Zoho Corporation, a leading global technology company, previewed Zoho CRM for Everyone, a new set of capabilities aimed at democratizing CRM to all teams involved in customer operations activities. Zoho CRM for Everyone allows sales teams, the primary custodian of customer relationships, to communicate and coordinate from a single place various customer deliverables across areas like solutions engineering, contract management, sales enablement, customer onboarding, and advocacy. These capabilities stand to improve visibility for every stakeholder in the customer journey, mitigate gaps in coordination, reduce turnaround time, and improve the quality of the customer experience.

Marketing Technology News: Monocle Emerges From Stealth, Launches AI Platform to Power Promotion Strategies for Consumer Brands

“Traditionally, the CRM system has been built by IT and built for sales workflows”

“Modern CRM strategies demand that the entire enterprise contribute and orchestrate actions around revenue-driving motions that require visibility and collaboration across teams,” said Liz Miller, Vice President and Principal Analyst at Constellation Research. “This is what stands out about Zoho’s vision for CRM for Everyone. This is a solution that meets the modern sales and engagement strategy, reaching beyond the stagnant notion that CRM is a record or a database…it puts CRM at the center of the project called Revenue. It applies connected collaboration and a project management mindset to the operations of building durable customer relationships through cross-functional actions in order to seamlessly drive more profitable relationships with customers.”

Marketing Technology News: MarTech Interview with Shirli Zelcer, Chief Data & Technology Officer @ Merkle (a dentsu company)

“Traditionally, the CRM system has been built by IT and built for sales workflows,” said Mani Vembu, Zoho’s Chief Operating Officer. “Over the years, it has accumulated a wealth of customer context, but access to the CRM is strictly rationed, and teams are forced to operate on their own islands with limited context. This is fundamentally antithetical to a great customer experience. Zoho CRM for Everyone breaks down those silos for the first time, enabling different teams in a sales process to contribute productively by reducing CRM complexity and encouraging participation.”

Zoho CRM for Everyone enables account managers, for example, to pull in a solutions engineer to coordinate a great product demonstration for a customer. A specialist can track the step-by-step rollout of the onboarding experience for each customer. A marketer can perform win-loss analysis for specific deals. A community specialist can manage advocacy engagements like case studies. All of these different activities can be managed within the CRM with deep customer context and cross-functional visibility. They may all use different core applications for deep work but can now converge on the CRM for managing shared responsibilities towards the customer.