Land of Zoho Creator

Today I saw the annoucement of Zoho Invoice , which prompted me to write this post.  As an owner of a small business, I am seriously considering Zoho as the productivity platform for my team. In my opinion, all of the Zoho apps are well designed, but before I start spending the time required to migrate my invoicing from Quickbooks Online, my contacts from Outlook, my Online Meetings from Gotomeeting, my conversations from Skype etc., I want to make sure I gain something from this effort.

Here’s what it would take for me to take the plunge.

1. Integrated data management. I need to be able to add  information once and use it in different contexts. Let’s take Contacts. Ideally, I would create a form in Zoho Creator (or copy an existing template) and that form would then be my template for adding Contacts for Customer Management (Zoho CRM), Invoicing (Zoho Invoice), Human Resources (Zoho People), etc.  In other words, I know what contact data is relevant to me and my team and I don’t have time to customize Contact forms in four different applications.
2. Document automation capabilities. I need a good way of packaging the data I have to share those with whom I interact.  Let’s take Service Agreements. Again, I would like to manage my data with Zoho Creator and have the ability to generate renewals as .pdf documents. Ideally, I would use Zoho Writer to create the document template, and assuming it had a (Mail) Merge feature, I could  generate these agreements automatically .
3. Data visualization tools.  I need an easy way to view my information as a calendar, a map, a timeline or a list, regardless, of its nature (sales, human resources, time management, etc.). Currently, I see that the Zoho apps mentioned above all have their own calendars, reports and graphs. Again, by having the data stored in Zoho Creator and tools for displaying the data, this too could be achieved.

I’m not talking about  Grand Unification Theory here. I am stressing the importance of having a unified repository of information that can be reused in different contexts and for multiple purposes and leveraging Zoho Creator as this repository seems to make sense.