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I Could Do Worse Than to Get Stuck With Zoho, But Zoho Could Do Better, Too.

It’s got some slick features.  I haven’t talked myself out of it yet.  There are some serious annoyances that may cause me to not use it; it’s certainly ready for prime time. I’ll start with what it does right:

Speed:  On my dad’s crappy gateway with a slow Verizon 2GW network, it was usable.  I wouldn’t say fast, but certainly as fast as Google Docs on a bad day.  The speed wasn’t a problem; it’s not quite desktop speed, and it’s not quite Highrise speed.  But it’s faster than say, FreeCrm (which would sell more software if they designed it better).  Anyway–speed is acceptable.

Ease of Use:  I’m going out on a limb.  It’s got a different ethos than 37 Signals’ stuff, but it’s certainly usable.  Doing what it wants you to do is managable, but there are some (again) stupid kludges that should be unacceptable.  I’ll get to those in a minute.   Entering in a contact, setting workflow rules, assigning tasks, emailing a contact, importing emails all worked well.  It worked with my google documents (not my google aps).

Getting to your data:   You can grab reports of 2-3k people at a time–and while you have to cut and paste into Excel using a paste-as-text utility (or use notepad), it’s got the feature to check it off.  You can make reports like ACT based on Last Activity, Date Created, and more.  It doesn’t have all of the legacy interface problems that ACT has–meaning that it’s clean, and the interface is not too busy.

Working With Teams:  There are too many clicks–which indicates a lack of thought.  But you can set up and manage workflow rules on the first try without hating it.  A new Realtor can get an 8×8 campaign.  A new client can be given the Loan In Process steps.   This is where Zoho talks about it:   http://zohocrm.wiki.zoho.com/Managing-Workflow.html

Cases:  There are neigh unlimited ‘cases’ for use with this thing; which means that you can have trouble tickets, etc.

Price:  Free for three users.  Has intelligent (but not 37 Signals Simple) rules for that sort of thing.

Accounts/Tracking:  Haven’t dug deep, but it’s got some robust account/tracking rules and things that I can certainly get be

Upgrades:  You have the Zoho Platform which has sprung up as muchrooms on a spring day, doing everything that MS office does, or the critical 90% of what MS office does and sharing in an “easy as hell” way.   Projects looks promising (I’m going to take marlowe’s advice and really, really try basecamp first), but this projects software looks promising, and has a good balance (or mushy middle) between being corporate and 2.0.

What I Don’t Like About Zoho CRM:

There are lots of things I don’t like about it.  First of all, it doesn’t use Zoho’s Docs suite to do mail merges; it again doesn’t spit out letters.  Part of my marketing is inundating new people with mail.  But seriously–I send and fax out a lot of in process messages and it doesn’t give me what I need.  It needs an ACT Style way of writing letters; I can work in OO or Word, but I don’t want to have to; it’s again a kludge that I’m having a hard time digging.

It also should be a “google aps” substitute.  I guess servee may get us to where we intend to go, but I’m not sure yet.

I’m going to give FRee CRM Another look before I circle back.  I might give sugar CRM a look as well.

The criteria (unweighted-failing in one area probably means ultimately failing)

-ease to enter contract

-ease to enter workflow

-speed.

-part-of-a-group

Oh, and By the Way:  I’m looking for a Wigetized version of this theme: 3 Column Pressrow.  I want to do some cool things with it, so if you know of a wigetized version, that would be vv fabulous.  

 And In Case You Missed It:

The Ubiquitous Fast Company article on “Is the Tipping Point Toast”  You kids had your chance to miss it last week.  Now it’s found you again, so read it.

The Positivity Blog on Michael Jordan’s Guide To Success

Totally off the wall article I loved on Using CL for Blog Promotion

OK….that’s enough.  (I’ve got a good sized backlog of things I intend to link to–one of the things you can count on with me is a minimum of 3 interesting articles tagged on to the end of each article I do.  I am just curious about this…Fiona came on…and we’re steady goin’ nowhere).

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