Zoho advances Bigin to redefine small business CRM market

By Onome Amuge

Zoho Corporation, a leading global technology company, has introduced the latest version of Bigin, the company’s CRM solution for small businesses.

As the preferred CRM solution for small businesses, Bigin offers a simple yet powerful CRM without the high barrier of entry and cost. The new product updates further support small and micro businesses by providing them the tools and insights they need to maintain and grow meaningful and high-value relationships with customers in a challenging economic environment.

Kehinde Ogundare, Country manager, Zoho Nigeria, in his remark, said small businesses face challenges in choosing the right technology for managing their customer-facing operations because of constraints related to time, cost, and software implementation.  To this end, he explained that Bigin is the only solution that brings together all customer operations like sales, onboarding, delivery, training, advocacy, and more into an intuitive interface that takes only 30 minutes to deploy.

“By bringing together all the facets of customer operations into a single view, Bigin allows small businesses to have a more accurate understanding of the customer’s journey. These insights help them attract and retain customers, ultimately growing the business. The fast-growing adoption of Bigin shows the expanding appetite of small businesses who want and need CRM technology suited to their particular needs, helping them move beyond old-school spreadsheets,” Ogundare added.

According to Zoho, since Bigin’s launch in 2020, it has stood out as a robust, easy-to-use, and welcoming CRM solution thanks to its 30-minute set up promise. In addition, Bigin now boasts 20,000 customers and continues to help small and micro businesses manage all of their customer-facing operations within a unified platform, Zoho stated. The innovative service  also recorded a revenue growth of 161 per cent in 2022 in Nigeria, indicating the revenue has doubled compared to 2021.

Zoho further observed that around 65 per cent of Bigin’s global customers have never used a CRM previously, making it the ideal choice for business owners who are looking to move away from spreadsheets. The technology company also assured its customers that when they outgrow Bigin, they would be granted an easy migration to its full-fledged CRM solution.

Bigin’s latest version includes the introduction of Team Pipelines, which allow customer-facing teams to manage their distinctive operations using a set of pipelines and sub-pipelines within a single Bigin account.

Unlike competitive offerings which often cater only to a single function like sales, Zoho noted that Bigin is an efficient solution for all customer-facing teams.

“New features compile customer operations into one place, and enable tighter alignment and collaboration between individuals and teams without compromising the simplicity that makes Bigin stand out,” the company stated.

Bigin by Zoho CRM starts at ₦2,100  per user monthly which is billed annually for the express edition. The premier  edition goes for  ₦3,600 per user monthly and is billed annually. A free edition is also available,but with limited services.

Zoho highlighted key product updates to include:

 -Team Pipelines: A feature that connects and streamlines various customer operations in one place, offering small businesses an easy way to manage their day-to-day processes and a single source of truth for analyzing customer data.

-Connected Pipelines: This automates the flow of customer data across processes, improving the customer experience and saving time on manual data entry.

 Toppings: Through this, additional functionality and third-party integrations can be added to address specific business needs. Examples include the ‘Email-In’ topping which maps emails to customer records and the ‘File Cabinet’ topping which automates file collection and management.

Mobile Capabilities: Zoho said it is providing new features across all platforms, including iOS, iPadOS, Android, and macOS and has added a new feature called Dynamic Display which allows users to customize the appearance of records in their pipelines. Bigin also recently updated its apps for the Apple’s iOS16 and Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 4 launches, where it was an exclusive launch partner.

Developer Center: Bigin has opened its developer platform to a network of global app developers and partners who can create custom solutions for unique business needs. With various tools and components like custom fields, buttons, links, widgets, related lists, and REST APIs, developers can create new Toppings and monetise them in the Bigin Marketplace.