Learn your possibilities within Zoho.
Example #1:
Art Design Process
Several years ago we helped a highly successful business out of Phoenix named Sportiqe migrate from spreadsheets to Salesforce.com. A couple of years later, they migrated to Zoho CRM Plus.
We quickly completed the migration within a few hours time...and continued to work with them periodically to maximize their usage of the system. At the time, Zoho ONE didn't exist (where all Zoho apps are available at an Enterprise level), so we focused on CRM and Campaigns.
A couple of years into Zoho, we were approached with a question - could we look at their art design process?
Their art design process was supported by a proprietary system built in a SQL database. It was showing its age - it didn't have connectivity to the CRM and it wasn't built to scale. We looked at the structure of the data along with an understanding of the basic flow and set out to investigate what Zoho could do...
We knew we needed something that was similar to ease adoption, yet allowed for improvements in functionality, usability, reportability and ultimately provide a positive extension of their brand to their prospect / customer.
After reviewing Zoho Projects and native functionality within Zoho CRM, we decided that although we could leverage them to provide similar functionality, it wouldn't provide an impressive user experience. We were looking to create an elegant design to manage the process - we decided to build it in Zoho Creator.
With Zoho Creator, you can build almost any app your company needs...while connecting it with the other Zoho products seamlessly. The only challenge they had was they were on Zoho CRM which didn't include an enterprise level of Zoho Creator - but Zoho ONE does. So as part of the implementation, we migrated them to Zoho ONE.
As you can see by the pictures below, we have created an elegant design that manages their art design flow. Sales, the creative department and management all have a very clear dashboard to work with regarding the workflow. Art is requested from within Zoho CRM (and a deal can be created in Zoho CRM automatically for the account referenced when the request is submitted), the appropriate parties are notified, the creative team then can drag and drop the images into the request - an email with link goes to management to approve the art or decline it. Once approved, it gets sent to the rep as a link in an email. The rep can click the link and review and also forward the link to the prospect so they can review it. The link that is sent to the prospect is designed to mimic their catalog page. The rep can include pricing and notes related to the art. Everything is tracked and associated to provide a clear understanding of where things are and how things are connected.
The future roadmap includes the prospect updating and placing their order from within the link they receive - saving the rep time.
This implementation has not only saved the company future IT overhead costs, it allows it to scale easily while improving the prospect / customer engagement in the process. This also unlocks better visibility via analytics to see what's selling, what's being requested and more because of the data being collected can be easily reported. All of this was built natively within the Creator product.
Now that we have migrated them to Zoho ONE because of this project, it now opens the door to unlock the possibilities in many other areas of improvement for no additional software costs. We are excited to continue helping them maximize their company with Zoho.
We quickly completed the migration within a few hours time...and continued to work with them periodically to maximize their usage of the system. At the time, Zoho ONE didn't exist (where all Zoho apps are available at an Enterprise level), so we focused on CRM and Campaigns.
A couple of years into Zoho, we were approached with a question - could we look at their art design process?
Their art design process was supported by a proprietary system built in a SQL database. It was showing its age - it didn't have connectivity to the CRM and it wasn't built to scale. We looked at the structure of the data along with an understanding of the basic flow and set out to investigate what Zoho could do...
We knew we needed something that was similar to ease adoption, yet allowed for improvements in functionality, usability, reportability and ultimately provide a positive extension of their brand to their prospect / customer.
After reviewing Zoho Projects and native functionality within Zoho CRM, we decided that although we could leverage them to provide similar functionality, it wouldn't provide an impressive user experience. We were looking to create an elegant design to manage the process - we decided to build it in Zoho Creator.
With Zoho Creator, you can build almost any app your company needs...while connecting it with the other Zoho products seamlessly. The only challenge they had was they were on Zoho CRM which didn't include an enterprise level of Zoho Creator - but Zoho ONE does. So as part of the implementation, we migrated them to Zoho ONE.
As you can see by the pictures below, we have created an elegant design that manages their art design flow. Sales, the creative department and management all have a very clear dashboard to work with regarding the workflow. Art is requested from within Zoho CRM (and a deal can be created in Zoho CRM automatically for the account referenced when the request is submitted), the appropriate parties are notified, the creative team then can drag and drop the images into the request - an email with link goes to management to approve the art or decline it. Once approved, it gets sent to the rep as a link in an email. The rep can click the link and review and also forward the link to the prospect so they can review it. The link that is sent to the prospect is designed to mimic their catalog page. The rep can include pricing and notes related to the art. Everything is tracked and associated to provide a clear understanding of where things are and how things are connected.
The future roadmap includes the prospect updating and placing their order from within the link they receive - saving the rep time.
This implementation has not only saved the company future IT overhead costs, it allows it to scale easily while improving the prospect / customer engagement in the process. This also unlocks better visibility via analytics to see what's selling, what's being requested and more because of the data being collected can be easily reported. All of this was built natively within the Creator product.
Now that we have migrated them to Zoho ONE because of this project, it now opens the door to unlock the possibilities in many other areas of improvement for no additional software costs. We are excited to continue helping them maximize their company with Zoho.
"A Special thank you David Edkins. David [has] been instrumental to getting this done. Thank you David for understanding the vision and scope of this project to deliver something to us that will allow us to continue to grow and evolve our business..”
- Matt, Sportiqe CEO
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David Edkins
Founder and President
Started in business working in Hewlett-Packard finance at 17. Moved to their consulting division and at 24, along with three other people, helped organize the engagement of localized consulting partners on an international scale. Later he leveraged his sales skills to promote HP Consulting to Fortune 100 companies across the country and became a member of their achievers club. He left HP to buy, sell, lease, and flip commercial office properties. During this time he created an online market place for constituents to share their wants and needs across the country - it encompassed 10,000s of members. For the past 10 years David has helped hundreds of companies across the country increase their profits by helping them efficiently leverage cloud-based systems - and now is only focused on the Zoho ONE platform. He lives in Rocklin, CA with his wife of 23 years and has four wonderful children.
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Example #2:
Mail Merge and BPOs
A newer client of ours, Housing Group Fund, is a private lender and real estate turn around team. They buy portfolios of distressed real estate debt and try to work out the loans with the borrowers. They also buy distressed properties to either hold as rentals or fix up and sell.
They had been managing the two sides of the business with spreadsheets, but found they were starting to miss things - things were falling through the cracks. In this business when something falls through the cracks it can cost thousands of dollars or worse yet, lose completely on an investment they've made. They needed something. They initially chose Zoho CRM to manage the operational logistics of the fix and flip side of the business. After a month of seeing the improvement in that side of the business, they looked at the loan side of the business.
They were looking to scale it, but again were fearful things would slip through the cracks as they grew. They were working off of several Google spreadsheets. They needed something that would help them manage the process better and scale. They were looking at specialized software that cost $500 per user per month.
After participating in a demo with them regarding this product, we were able to see the main priority points as well as some nice to have items. Zoho CRM could manage the bulk of it, but there were a couple of requests that were not baked in - mail merge and providing a portal for their brokers to do broker price opinions.
It seemed again Zoho Creator would be a good fit and we migrated them over to Zoho ONE.
Within a few hours we had created a portal for brokers to enter BPOs as well as have their own dashboard to see what open BPOs they have and which ones they've completed so they could track those properties for potential listings later...all by simply assigning the broker to a property in Zoho CRM. Once the broker completes the BPO, including files, the data they enter feeds back into Zoho CRM along with the files as attachments to the record. The partners now also have a clean dashboard to see what outstanding BPOs they have 'out there'.
Even though Zoho CRM has a mail merge function that allows you to merge documents in bulk and send for electronic signature, they didn't want to send documents for electronic signature, they wanted to send them to a mail house. They also wanted to preview the documents before sending. Again, within a few hours, we put together a connection between Zoho CRM and Zoho Creator to preview and push the batches of letters to go out to the mail house using an API.
They now have clarity for how they manage the business, who's doing what, what's outstanding and what action needs to take place. Amazing how quickly we were able to implement these improvement for them - without increasing their software costs.
They had been managing the two sides of the business with spreadsheets, but found they were starting to miss things - things were falling through the cracks. In this business when something falls through the cracks it can cost thousands of dollars or worse yet, lose completely on an investment they've made. They needed something. They initially chose Zoho CRM to manage the operational logistics of the fix and flip side of the business. After a month of seeing the improvement in that side of the business, they looked at the loan side of the business.
They were looking to scale it, but again were fearful things would slip through the cracks as they grew. They were working off of several Google spreadsheets. They needed something that would help them manage the process better and scale. They were looking at specialized software that cost $500 per user per month.
After participating in a demo with them regarding this product, we were able to see the main priority points as well as some nice to have items. Zoho CRM could manage the bulk of it, but there were a couple of requests that were not baked in - mail merge and providing a portal for their brokers to do broker price opinions.
It seemed again Zoho Creator would be a good fit and we migrated them over to Zoho ONE.
Within a few hours we had created a portal for brokers to enter BPOs as well as have their own dashboard to see what open BPOs they have and which ones they've completed so they could track those properties for potential listings later...all by simply assigning the broker to a property in Zoho CRM. Once the broker completes the BPO, including files, the data they enter feeds back into Zoho CRM along with the files as attachments to the record. The partners now also have a clean dashboard to see what outstanding BPOs they have 'out there'.
Even though Zoho CRM has a mail merge function that allows you to merge documents in bulk and send for electronic signature, they didn't want to send documents for electronic signature, they wanted to send them to a mail house. They also wanted to preview the documents before sending. Again, within a few hours, we put together a connection between Zoho CRM and Zoho Creator to preview and push the batches of letters to go out to the mail house using an API.
They now have clarity for how they manage the business, who's doing what, what's outstanding and what action needs to take place. Amazing how quickly we were able to implement these improvement for them - without increasing their software costs.
Our Philosophy
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#1 Keep it Simple
Most "consulting" companies are looking for billable hours - we look to have raving fans. We do not hide behind complexity to make it nebulous for you.
Our philosophy is to start with where you are to allow for simple adoption of the new aspects we introduce. Once you/we start seeing the results, we can increase the complexity. |
#2 Be Easy to Work With
Our culture is driven by the golden rule - treat others as you would like to be treated. Who wants to work with a jerk? No one.
We are adaptive - we can go as fast or as slow as you like. We have some clients that want to build out everything from the start and others that want to gradually adopt different aspects of the software. We are happy work with any and all...after all we are all part of the same family. |
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#3 Know Your Sh*t
We are constantly educating ourselves in new best practices, new features of Zoho apps and constantly looking to apply these principles with our clients.
This allows us to come up with creative solutions. Our knowledge for how to structure things as well as what has worked for other businesses like yours (or even in other industries) allows us to quickly arrive at actionable applications of aspects of Zoho. It's great to be able to say "yes" to most client's requests. |
#4 Respect Budgets
Since we only specialize in working with small businesses, we know budgets can ebb and flow. We also know the power of leveraging technology to help increase sales while decreasing expenses - but we need to start somewhere.
We offer blocks of time that do not expire - most opt for nine hours for $1,495. We are amazingly fast at implementation. We have clients that take months to get through the time. We also offer monthly retainers. Again, we're easy to work with. |
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Don't Have Zoho ONE?
Zoho ONE is a platform that works as the "Operating System for Business". It encompasses over 45 different, but interconnected apps that manage every aspect of a business. It includes the following apps:
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Email hosting
Online word processor Online presentation creator Online spreadsheets HR recruiting / job listings HR employee management HR payroll (CA, TX) Website chat Website chatbots Website monitoring Event management Online meetings Note taking / journaling Marketing management |
Customer Relationship Management
Email autoresponder (drip) campaigns Social campaigns Social media management Customer service ticketing Traditional project management Agile project management Online subscriptions Full books and accounting Inventory management Phone integration Website creator Unified channel chat ...and more |