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Time Business News
4 days ago
- Business
- Time Business News
Best CRM for Small Business: Best CRM Platforms for Small Business
Customer Relationship Management (CRM) platforms have become essential tools for businesses of all sizes. For best crm for small business can make the difference between growth and stagnation. It streamlines communication, organizes customer data, automates follow-ups, and enhances customer experience. With countless CRM platforms available in the market, choosing the best one can be overwhelming. In this blog, we'll explore the best CRM platforms tailored for small businesses, focusing on usability, affordability, and essential features. Why Small Businesses Need a CRM Small businesses often manage customer relationships manually, using spreadsheets, email folders, or even handwritten notes. This might work for a short time, but as your business grows, you need a system that keeps everything in one place. A CRM centralizes customer data, tracks sales interactions, and improves collaboration between team members. It helps you build stronger relationships with your customers by giving you insights into their behavior, preferences, and past interactions. This allows small businesses to compete effectively, offer personalized service, and scale efficiently. Key Features to Look for in a CRM When selecting a CRM for a small business, there are several core features to consider. These include contact and lead management, email marketing integration, sales pipeline tracking, task automation, and reporting. Ease of use is also crucial—your team should be able to learn and use the system without extensive training. Affordability is another major factor for small businesses. Many CRMs offer free tiers or affordable pricing plans designed for startups and small teams, which is ideal when you're working with a limited budget. HubSpot CRM: Powerful and Free HubSpot CRM is often the first recommendation for small businesses—and for good reason. It offers a robust free plan that includes contact management, deal tracking, email templates, scheduling, and live chat. HubSpot also integrates seamlessly with Gmail, Outlook, and a wide range of third-party tools. What makes HubSpot stand out is its user-friendly interface and scalable ecosystem. As your business grows, you can add more advanced marketing, sales, and customer service tools without switching platforms. It's ideal for startups and small teams looking for a flexible, long-term CRM solution. Zoho CRM: Affordable and Customizable Zoho CRM is another excellent option that balances price with performance. Known for its affordability and wide feature set, Zoho offers workflow automation, sales forecasting, AI-powered insights, and multichannel communication. Its interface is intuitive, and the platform is easily customizable to fit various business needs. Zoho's pricing plans start low, making it accessible even for solo entrepreneurs. Plus, Zoho's suite of business apps (like Zoho Books, Zoho Projects, and Zoho Mail) can be integrated seamlessly, providing an all-in-one solution for small businesses. Salesforce Essentials: Enterprise Power for Small Teams Salesforce is a global CRM leader, but its enterprise offerings can be overwhelming for smaller businesses. That's where Salesforce Essentials comes in—it's a simplified version tailored specifically for small businesses. With Essentials, you get access to powerful CRM features like lead and opportunity management, email integration, mobile access, and automation tools. It's a bit pricier than some other options, but you benefit from the reliability, scalability, and security that Salesforce is known for. If your small business plans to scale quickly and needs a platform that can grow with you, Salesforce Essentials is worth considering. Pipedrive: Sales-Focused Simplicity Pipedrive is a CRM built specifically with salespeople in mind. Its visual sales pipelines are intuitive and easy to manage, allowing teams to focus on closing deals rather than navigating complex systems. Pipedrive includes features like activity reminders, email tracking, customizable pipelines, and detailed sales reporting. Its drag-and-drop interface is particularly user-friendly. While it doesn't offer as many marketing tools as some other CRMs, it excels at helping small sales teams stay organized and productive. It's an ideal CRM for businesses where the sales cycle is the top priority. Insightly: CRM and Project Management in One Insightly combines CRM and project management in a single platform, which is a big plus for service-based small businesses. It provides standard CRM features like contact and lead management, email templates, workflow automation, and integrations with Google and Microsoft apps. What sets Insightly apart is its ability to manage projects linked to customer records. This feature is especially useful for businesses offering services like consulting, event planning, or marketing. Insightly also offers customization options and reporting tools to help small teams optimize operations and customer relationships. Freshsales: AI-Driven Sales Automation Freshsales by Freshworks is an intuitive CRM that leverages AI to boost sales productivity. With features like lead scoring, email tracking, sales sequences, and a built-in phone system, Freshsales simplifies the sales process for small teams. The platform also offers visual pipelines, customizable dashboards, and smart analytics. The AI assistant, Freddy, can help identify the best leads and recommend actions to increase conversions. Freshsales has a generous free plan and affordable paid tiers, making it a strong choice for small businesses looking for a modern, tech-savvy CRM. Choosing the Best CRM for Your Business The best crm platforms for small business depends largely on your business goals, size, and specific needs. If you're just starting out, HubSpot CRM or Zoho CRM are great free or low-cost options. For sales-driven teams, Pipedrive or Freshsales offer excellent pipeline management tools. If your business requires project tracking along with CRM features, Insightly is a solid choice. Meanwhile, Salesforce Essentials provides robust capabilities for growing teams willing to invest in a long-term solution. Ultimately, take advantage of free trials, explore user interfaces, and consider integration needs before making a decision. TIME BUSINESS NEWS
Finextra
14-05-2025
- Business
- Finextra
Zoho enters US payments market
Zoho Corporation, a global technology company, today launched Zoho Payments, a unified payment solution that helps businesses collect payments online using multiple payment methods like cards and ACH. 0 The solution offers native payments capabilities within Zoho, enabling businesses to manage payments directly within their existing financial workflows. 'As digital payments become the default preference for everything from online purchases to subscription services, businesses need a payment solution that not only offers flexibility, but is also tightly connected to their financial operations," says Raju Vegesna, Chief Evangelist at Zoho. "Zoho Payments closes this gap by natively connecting with our ecosystem, enabling seamless collections across different use cases. Our solution provides businesses with better authorization rates, strong risk management, automated reconciliation, and helps minimize losses from fraud and chargebacks, delivering real operational value as payment volumes grow.' With studies showing that nearly 87% of transactions now cashless and 81% of U.S. consumers preferring to pay by card, businesses need payment systems that can keep pace. Relying on disconnected tools often leads to delays, errors in reconciliation, and disrupted financial workflows. Zoho Payments addresses this gap by offering a secure, deeply connected alternative, allowing businesses to centralize their payment operations. "Our transportation company has used third-party payment portals before, but they came with extra logins and separate integrations that didn't fit smoothly into our workflow. It made sense for us to try Zoho Payments since we were already using Zoho Books," says James Martin, Founder and CEO of Keystone Transport Services. "The integration was seamless. Its automation capabilities ensured that there were minimal interventions by our teams, significantly reducing the required overhead for onboarding and managing new customers. Now, one person can easily accomplish over 100 times the work as before." Core Capabilities Zoho Payments helps businesses accept card payments in over 135 currencies and ACH payments for transactions within the U.S. The payment solution works out-of-the-box with Zoho's apps from finance and operations, sales and marketing, low-code, and collaboration platforms. Businesses can also connect to any third-party systems via APIs to collect payments. Payments can be accepted through various connected workflows, such as sending invoices or payment links to customers, creating hosted payment pages for one-time or recurring payments, or collecting payments via an e-commerce store. This level of flexibility allows businesses to offer seamless payment experiences to their customers while benefiting from faster settlements and customized payout scheduling. "The integration of embedded payment capabilities within finance applications represents a significant leap forward. Moving beyond basic invoicing, these features streamline the entire payment lifecycle, accelerating cash flow and reducing administrative burdens. This evolution transforms finance platforms into more agile and responsive financial management tools," says Kevin Permenter, Research Director, Financial Applications at IDC. "Zoho has made a major investment in infusing their powerful finance platform with payment management capabilities and services. I expect the market will be extremely receptive of Zoho's most recent payment additions." Zoho Payments is PCI DSS Level 1 compliant. The application offers significant advantages that strengthen financial processes and operational efficiency. It helps businesses improve their payments success rates, boosting top-line revenue, while fraud protection reduces chargebacks, positively impacting their bottom-line performance. With automated reconciliation, finance teams can reduce the amount of time spent on manual tasks and avoid any resulting errors. The platform is highly scalable, providing the reliability that businesses need as their transaction volumes grow. Moreover, businesses can get better visibility on their payment transactions, payouts, refunds, payment failures, and account summaries, creating insights into cash flow, payment trends, and operational bottlenecks. Pricing and Availability Zoho Payments is now available for use. Pricing for domestic cards is 2.9% + 30¢ per transaction which includes Visa, Mastercard, Amex, Discover, JCB, UnionPay, and Diners Club. The pricing for international cards is 1.5% plus the domestic card fee.
Channel Post MEA
11-03-2025
- Business
- Channel Post MEA
Zoho Localizes AI for VAT Filings and Ensures MENA Compliance
Hyther Nizam, President for MEA and VP of Products at Zoho, highlights Zoho's focus on localizing AI agents through Agent Studio for VAT filings in the MENA region. This initiative ensures adherence to evolving regulations by leveraging local laws, privacy policies, and seamless integration to support businesses effectively. Zoho emphasises the localization of AI agents through Agent Studio, particularly for regional needs like VAT filings. How will Zoho ensure these localized AI solutions remain compliant with the rapidly evolving regulatory environments across the diverse markets within MENA? Zoho is committed to ensuring that its AI agents, particularly those focused on regional needs like VAT filings, remain compliant with the evolving regulatory environments across MENA. Specifically, in the case of VAT compliance in Zoho Books and ZATCA compliance in Saudi Arabia, Zoho integrates these regulatory requirements directly into Zoho Books. As new regulations and compliance needs emerge, Zoho continuously updates and integrates them within Zoho Books to ensure users are always in alignment with local laws. Moreover, all work done in Zoho Books, including VAT-related tasks, will seamlessly integrate with the AI agents, allowing users to leverage this data in the VAT filing process. By reusing the work already completed in Zoho Books, these AI agents can streamline and automate VAT filing, making compliance even easier for businesses operating across MENA. The Agent Marketplace aims to offer pre-built Zia Agents for various business functions. What criteria will Zoho use to curate and ensure the quality and security of agents offered on this marketplace, especially given the sensitive nature of enterprise data? Zoho has maintained an unwavering privacy policy where it pledges to keep data only in the hands of its owners. Our focus is on providing a secure, trustworthy environment for businesses to access and deploy AI agents while maintaining the integrity of their data. To ensure the quality and security of the agents offered on the Agent Marketplace, Zoho employs a rigorous vetting and moderation process. Any third-party agents published in the marketplace will be thoroughly reviewed by our team to ensure that no customer data from enterprises is exposed to larger language models (LLMs). On the other hand, any agents published by Zoho will meet the highest standards of security and privacy compliance, ensuring full alignment with stringent industry regulations. Zoho highlights its commitment to data privacy. With the increasing autonomy of Agentic AI, how will Zoho guarantee that user data remains protected and that AI agents operate within ethical boundaries, particularly when interacting with sensitive customer information? Zoho is deeply committed to data privacy, and with the increasing autonomy of Agentic AI, we ensure that AI agents operate within well-defined ethical boundaries. We have set clear limits on the decision-making capabilities of AI agents to prevent any unintended overreach. We provide fine-grained control over the data within the context of an organisation, ensuring that AI agents operate only with the relevant information necessary for their tasks. For example, a support agent or salesperson will have access to only the data they need, based on their role and permissions. This means agents are context-aware and operate under strict access controls, preventing them from accessing unrelated data across the organisation. Additionally, we prioritze compliance with auditing standards, ensuring that the AI agents respect the privacy and security of organisational data. This approach guarantees that no sensitive customer information is mishandled, and it aligns with enterprise data structures and privacy regulations, keeping user data protected at all times. Zoho has a large portfolio of over 100 products. What are the key strategies for integrating Zia Agents seamlessly across this diverse ecosystem, and how will Zoho ensure a consistent user experience? We are introducing Agent Studio, which will act as a central hub where key functionalities from various products, such as VAT filing agents, chat agents for Zoho Desk, or HR agents for internal employees, can be accessed as pre-built agents. These agents will be integrated into their respective applications, ensuring that they enhance existing workflows. In addition to the pre-built agents, Agent Studio will provide customers with the flexibility to build their own custom agents tailored to specific needs, enabling them to perform multiple tasks efficiently. The key to ensuring a consistent user experience across all products is that these agents will all be built on the same interface and design principles within AgentStudio. This ensures a unified experience, regardless of which agent is being used across Zoho's ecosystem, while maintaining interoperability with existing functionalities. You mentioned that the MENA region is one of Zoho's fastest-growing markets. What specific factors do you attribute to this growth, and how will the launch of Zia Agents further accelerate Zoho's expansion in the region? The MENA region has been one of Zoho's fastest-growing markets, both in 2024 and over the past four years. A significant factor behind this success is our focus on localised products and our local presence in key markets, particularly in the UAE and Saudi Arabia. We have established local offices and data centres in Saudi Arabia, which has enabled us to offer solutions that comply with local laws and regulations. This localised approach has played a pivotal role in our rapid growth in the region. Looking ahead, the launch of Agentic AI and Agent Studio will further accelerate Zoho's expansion in MENA. These new offerings allow customers to build custom agents for specific purposes, which will provide businesses with powerful tools tailored to their unique needs. Moreover, these agents will be designed to respect privacy and security concerns, particularly for enterprise customers, ensuring compliance with local privacy laws. By integrating seamlessly with many of Zoho's products and functions, these AI agents will enhance workflows and create more value for businesses in the region, helping Zoho to solidify and expand its presence in MENA. How does Zoho balance the development of cutting-edge AI technologies with the need to provide practical, immediately valuable solutions to its customers in the Middle East? Zoho believes that AI should be context-aware and designed to solve real, tangible problems within the enterprise environment. We recognise that AI cannot operate in isolation, like a generic chat interface, especially for enterprise customers. Instead, it should be integrated seamlessly with key business functions and workflows within the products customers are already using. In line with this, we focus on Agentic AI, which is deeply embedded into Zoho's suite of products to address specific business challenges. This approach ensures that our AI solutions are not just cutting-edge but also immediately valuable, providing practical, context-based assistance where it's needed most. With the launch of Agent Studio and the Agent Marketplace, how will Zoho empower its partners in the Middle East to build, deploy, and support these AI solutions for their clients, and what support structures will be in place? With the launch of Agent Studio and the Agent Marketplace, Zoho is empowering its partners in the Middle East to not only build and deploy AI solutions but also to monetise these solutions. Partners will have the ability to create custom agents tailored to specific needs and publish them on the marketplace, providing them with an opportunity to reach a wider audience. To support our partners and customers in this journey, Zoho will offer specialised support. We will have a dedicated team of specialists within our support structure who are focused specifically on agents. This team will assist partners and customers in building the right agents for their unique requirements and help them navigate the process of publishing their agents in the marketplace. 0 0
Zawya
18-02-2025
- Business
- Zawya
Scope Solutions partners with Dext to expand bookkeeping automation into UAE, Cyprus, and Malta
UAE – Scope Solutions, a trusted provider of cloud accounting and technology solutions, is excited to announce its partnership with Dext, a leading provider of bookkeeping automation and part of the IRIS Software Group. This collaboration introduces Dext's advanced automation tools to businesses in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Cyprus, and Malta. For over a decade, Scope Solutions has supported businesses with smart cloud platforms like Zoho Books, Xero and QuickBooks. Now, by partnering with Dext, Scope Solutions is extending its ability to provide unparalleled automation and financial management capabilities to businesses, accountants and bookkeepers across the regions. Driving Innovation for Accountants and Businesses With Dext's cutting-edge platform, including latest features like Supplier Statements Reconciliation, Approvals, and Mileage Tracking, businesses can enhance data accuracy, streamline workflows and make smarter financial decisions whilst staying compliant with evolving tax regulations. Simplify financial tasks, save time, and make smarter decisions. The partnership's aim is clear: to empower accountants, bookkeepers, and business owners with automation to simplify tasks, save time, and ensure smarter decisions, allowing them to successfully grow whilst keeping operations compliant. The demand for such solutions is especially strong in the UAE, where evolving tax regulations and an influx of new businesses are shaping a fast-paced financial landscape. Dext has already seen a 367% increase in transactions from Emirati firms within the past year. Through this partnership, Scope Solutions is meeting that demand with tools tailored to local needs, alongside the expertise that it provides in building effective tech stacks for our clients. Building on a Strong Foundation This collaboration also builds on Dext's recent integration with Zoho Books, a globally trusted accounting solution that is widely adopted in the Middle East. Together, these tools create a unified system that enhances data accuracy and streamlines workflows, uniquely positioning Scope Solutions to leverage this partnership as a recognised Zoho Finance Partner. For accountants, bookkeepers and businesses in UAE, Cyprus, and Malta, this means less manual work, greater compliance, and more time to focus on growth. A Partnership That Makes a Difference 'We're thrilled to bring Dext's automation to the regions we serve,' said Ayman Kaouri, Co-founder and Regional Director of Scope Solutions. 'This partnership complements our years of experience with other platforms such as Zoho Books, Xero and QuickBooks, and enhances the integration capabilities we've been delivering to our clients. By combining local expertise with Dext's technology, we're helping businesses unlock new levels of efficiency and success.' 'Partnering with Scope Solutions allows us to better meet the growing demand for digital bookkeeping and compliance solutions across the Middle East and Europe,' said Sabby Gill, CEO of Dext. 'Following the integration with Zoho Books, this partnership enables us to deliver even greater value by pairing automation-driven tools with local expertise to empower firms to save time, drive growth, and deliver superior client service.' -Ends- About Scope Solutions Since 2012, Scope Solutions has helped businesses embrace the cloud with innovative tools and bespoke consultancy services. By focusing on automation and streamlined workflows, we help accountants and businesses stay competitive and thrive in a digital world. With our strong regional expertise, we're proud to deliver solutions that make a real difference in Malta, Cyprus, UAE, and beyond. For more information, visit For media inquiries, contact SOCIATE PR: Rosa Bullock, Founder & CEO Email: About Dext Dext, part of the IRIS Software Group, is the leading provider of bookkeeping automation. Founded in 2010, the company empowers businesses, accountants, and bookkeepers to thrive through innovative technology that simplifies accounting processes and drives smarter, more timely financial decisions. Trusted by thousands of professionals worldwide, Dext integrates with major accounting software and connects to over 11,500 banks, suppliers, and marketplaces. In 2024, Dext joined IRIS Software Group and continues to work directly with its clients to create a more seamless, end-to-end accountancy workflow. For more information, visit
