Without customers, the world as we know it would not exist. They're the backbones of business! When people think about their most important relationships, their minds probably go to their parents, friends, or partners. In business, it's the one you have with your customers. Maintaining these relationships is an art unto itself, so much so that an entire industry has formed around it.

Customer relationship management (CRM) allows companies to strengthen their existing client interactions, and build out their customer base through lead generation. Effective CRM is not easy. If it were, no one would ever go out of business. It encompasses a number of different areas, but all of the strategies, activities, and technologies involved are united around a single, common refrain: the customer is king.

Customer relationship management is, in a sense, the art of bringing people and ideas together, and that’s what we’re all about: connecting our clients with the technology they need to make their vision of success a reality.

To build new customer relationships and improve on existing ones, businesses have turned to CRM software.

To explain a little more, let's give our guest of honor this week, Zoho CRM, a chance at the microphone: “CRM is the largest software market in the world, and has increasingly proven to be the best technological asset that companies can invest in. With the prominence that the cloud CRM software market has been gaining over the years, and the ease with which CRMs can integrate with other applications that businesses generally use, CRM systems help implementers [sic] cover every aspect of their business cycle with an increase in sales & marketing returns, all while helping them cut down on their costs.”

It wouldn't be an exaggeration to say that CRM software — Zoho especially — is one of our favorite things in the world. We use it ourselves and love it so much we became an official Zoho partner.

Zoho CRM has given us invaluable insights into our customer base, thanks to a powerful combination of intelligent analytics, simplified collaboration, and productivity boosting tools. The proof, as they say, is in the pudding — if said pudding were able to help you optimize your full sales lifecycle from prospect to customer. That would be the world's best dessert now, wouldn't it?

There are a lot of products out there aimed at helping either small or large (or medium, not to leave them out) businesses grow their customer bases. Zoho works for companies that fall into any of the above, with the added benefit of being integratable with your most used business and relational applications.

Among the most popular CRM software products out there are Salesforce and Microsoft Dynamics. When it comes to features, Zoho CRM blows Dynamics out of the water. Zoho and Salesforce are on surprisingly even footing — a side-by-side comparison is almost uncanny to look at, with around 50 features in common. But MS Dynamics? It’s not even in the race. It’s off in the stands somewhere, rummaging through its wallet for the last 75¢ it needs to buy an overpriced hotdog.

Though Salesforce holds gold in the area of name recognition, it underperforms in the most important category of all: price. At the enterprise level, Salesforce is nearly 4 times as expensive as Zoho CRM: $125 /user /mo. vs. $35 /user /mo. With roughly the same number of features, it’s clear who the ultimate winner is.

Contact JNT TEK for an evaluation of your current database and see if Zoho CRM is right for your business.