Redesign your CRM with Canvas for Zoho CRM

Canvas is a no-code, drag-and-drop design studio built into Zoho CRM to help companies personalise and customise their teams’ experiences.

Different business units inside an organisation have different cultural tastes, different frames of reference, and different requirements for information. Their members have different knowledge, different frames of reference, and they use the organisation’s system in different ways. And sometimes they want it to look different.

With that in mind, Zoho developed Canvas: an add-on to their flagship CRM that enables an organisation to display different information from the same system to different user types within a company. This information can be selected, presented, filtered and organised according to the tastes and needs of those users.

Its goal is to drive non-technical user adoption of their organisation’s CRM by making its interface more customisable, relevant and user-friendly.

To get a video introduction to Canvas for Zoho CRM, watch this Zoho Canvas Introduction video.

How does Canvas for Zoho CRM help?

Canvas for Zoho CRM makes adoptability easy, giving you the power and creativity to help your team understand and use CRM to its fullest.

One of the reasons people are reluctant to use CRM to its full capacity is the interface. CRM software often looks the same: rows of interchangeable data on a plain background, only some of it relevant to them. Leveraging Canvas for Zoho CRM allows your organisation to sharpen and filter that data based on its values, allowing those users to check at a glance for the information they care about.

There’s no such thing as a universally perfect design style or user interface – those preferences are subjective and it all comes down to an individual’s own aesthetic tastes and job needs. With Canvas for Zoho CRM, you can build a CRM that's pleasant to work with, is easy to navigate, is not overloaded with information, and is easy to search and filter. Your staff will appreciate the ability to access their information with fewer clicks and engage with it better.

How Does Canvas for Zoho CRM Work?

Canvas for Zoho CRM is a drag and drop editor with no technical skills required – you don’t need to know how to code in order to use it effectively. Start from scratch or work from one of the pre-loaded templates it comes with, created by Zoho’s in-house designers so that you can hit the ground running.

If you want to get creative then Canvas for Zoho CRM has an easy-to-use page builder tool for designing CRM systems that will really make your people feel at home. A wide range of formatting options let you craft something truly personal. Edit font colours, adjust padding, switch to tabs, merge fields, refine spacing, and more.

Choose what to show and what to hide, reducing clutter and helping users find key information quickly. You can also decide where each field goes and how they look, like colour coding for better visibility.

Limitations and Pricing

Since Canvas for Zoho CRM is included by default in some of Zoho’s CRM plans, there’s no added price for building it out. However, there is a limit to how many views (separate configurations) your organisation can deploy at a given time. These limits are based on the Zoho CRM plan you’re using, and they are:

Free: 0 views

Standard: 1 view per organisation

Professional: 3 views per organisation

Enterprise: 5 views per module

Ultimate: 25 views per module

Conclusion

Zoho is an ambitious company, and they’re firmly committed to growing the popularity of their CRM suite in particular. Their developers are well aware that a major issue in CRM system adoption is the technology’s acceptance by non-technical business users.

Their solution has been Canvas for Zoho CRM – a way to make your CRM simpler to use, more aesthetic, more understandable and more relevant to those non-technical users’ considerations.

If people in your organisation are proving to be less than eager about working with a your CRM system, then Canvas for Zoho CRM might just be the solution. Applying Canvas for Zoho CRM will encourage your users to engage with their CRM systems – getting the most from your investment by driving individual productivity and organisational results.

About the Author

Muhammad Waheed Qadir is a Senior Zoho Functional Consultant at CCG. His passion is solving business case studies and recommending the right customer management solutions to clients.