Sometimes you just have to say how good a product is you’re working with. I previously did this with Pixelmator and I feel the urge to do it again right now. This time it’s Solve360 that’s making me happy.
When we started our new business we quickly settled on the need for a CRM system. I looked at the options and finally opted for ZOHO. SalesForce proved to be too expensive and ZOHO seemed to fit my needs. We’ve been working with ZOHO for about 4 months now and I seemed to be looking at the system less and less. I think one of the key factors in a CRM system is that your staff should be happy using it, in fact they should be excited to use it. Well, with ZOHO, this definitely was not the case.
In the end, there were three other things that made me want to look at other options:
- Decent integration and data export possibilities. ZOHO does have an API and you can export data to CSV and Excel and alike, but in some areas the API is quirky and the export possibilities are sometimes limited. I’m setting up my new IT infrastructure in a very loosely coupled way, with desparate systems integrating with eachother via HTTP (REST) and ZOHO facilitates this only to a certain extent
- Rigid way of handling sales. I’m a big fan of systems that don’t force you into a particular way of working. ZOHO unfortunately does this however. There’s a very strict division between Leads and Contacts (client), while I consider everybody to be a client, not just leads. It’s very forced at optimizing the sales process and not on serving the customer in the best way possible. I want to have a system that facilitates my serving our customers, not serving some VP of Sales we might eventually hire
- Last but not least there’s project management. Our sales process itself is not just about selling products, it’s about delivering service. In essence we’re a service provider and even in the sales process, it’s not about closing the deal, it’s about giving the customer the best service experience possible. This means I need a system that does not only help me with the conventional sales tasks (creating opportunities, upping the probability of a sale, sending out quotes), but also with more service-oriented things (task management is the most important one). And even after the sales process has finished, I need a tool that helps me manage the service we’re delivering to the client. ZOHO does not do this. It does have task management, but once a sale is done, it’s hard to keep using ZOHO to deliver service to the customer)
There are a few other things that made me look for other solutions (ZOHO’s UI is sluggish, not very Web 2.0 and sometimes hard to work with), but these were not the most important reasons.
One last thing kind of itched as well. As a service provider, ideally you want your suppliers (of for example IT tools) to be just like you: delivering excellent service. This was not the case with ZOHO. On the forums, questions remained unanswered from time to time, most of the time feature requests were answered with a simple ‘we do not support this at this time’ reply. This made me feel bad about forking out money for something like that.
Ironically on the ZOHO forums, I came across a thread where people were recommending other CRM solutions, amongst others Solve360 and this made me start to look around for better.
Fast-forward to today: I’ve been working all weekend to move my data from one place to the other (from ZOHO to Solve360 that is) and it’s been fun. The API is very usable (although it could use some improvements here and there–more on that later). The system is very flexible (which makes you think about your process–something I like, as opposed to being forced into a process that somebody else thought up for me). It supports project management, opens up to our actual customers (by publishing project-related info to them and even allowing them to work on the projects with you side by side) and doesn’t stop there. Integration with an email marketing solution (Constant Contact) is available and on top of that, it’s totally Web 2.0 (in the sense that it offers a very usable, very nice single-page UI). One minor thing (tongue in cheek): it has a button that strongly resembles the Windows start button and the button with which you can manipulate the windows (close, maximixe) are on the wrong side of the windows and being an avid Mac user, I don’t like that, but well, you can’t have it all, can you 
.
On top of all this one thing made me decide this was the company that was going to help solve my problem: their customer service so far is excellent. The API has a 12k call limit per day. I can understand this, but I really needed to move my data from ZOHO to CRM over the weekend and I didn’t want to run into the limit. So I fired off an email to them asking about this. Within an hour I had a reply, telling me they had taken off the limit for me. This was in line with all the other interactions I had with them: quick replies, to the point and always helpful.
A few other things I like (amongst others):
- It does tagging. And yes, tags are different than multi-select fields or checkboxes. You can tag anything in the system, with self-defined tags
- It has iCal integration, synching your tasks to your iCal calendar automatically. This is great!
- It facilitates lead nurturing very well with scheduled emails and things alike
- It integrates with Google Docs and Google’s address book
So, conluding I can say: ’so far so good’.
Of course there are always negatives, but so far I haven’t been able to find a lot. One that’s itching is the XML they’re outputting when using their API. Now before I go on let me state that it’s a great API that just works, but having been a software engineer for quite some time I’m a bit perfectionistic in this area. The issue: their XML doesn’t conform to a schema. When requesting a list of contacts using the API I would have expected something along these lines:
<customers>
<customer>
<id>1235</id>
<firstname>Alef</firstname>
<lastname>Arendsen</lastname>
<status>On Hold</status>
...
</customer>
<customer>
<id>1236</id>
<firstname>John</firstname>
<lastname>Doe</lastname>
<status>In Progress</status>
...
</customer>
</customers>
but instead I got this:
<response>
<id31507>
<id>1235</id>
<name>Alef Arendsen</name>
<parentid>52541</parentid>
<flagged>1</flagged>
<custom52857>On Hold</custom52857>
</id31507>
<id34943>
<id>1236</id>
<name>John Doe</name>
<parentid>52542</parentid>
<flagged>1</flagged>
<custom52857>In Progress</custom52857>
</id34943>
...
<count>21</count>
<status>success</status>
</response>
Ouch! First of all, with the id-element including the contact’s identifier, this XML document is never going to conform to a particular schema (well, it might, but not the way I want it too). The second thing is the custom fields. While on the one hand it seems to make sense to include the custom field’s identifier (you might want to change the name of an identifier, and then you don’t want your identifiers to change), but what I would really like is for the field to have some kind of symbolic name (that I can define myself) that will be included in the XML. API design is important, and I’ve always like how people like Juergen and Arjen (former colleagues at SpringSource) spent countless hours working on the best possible experience for a developer.
Now again, let me restate that their API is way better than what I’ve seen from other providers (SOAP, anyone), but I just *had* to find one negative point . And then again, knowing the guys at Norada, maybe they’ll even work on improving it (hint, hint).
Last thing: I’d like to upload my own background. Right now I’m stuck with a set of preselected backgrounds . But well, the backgrounds Norada in combination with their very slick UI provides are way more attractive than a dull Web 1.0 interface, so I think this’ll have to do for now .
As far as pricing goes, Norada offers plan ranging from $24 (per month) for a single-user subscription to $149 for a subscription that’ll get you 18 users. In comparison, the ZOHO edition we used (Enterprise) cost us $112 per month for 4 users (including the Mail Add-on). SalesForce would cost approximately the same per month, but only for one user(!). I need the API and this is only offered in SalesForce’s Enterprise Edition, which costs $125 per month per user.
Okay, that’s all for today, I think I’ve done enough promotion work for the Norada guys. Keep up the great work!
