Malaysia — 23 June 2021 — Zoho, a global technology company, has announced Bigin, its pipeline-centric CRM for small businesses, has surpassed 7500 customers in under a year while releasing new features including an industry-first mobile pipeline view. Bigin's new version also includes enhanced capabilities to help small businesses foster their customer relationships while recovering from the effects of COVID-19. According to a recent SMB Group study on how technology will be shifting after the pandemic, 42% of small businesses state that keeping up with customer demands is a top driver to invest in a new digital solution. With the release of new customisation features, public APIs, new integrations, and enhanced capabilities on mobile devices, Bigin makes the CRM experience easier for its small business customers.
Since Bigin's launch one year ago at the beginning of the pandemic, the product has reported a 40% average increase in total revenue every quarter with a total customer base of above 7500. Bigin has had an average of 32% increase in monthly new customer acquisitions since May of 2020. As Bigin continues to grow, there will be new enhancements later this year including advanced workflow automation, support for multiple global currencies, and simple process automation tailored for small businesses.
"Small and micro businesses have been disproportionately impacted by the pandemic and we are pleased to have helped over 5000 of them grow their business during these tough times. With the most affordable pricing in the industry, a promised setup time under 30 minutes, and an extremely low learning curve, our aim was to make it as easy as possible for companies to get started with a CRM. We are taking a major step ahead in our vision to offer the best possible CRM experience for our small business customers." says Mani Vembu, Chief Operating Officer of Zoho, "Mobility is a crucial aspect which is often an afterthought for most SaaS vendors. I am happy to say that we have adopted a mobile-first approach with Bigin. Thousands of customers have taken advantage of our unique, industry-first unified pipeline view."
Customer Statements:
"Before COVID-19, most of my client meetings were held in-person, but during the lockdown, I had to shut down my business entirely for two weeks. Somehow, I needed to find a way to manage clients online or I was going to go broke. It was during this transformation of digitising and going fully online that I discovered I had access to many apps with Zoho - one of those being Bigin. I tried Bigin and was excited to find that I was able to organise my clients and data and it was everything I needed, all in one place. I previously spent years trying to put together different vendors to manage the different aspects of my business, but it was too overwhelming and expensive. With Bigin, my emails are integrated into the client account so I no longer have to search for client emails to figure out billing at the end of the month. Also, it's easier to keep notes on each customer because I can upload documents in their account, which cuts down my paperwork completely. Bigin cut down my billing time significantly just by the ease of the note feature, helped me follow up on new leads by creating deals and Bigin tags allow me to organise different aspects of my business. Bigin has saved me a great deal of time and a lot of money." - Susan Carpenter, Founder of Life's Doors Meditation
"One of the biggest benefits of using Bigin for our company has been client management and incoming prospects for our classes and membership for our sailing school. Because of COVID, we had to go from mixed household classes to single household classes and pair them with the available instructors. When some of the COVID restrictions were lifted here in Oregon, we used Bigin to help us keep track of clients and potential students who provided proof of vaccination. We created a policy around clients and prospects providing proof of vaccination so they could come to the facility and enjoy their classes and move about freely without wearing a mask, and Bigin allowed us to keep track of and schedule all of that. Additionally, when we make a note in Bigin of a member or incoming student who's been vaccinated, all of our staff receive alerts. It also integrates with our Google calendar, so we keep track of all our customer-related interactions and management and we can schedule larger, mixed household classes based on the info we have about students and members being vaccinated. Bigin is the perfect fit for the club." - Cassie Courtney, Marketing Director of Island Sailing
Analyst Statement:
"Small businesses need to organise and automate the sales process to stay on top of leads and nurture prospects through the sales pipeline: SMB Group's latest research says that businesses with fewer than 100 employees prioritise sales as the most important business function to automate. But the study also shows that "lack of" issues--lack of time, money, and expertise--prevent many from deploying and getting value from CRM solutions. Zoho Bigin delivers CRM tools that small businesses need, without burdening them with complexity—at a price almost any small business can afford." - Laurie McCabe, Co-Founder and Partner at SMB Group Inc.
Key Product Updates (additional updates can be found here)
- Improved usability: A customisable pipeline view that allows customers to rearrange their pipeline stages and rename default modules based on their unique needs.
- Faster, actionable search: Preview search results instantly and take quick actions such as field updates, sending an email, and adding a new note without having to visit the records individually.
- Greater extensibility: Connect with any third-party app of their choice and new native integrations with Mailchimp, Zoho Books, and Zoho Invoice.
- More power to telephony: Bigin's in-built telephony gets added contact center features such as call recording, call transfer, and automatically queueing incoming calls in waiting. It also allows more than 85 third-party telephony providers to integrate with the CRM.
- Enhanced mobility: Industry-first mobile pipeline view, making it easy to sell right from their smartphone or an exclusive app on macOS.
Pricing and Availability
At $7/user/month, billed annually, Bigin is not just built for small businesses, it is also priced for them. For more information, please visit https://www.zoho.com/bigin
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About Zoho
With 50+ apps in nearly every major business category, including sales, marketing, customer support, accounting and back office operations, and an array of productivity and collaboration tools, Zoho Corporation is one of the world's most prolific software companies.
Zoho is privately held and profitable with more than 9,000 employees. Zoho is headquartered in Austin, Texas, with international headquarters in Chennai, India. Additional offices are in the United States, India, Japan, China, Singapore, Mexico, Australia, the Netherlands, and the United Arab Emirates.
Zoho respects user privacy and does not have an ad-revenue model in any part of its business, including its free products. More than 60 million users around the world, across hundreds of thousands of companies, rely on Zoho every day to run their businesses, including Zoho itself. For more information, please visit www.zoho.com
