Zoho CRM 2016 Is Here
Responding To CRM Needs
Zoho announced a major update recently that includes the release of multiple tools aimed at helping salespeople throughout the sales cycle from beginning to end.
What’s new in Zoho CRM? According to this Zoho blog post, “Almost everything, to be honest. SalesInbox and SalesSignals give you more context for every conversation. Expanded multichannel support makes Zoho CRM 2016 the most tightly integrated system on the market. Add advanced features like Page Layouts, Sandbox, and new customization options, and you can see we’ve gotten a major renovation.”
Zoho Is Growing In Popularity
Zoho isn’t exactly the first option many people think of when you’re talking about CRM, but the company is growing at a rapid pace with a reported some 300,000 businesses actively using the platform.
While the latest upgrade brought a literal 50 new features to the CRM, the main focus of the updates deal with three major functions—incentives, communication, and analysis—all of which have the potential to help Zoho compete with CRM giants like Salesforce in the marketplace.
SalesSignals For Real-Time Info
One of the biggest updates of Zoho CRM 2016 is Zoho’s new and improved SalesSignals feature which has been revamped so your sales team has everything they need to engage customers anywhere. Salespeople will now have multi channel support for email, in-person meetings, live chats, phone calls and social media.
You can also expect notifications whenever a new visitor looks at your company website or a returning customer opens an email. Nifty, huh?
An Email Inbox For Sales People
SalesInbox is another big feature introduced in this update that has salespeople talking. SalesInbox organizes email according to salespeople’s CRM data and prioritizes them to reflect their importance.
Salespeople can also customize the inbox as they see fit, defining their own filters based on the criteria they set. But the capabilities of SalesInbox go beyond organization, allowing salespeople to create new leads directly from email.
SalesInbox works with Gmail, Yahoo Mail, Zoho Mail and other email hosting services.
All-Access Zoho
Last but not least, one of the most exciting announcements of this upgrade (in our humble opinion) is the launch of Zoho Marketplace. The Zoho Marketplace will provide app developers, ISVs, partners and others with the Zoho Developer tool, access to Zoho Creator and access to the company’s Open REST APIs.
The Zoho Marketplace is a commission-free area where developers can submit their apps and extensions for approval and once approved, sell directly to the client base.
Upcoming news: We have an announcement coming soon about Commercient’s participation in the Zoho Marketplace.
Responding To The Market
With 50 new and exciting updates to play with, Zoho users have a brand new arsenal stocked with essential tools for “breaking sales records without breaking a sweat.” This update to Zoho CRM shows a company that keeps its ear to the ground and stays on top of market demands.
Two trends currently pushing the market in new areas that Zoho has seemingly made an effort to address are the use of digital assistants to increase accessibility of business data and the emergence of machine learning to help with customer engagement.
And the icing on top of the cake? The 2016 version of Zoho CRM has the same pricing structure customers were familiar with before all of the new updates:
Free up to 10 users with paid plans starting at $12 per user per month for the standard edition, $20 per user for the Professional Edition and $35 per user for Enterprise.
