Business Systems / Zoho One / How We Use It
After several years of using different Zoho applications and eventually ending up with the Zoho One plan, we decided to step back and have a look at all the Zoho applications we use and what we use them for.
We started with the core applications within our business; CRM, Books, Desk, and Mail. Then with the Zoho One plan, we picked up more as we developed the integration and automation across our systems.
Our Integrations
View Customer Emails within CRM
We have our Zoho Mail email service integrated with our CRM so when looking at a customer, we can easily see all email exchanges with them. This is particularly useful when following up a sales proposal, either with a lead or an existing customer.
Internal Integration - External Integrations available e.g. Gmail, Microsoft 365.
Add Email Attachments to Your File Storage Instantly
It's so convenient being able to add an email's attachment directly to our Zoho Workdrive file storage. We can easily browse existing folders, or create new folders.
Internal Integration - External Integrations available e.g. OneDrive, Dropbox.
See Your Customer's Quotes and Invoices within CRM
We can see all Quotations/Estimates, Sales Orders, and Invoices for a customer directly from their CRM record. Additionally, we can create new transactions all within CRM.
Internal Integration - External Integrations available e.g. Xero, Quickbooks.
Create Quotes and Invoices within Your Help Desk
It is easy to generate Quotes/Estimates and Invoices within our help desk. With the Desk and Books integration we can keep on top of billing out products are services directly whilst working on a support ticket.
Internal Integration
Forms to Automatically Create Leads in Your CRM
We use the Zoho Forms application to allow submissions of our 'New Enquiries' form on our contact page to create new Leads in CRM. We get notified of the form submission, and all the required information is in the right place in CRM Leads, therefore allowing us to use the full sales experience within CRM immediately.
Internal Integration - External Integrations available!
Synchronise Telephone Call and Contact Data with CRM
The 3CX and Zoho CRM integration includes:
- Call Journals – calls are logged as CRM call records
- Contact Synchronisation – inbound calls from external numbers trigger a CRM contact lookup to add to 3CX Contacts, so the caller name is automatically shown on your phone’s display when receiving the call.
- Create a new contact automatically when a call is received from an unknown number (optional).
External Integration - other telephone system suppliers available!
We did a mixture of migrating existing activities to Zoho One applications (e.g. our email hosting, website hosting, and bookkeeping) and discovering then making use of the applications within the Zoho One suite (e.g. creating some useful forms with Zoho Forms, and utilising Zoho SalesIQ for setting up live chat on our website and the various customer portals provided by Zoho).
We have one external integration to link our CRM and telephone system activities. Zoho CRM can link to many telephone systems, so if you're tied to a different telecoms supplier for a while, fear not - you may be able to link Zoho CRM to it. Similarly, Zoho offers many external integrations across it's application suite - let us know what you're looking for.
Your migration to Zoho One doesn't need to be a big leap.
There's incredible value using just 2-3 of the available applications. We can work with you to discover the rest.
Please note that by subscribing and using Zoho's applications and services you agree to their Terms of Service.
