Orases

Posted in: Culture, Technology

I've been a sales professional for over 20 years, and in that time I've managed products from web design services to copiers and business travel. I have consulted on market saturation, acquisition, and new business development. Throughout my career I have developed a remarkable acumen for successful tools. It just doesn't pay to be slowed down by the wrong technology, especially when trying to maintain a market share rate of growth of 3%, consistently from quarter to quarter, and company to company. 

It's critical for success to have a tool to track sales calls, meetings, tasks, prospects, and overall account management. Additionally, an easily accessable system to manage documents through each phase of the sales process is key to staying on top of fast-paced environments. I've used various Document Management Systems in the past, including Xerox, Canon and I've saved documents to servers, desktops, and flash drives. I've worked with systems tailored for individual use, all the way to the enterprise level software. 

In the past, I've had success with Lotus notes; I loved the database application, and Windows based systems, which have their own set of restrictions, all the way to Salesforce, which has been the industry standard for quite some time. Each of these systems have their strengths and drawbacks, but I've found that none of them have been able to stand up to the current system, Zoho-- a Google application. 

I was convinced to give it a try when I learned that the people who created and support Zoho actually use it themselves to handle their customers, support, and projects. With Zoho, the learning curve was quick-- the tools are intuitive, and they have everything from Project Management to Community Portals and Customer Management.  Also, when I did run into trouble-- the Helpdesk was right there to get me back on track, plus they have people you can call or email to work out any complicated snags. 

It starts as a free system, and even once you get into the payment portions, it's much more cost effective than some other options. Also, it lets you extract data from anywhere, in almost any format, on almost any device. As a business professional, I've learned that research is critical when developing a sales division and Zoho seems to be a great solution for a small to medium sales division.