Are you looking for an affordable and efficient tool to help you structure your business processes? To help you, Zoho has decided to create the “little brother” of Zoho CRM: Zoho Bigin.
A CRM designed for SMEs, VSEs and the self-employed to offer them a mobile solution made for them, without unnecessary or superfluous options.
In this article, we explore the details of the software’s key features, pricing and key feedback from users of the tool.
Sommaire
Our review of Zoho CRM : Summary table
Functional scope of Zoho Bigin
Opportunity management
With Bigin, opportunity management is made easy. Once you have imported your contacts, you can go to the “Offers” section to create your business opportunities.
In this area, you fill in the relevant information, i.e. the name of the offer, the name of the company, and the stage of the opportunity:
- Qualification needs analysis
- Quotation under negotiation
- Deal won or lost
- …
You can also enter the amount of each opportunity, or a description to give more details about the current offer. This information is accessible from your computer and from your smartphones and tablets. Ideal for your sales representatives who can view all current opportunities and modify them at any time.
Smaller organisations that often do not have an excessive number of offers in progress will be able to find their way around, without having to go through the contacts to find the deals being negotiated. They will be able to consult the list of clients to be relaunched in a few minutes as soon as Bigin is opened.
It’s a real time saver so you don’t lose your prospects who are about to buy. Zoho Bigin pushes you to pursue ongoing negotiations to close them quickly and positively.
Contact management
The interface gives you direct access to all the essential sections of the application. You are only one click away from finding your current opportunities, activities, emails and contacts.
When you open one of your contacts, you can instantly see all the information about them, the name of the company manager, their full contact details, their website, current business, your previous contacts and their history with you.
You also have the possibility to make calls directly from the Zoho Bigin contact record thanks to the integrated telephony, while keeping access to your prospect’s information. This is very practical as you keep a record of your telephone exchange directly in the application.
Indeed, the incoming or outgoing call will be automatically recorded in the activity part of the CRM, and you can then complete the information about this exchange in the activity description. In the same way you can send commercial emails to your contacts directly from Zoho Bigin, and prospecting email campaigns.
Sales automation
Despite its affordability, Zoho Bigin offers interesting workflows to automate your most repetitive tasks:
- Track transaction updates,
- Set up e-mail alerts,
- Notify team members when tasks are created,
- …
But what happens to those automations that you have customized once your business development requires moving to a more robust tool? Zoho gives you the ability to import these features into Zoho CRM, which is more suitable for more mature businesses.
Importing data from Bigin to other CRMs is more complicated and requires REST APIs.
Reporting
Zoho Bigin provides you with a reporting tool that gives you access to key business performance indicators.
The following are some of the items you will find there:
- Amounts of your opportunities won or being negotiated,
- Top 5 of your best customers,
- Number of calls made and tasks completed in the month, etc.
You can customise the data you want to analyse, for example by selecting a particular city, potential income, or a specific time period. The customisable fields for each user are quite limited, you cannot add more than 20.
Salesdorado’s opinion
Zoho Bigin contains all the features needed by small businesses. Even if some of them are limited, they are suitable for many small and medium-sized businesses, especially for those starting up. All data in Bigin can be imported into Zoho CRM in case of functional changes.
Bigin: a CRM designed for the mobile
Zoho Bigin is available on all mobile devices, and can be downloaded from the Apple Store and Google Play, so you can always see what you’re up to, and what opportunities you can’t afford to miss.
You can easily edit or create your contacts, activities, or business from your smartphone or tablet. iPad users also have the option of using the Apple Pencil to write text in any field in Zoho Bigin.
Salesdorado’s opinion
Zoho Bigin is fully compatible with mobile devices, especially Apple. This is a real strength for a customer relationship software that every salesperson or business owner may need on the go. They can prepare appointments, keep in touch with prospects and customers, or provide additional information about contacts or opportunities.
Getting started
Zoho has traditionally been criticized for a somewhat “features-first, design-later” approach, but in recent years they have really put the emphasis on user experience.
When you create your account, the tool takes you through all the important elements of the software, step by step.
We’re a big fan of the navigation bar, very simple and effective. You can feel that it has been thought through.
The search bar, accessible from any page of the software with CMD + K (like Slack for those who also use the tool) is hyper efficient: the search is fast & dynamic, the results are super well presented: you have access to all your info on a prospect in one step. A real plus.
The interface is clear, easy to understand and totally intuitive. A few explanatory videos and a knowledge base are available to help you get to grips with the tool.
You can import your contact lists and/or your current business from an Exel or csv file in a few clicks, and you will instantly find all the information on your current business.
The list of these imports is however quite short, limited to 50 entries at a time. For longer lists, the file has to be reformatted or adjusted, so this will take more time.
Salesdorado’s opinion
Frankly, it’s a no-fail on this side: the modern and intuitive interface of Zoho Bigin makes the user experience particularly pleasant.
Integrations
Zoho has also focused on making Bigin compatible with solutions such as Microsoft Office 365 or Google G-Suite. This allows Bigin to seamlessly integrate email and calendar, and synchronise it with the business development tools you use every day. You can easily find your appointments and emails without having to leave Bigin to do your research.
Zoho Bigin has been designed to work perfectly on all modern platforms, including Apple smartphones and tablets. As most companies, including smaller ones, use an iPhone and/or iPad on a daily basis for business purposes, Bigin has made sure that its CRM solution is fully compatible with Apple tools. Bigin widgets can be added to these mobile devices. The management of notifications and alerts on the Apple Watch is also possible.
Salesdorado’s opinion
Zoho Bigin is compatible with all the applications commonly used by small and medium-sized businesses, allowing you to retrieve all the essential data from your customer relations in Bigin so that you can access all the information about your prospects and opportunities without leaving Bigin.
Customer reviews of Zoho Bigin
The reviews of Zoho Bigin from users are overall very positive. They give a mark of 4,5/5 on Capterra and 4,3/5 on G2. Discover their main remarks and opinions about Zoho Bigin :
Advantages & Disadvantages
- Intuitive interface: “Bigin has the best user interface on the market, when using small business CRM.” – “I love being able to customise the workflows”, “The setup was intuitive and the customisation easy to make Bigin exactly what we needed”.
- Value for money: “We chose Bigin because of their clean interface, the features they offer, and their low (but overall great value) price.
- Lack of integrations: “I wish the tool was integrated with LinkedIn rather than Twitter as far as social networks are concerned”; “Email manager integration should be easier. Can’t send invitations to new users”.
Zoho Bigin’s prices
Bigin is geared towards SMEs and VSEs, so its price is perfectly affordable and a free version allows self-employed people to use the essential functions of this CRM solution.
- The Free version of Zoho Bigin provides access to the solution for 1 user with 1GB of data storage, 500 records, 3 workflows, 1 web form, 1 pipeline, integration with Zoho Desk, mobile use, and integrated telephony.
- The Express version of Zoho Bigin is available for €9/month/user for an annual subscription. This version provides access to Bigin with the ability to perform 50,000 records, 25 workflows, 5 web forms, 5 pipelines, 20 custom fields/module, IMAP based messaging, and custom dashboards. The express version allows you to store 1GB of data, you can then increase your storage capacities for 9,6€ / GB / year. Similarly, you can increase your recording capacities for 0,0012€ / recording / year.
If you are a user of this software, do not hesitate to share your opinion on Zoho Bigin in comments!
