Zoho Updates Its CRM Product For SMEs

Zoho Corporation has unveiled a new version of Bigin, the company’s Customer Relations Management (CRM) solution for small businesses. The solution has been offering a simple but powerful CRM system without the high barrier of entry and cost.

The update Zoho has launched further supports small and micro businesses by providing them the tools and insights they need to maintain and grow meaningful and high-value relationships with customers in a challenging economic environment.

“Small businesses face challenges in choosing the right technology for managing their customer-facing operations because of constraints related to time, cost, and software implementation,” said Veerakumar Natarajan, Country Head, Zoho Kenya. “Bigin is the only solution that brings together all customer operations like sales, onboarding, delivery, training, advocacy, and more into an intuitive interface that takes only 30 minutes to deploy. By bringing together all the facets of customer operations into a single view, Bigin allows small businesses to have a more accurate understanding of the customer’s journey. These insights help them attract and retain customers, ultimately growing the business. The fast-growing adoption of Bigin shows the expanding appetite of small businesses who want and need CRM technology suited to their particular needs, helping them move beyond old-school spreadsheets.”

Since Bigin’s launch in 2020, it has stood out as a robust, easy-to-use, and welcoming CRM solution thanks to its 30-minute set up promise. Bigin has seen a revenue growth of 144% in 2022 in Kenya, indicating the revenue has doubled compared to 2021. Around 65% of Bigin’s customers globally have never used a CRM previously, making it the ideal choice for business owners who are looking to move away from spreadsheets. When they outgrow Bigin, Zoho also offers them an easy migration to its full-fledged CRM solution. Bigin now boasts 20,000 customers and continues to help small and micro businesses manage all of their customer-facing operations within a unified platform.

Bigin’s latest version includes the introduction of Team Pipelines, which allow customer-facing teams to manage their distinctive operations using a set of pipelines and sub-pipelines within a single Bigin account. Competitive offerings often cater only to a single function—like sales—whereas Bigin is an efficient solution for all customer-facing teams. New features compile customer operations into one place, and enable tighter alignment and collaboration between individuals and teams without compromising the simplicity that makes Bigin stand out.

Key Product Updates

• Team Pipelines: This feature connects and streamlines various customer operations in one place, offering small businesses an easy way to manage their day-to-day processes and a single source of truth for analyzing customer data.
• Connected Pipelines: Automates the flow of customer data across processes, improving the customer experience and saving time on manual data entry.
• Toppings: Additional functionality and third-party integrations can be added to address specific business needs. Examples include the ‘Email-In’ topping which maps emails to customer records and the ‘File Cabinet’ topping which automates file collection and management.
• Mobile Capabilities: Zoho is providing new features across all platforms, including iOS, iPadOS, Android, and macOS and has added a new feature called Dynamic Display which allows users to customize the appearance of records in their pipelines. Bigin also recently updated its apps for the Apple’s iOS16 and Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 4 launches, where it was an exclusive launch partner.
• Developer Center: Bigin has opened its developer platform to a network of global app developers and partners who can create custom solutions for unique business needs. With various tools and components like custom fields, buttons, links, widgets, related lists, and REST APIs, developers can create new Toppings and monetise them in the Bigin Marketplace.