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Showing posts from August, 2022

How (and why) a marine consultancy made Zoho core of their business

During ZohoDay 2022, I had the chance to have a longer conversation with Graham Dallas , business development manager of the ABL Group. Graham was responsible for the implementation of ABL Group's new CRM system. ABL Group is the result of a 2020 merger of AqualisBraemar ASA and the LOC Group. It is a 400+ person global energy and marine consultancy that helps companies around the world transition toward offshore renewable energy sources, clean shipping, and sustainable marine practices. Formerly Microsoft Dynamics users, ABL Group first began working with Zoho in 2021 via an implementation partner, and they collaborated on a design and build of a customized CRM solution for their business. Soon, the second phase of implementation will begin, which then includes integration with Oracle NetSuite. One of the main challenges facing ABL Group was the integration of two different businesses, one of them already using a "chunky" CRM solution and the other one not having a syste

The customer success movement

Customer success has become an interesting topic for software vendors and systems integrators, alike. I am thinking about this topic for a while now and now bring my thoughts to virtual paper after Jon Reed pinged me about it and after reading Josh Greenbaum ’s very readable post about “ customer successing ”. By the way, Jon called software vendors to attention and to deliver proof points in a great article, too. So, call me a copycat 😉. The customer success movement In the past years enterprise software vendors and consultancies alike, have increasingly established customer success teams as part of their organizations. One can almost call it a movement. And it is a laudable endeavor to work on ensuring the customers’ success. However, when looking closer at the reasons for their establishment and their charters, it becomes quite obvious that many of these customer success teams are set up as a reaction to failing implementation projects or, even worse, as a vehicle for selling

How to make Zoho a business's operating system

During ZohoDay 2022, I had the chance to have a longer conversation with Adi Mula , founder and CEO of Foodhub. If you do not want to read too much but prefer watching the edited interview, you can do so here . Similar to GrubHub and DoorDash, Foodhub allows residents of the UK, India, Egypt, Australia, New Zealand, and Malaysia, the US and some more countries to order food to be delivered from a variety of local restaurants; unlike those other sites, Foodhub does not charge service fees. Foodhub currently has about 1,100 employees. Most of them are using Zoho products in one way or another and many use multiple Zoho products. Foodhub started its Zoho journey with the goal of simplifying processes and to be able to provide every team with simple and easy to use tools that will help them do their jobs.  Originally, Foodhub worked with a set of interconnected, yet overly complicated applications. This journey started with implementing Zoho CRM because this was where the pain was bigges

How to Zoho-matize a business

During ZohoDay 2022, I had the chance to have a longer conversation with Elie Katz , founder and CEO of National Retail Solutions, NRS. if you do not want to read too much but prefer watching the edited interview, you can do so here . NRS was founded in 2015 and has  since then grown its customer base to more than 17,000 retail stores across the United States. NRS is a part of IDT, a provider of communications and payment services to individuals and businesses. The business provides POS and payment processing software, focusing on small, independent retailers, who want to not only survive but also thrive in a big box environment. The NRS POS system is built to help stores organize, attract customers and increase revenue; it includes a loyalty coupon program and other bells and whistles.   An important point is the NRS outside-in philosophy, which is defining its own success as a result of making its customers successful by being able to address their needs.   The challenge that Elie, h