Tag Archive for ‘crm’ at diversity.net.nz

Tag Archive for 'crm'

Zoho creating a Salesforce doppelganger… or more…

Published by Ben Kepes on April 17, 2008 in Governance, IT, SaaS and Strategy.

News this morning that Zoho CRM is launching an enterprise edition.

I’ve always had a little bit of scepticism about enterprise editions - knowing what I know about enterprise it seems that the only different between SMB and enterprise editions is that the latter need to be slower, more needlessly complex, double up lots of functionality and put in place some filters to disconnect the technology from its actual users. Yeah I’m kind of dubious about enterprise! That rant aside let’s look at the offering…

First the new functionality;

Role-based Security Administration
More product Customisation & Data Administration
Multi-language Support
SSL Support for Professional & Enterprise Versions
Integration with Zoho Sheet
Improved Business Functionality including the ability to;
- Automatically update Stock information once the Purchase Order is approved
- Find and Merge the duplicate records in Vendors module
- Convert Quote to Sales Order or Invoice in a single click
- Convert Sales Order to Invoice in a single click
- Add account information automatically while creating quotes/orders/invoices from the potentials
Wiki-based Context-sensitive Help

Here is a schematic of the way the role-based security and authentication works;

All this is levelling the playing field with SFDC, but as Zoli points out, Zoho already has a breadth of functionality that is already wider than Salesforce’s, resulting in an (almost) ERP offering.

An interesting look sat the ZohoCRM vs SFDC comparison can be seen in this chart the most telling comparison for those who don’t want to trawl through detail is the following, giving the details for a 5 person organisation.

As another interesting aside to the announcement this week about the SFDC/Google apps integration, Zoho has plans to integrate its writing, mail and other business apps in its CRM offering - thereby kneecapping the SFDC/Google offering (at least into SMB anyway).

So…. what does it all mean? Well I can’t but wonder what the game plan is for Zoho. As released a couple of days ago, Zoho has already rebuffed a takeover discussion with Salesforce, their rationale was that the cultural fit just wasn’t there (which is probably right). So what is the plan - while this offering moves more towards enterprise, it’s hard to imagine enterprise feeling comfortable jumping onboard en masse with a relatively small, relatively unknown such as Zoho. The SMB space is hard to monetize (and when you give stuff away free at the start it’s pretty hard to revert to a monetized model).

So I don’t see where all this is heading - Zoho is fantastic, the breadth of their offerings, their speed of development and their reaction to what else is going on in the space - its the business stratgy that has me wondering.

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PHASE 2 - covering all bases…

Published by Ben Kepes on April 2, 2008 in Design, IT, SaaS and Strategy.

This morning I spoke with Hawaii based company PHASE 2 International. PHASE 2 is an interesting business that has several strings to their bow that span horizontal platforms as well as discrete vertical industry groups. They have a diverse customer base, from Fortune 500 companies through to SMEs, but have been pleasantly surprised at the uptake of their offerings by larger organisations they feel that this might be as a result of their history as IT consultants in the enterprise space.

The Phase two platform play

PHASE 2 have set themselves the task of becoming a platform aggregator bringing together disparate applications and providing them to SMEs. They rightly recognise that a “one stop shop” approach is attractive to SMEs and to this end have put together a broad range of offerings to fill out the functionality requirement. Their current offerings include;

Microsoft Office Sharepoint Server (MOSS) - the workflow automation, collaboration process and content management that PHASE 2 believes is most a palatable to the marketplace
Microsoft CRM - Like the fact or not, Enterprise and larger SMEs live within the constraints of Microsoft products. To this end PHASE 2 chose the MS CRM offering, especially due to its integration capabilities with the other MS offerings (especially Outlook)
Microsoft Exchange - Again, PHASE 2 chose the email solution that integrates most seamlessly with the MS suite of products
Microsoft project - In an interesting implementation, PHASE 2 offers MS Project via SaaS. Project managers will still need an installed copy of the app, but once the project is planned, it can be uploaded to the Phase2 SaaS platform from where it can be viewed by the project participants

I was a little sceptical about MS Project as a SaaS application, it still requires the lead PM to have an installed copy of the app and due to this can’t really be called pure-play SaaS. That said however, for customers who use project as a resource allocation and time management tool, the functionality that PHASE 2 offers should suffice.

The Phase2 vertical plays

In a solutions that has some similarities to those of Widen.com who I reviewed a few weeks ago, PHASE 2 offers ShareCAD a tool to allow collaboration for AutoCAD files. PHASE 2 explained to me the problems architects and other building and design professionals have when attempting to collaborate on CAD files. This difficulty is exacerbated by the way AutoCAD works, linking multiple referenced files within one file. ShareCAD takes care of this by performing the following actions,

The ShareCAD offering sounds like a valuable tool for those in the industry, I also couldn’t help but thing that the functionality would be equally applicable to a graphic design/publishing environment where referenced files, version control and ability to control access, are all valuable tools.

What’s in the Pipeline?

PHASE 2 shared with me a couple of offerings that are come in the next few months.

The first is a vertical medical billing product, PHASE 2 told me that up to 30% of the total of a medical invoice is accrued in the logistics of raising the invoice. To this end Phase2 are creating a solution that tracks items from multiple provider, allows for externally referenced filed (see a theme here?) and outputs an invoice that complies with regulatory requirements.

Second up is a IP based Biometric timeclock. PHASE 2 is developing both the hardware and software that will allow them to deploy a physical item within a workplace that employees then use with a biometric signature (thumbprint) and pass code. The data is then transferred to PHASE 2’s SaaS solution where it is posted to a SaaS payroll solution.

PHASE 2 are also investigating options with regards a SaaS accounting solution. It’ll be a third party product as they recognise that building an accounting application from scratch is a tough job.

Pricing

CRM runs to USD55/month for one user, USD440 for 10
Project is USD55/month for one user, USD500 for 10

This seems within the ballpark of the competition, I’d assume that PHASE 2 would show some efficiencies (and price drops) for customers investing in multiple solutions from them.

Summary

It looks good! PHASE 2 are rapidly building out a end-to end ecosystem for SMEs and larger organisations, meanwhile they’ve developed some nice solutions for verticals and should capture a good market share within those verticals.

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Zoho filling in the SME accounting space?

Published by Ben Kepes on March 30, 2008 in Collaboration, Design, IT, SaaS and Web x.0.

A few weeks ago I posted and said;

Next move I’m picking [for Zoho] is a filling out of the space between the current small business offerings and People, the first larger business offering.

That remark was particularly made to comment on the release of Zoho’s first offering that seemed poised to move them into the enterprise space. Today however we see that Zoho has released Zoho invoice. Check out the slideshow for an intro;

Already hints have been made that this is the first part of a full-featured accounting system - it seems logical - imagine a situation where a SaaS provider had a solution that included office productivity, CRM, accounting and collaboration - it’d make a pretty compelling case (and a strong foil to Google’s stickiness).

I’ve always waxed poetical about SaaS solutions being part of a wider platform play, but it’s getting increasingly difficult to see how Zoho can be stopped from creating an all encompassing platform of their own (OK - that’s a pretty generous statement at the moment but consider the velocity of their development thus far).

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