which CRM platform is the best, with the highest overall score? It turned out to be a product sold and implemented by my company: Zoho. You can read Greenberg’s detailed rationale here.
Considering that my company currently serves over 150 companies that use Zoho I think I can also give my opinion about it. I’m not saying I’m familiar with some of the other “difference winners” like Oracle, ServiceNow and Thunderhead. But I know that Zoho is not only affordable but truly offers not only CRM, but a great business platform for small and medium sized companies with advanced modules for project management , accounting, marketing and HR built around its core CRM application.
I have three types of clients who use Zoho. There are people who make contact, calendar and email management and that’s all they can do. I have a group of clients who take advantage of other Zoho modules with some customization and third-party integration. And I have (very) very few who actually use Zoho’s very powerful AI, developers and automation tools. The last two groups are my favorites, because … well … I’m a partner and I earn from services and those clients generally need our help.
You can imagine that since my firm is a Zoho partner this column will be a Zoho lovefest. Not completely.
In addition to Zoho, my company sells five other CRMs (some of which are also on the Greenberg list) and, depending on a client’s needs, one or more of those CRMs may be more appropriate. For example, companies that have fully invested in Microsoft may be better candidates for Dynamics. Those who want a simple but powerful sales -driven tool can be happy with Pipedrive. CRM decisions driven by marketers, rather than salespeople, may prefer HubSpot.
And besides, Zoho is far from perfect.
For example, I want to warn my clients about Zoho’s support. Unfortunately, this leaves a lot to be desired. Most of the company’s support comes from India. For sure, people are very kind and ultimately support problems are almost always resolved. But it can be a long, frustrating process. Often there are communication issues. Sometimes I feel a lack of urgency. It was all very polite and orderly. But it takes time to find the right person to fix the problems. I shouldn’t complain, should I? When our clients need support, they usually approach us, instead of dealing with Zoho and that is billable work. But honestly, it’s not the kind of billable work we want.
Another warning: the product management team at Zoho, like other cloud providers, seems satisfied by throwing surprises at their users. It’s normal for me to wake up in the morning and discover that the company has made on-the-fly changes to its interface overnight so I’m very scratchy in my head and wondering what happened to a button or drop down formerly there and was not, or now acting differently. Or no longer works. And then… days later it is magically resolved.
As a Zoho partner, I have a strong feeling that I am competing with Zoho for business. This is a common issue in channel partner conflict and Zoho needs to do a better job of resolving it. We have been selling the product since 2014 and we already have many clients. But unfortunately the company doesn’t give us leads and they don’t offer our services to existing customers – services that will help those customers continue to enjoy using the platform for a longer period of time. They provide a lot of training and technical resources for their partners. But the company has to decide if it is a channel company or not. At the very least, they should be open to partnering more with their channel partner experiences, regardless of their size.
For what it costs, I share it all – the pros and cons – with prospective clients when they review Zoho. But I will share something else: apart from being my partner, my ten-person firm is a customer. We use Zoho. It is a mission critical system. And the good news, it’s generally reliable and critical to my business. I eat dog food and I like it. Many.
That’s why I can’t argue with Greenberg’s choice of Zoho as the best CRM of 2022. There is no perfect CRM and there are many great candidates. But I like the approach to the company’s business platform and I hope they can do it. And despite its flaws, Zoho is superb.
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