In the past, portals were primarily only available to large enterprises with vast IT resources and budgets. Luckily, with the constant improvements and availability of online software solutions, portals have become more obtainable for businesses. Today more businesses seek to improve their customer and vendor relationships through enhanced communication and collaboration without needing an exorbitant budget to do so.
If you are reading this article, you most likely are using Zoho as your cloud-based business suite of tools or are considering using Zoho. Below, we will take a quick look at what a portal is and its benefits, and why we recommend ZPortals over the native Zoho portal. Additionally, we recommend watching our full 2023 ZPortals overview below as well for more information on the product.
What are Portals?
Portals are mystical doorways that can be created by spells, incantations, or magical artifacts. Wait a minute, sorry, wrong portal. Portals in the real world and not something from a fantasy book, are web-based platforms that allow users to access and manage information all from a centralized location. Generally speaking, they connect businesses with their customers, vendors, and partners while also providing a variety of features. These features can include self-service tools, support ticket management, document sharing, and more.
Here are a few examples of some benefits of portals:
- Enhanced Customer and Vendor Relationships – One of the primary benefits of portals is that they can help businesses to build stronger relationships with their customers and vendors. By providing a centralized platform for communication and collaboration, businesses can more effectively address customer and vendor needs, resolve issues, and provide support. This can lead to improved customer satisfaction and loyalty, as well as stronger vendor partnerships.
- Increased Efficiency – Portals can also help businesses to increase their operational efficiency by streamlining processes and reducing the workload on staff. By providing customers and vendors with self-service tools, businesses can reduce the number of support requests and inquiries, freeing up staff time to focus on other tasks. This also helps eliminate the room for human error.
- Improved Data Management – Portals can also help businesses to manage data more effectively. By centralizing information in a single platform, businesses can more easily track and manage customer and vendor data, including order history, support requests, and more. This can lead to improved reporting and analytics, as well as better decision-making.
Why We Recommend ZPortals
Simple. It has a clean UI, was built around the CX/UX, it’s scaleable, connects multiple Zoho applications under one roof, and it works. Also, the fact that it was also built buy a Zoho Premium Partner shows. It allowed them to build a portal based on what Zoho users actually want and need.
Key Features of Zportals:
- Customizable, Self-Service Portals – Zportals provides a unified, self-service portal for multiple Zoho apps that businesses can customize. They can use it to coordinate with customers, vendors, and affiliates, saving time.
- Efficient Collaboration – Organizations can improve collaboration and communication with customers and other stakeholders. This helps reduce the workload on customer support teams and improves overall efficiency by using ZPortals.
- Increased Professionalism – Improve your image by providing a secure and professional platform for customers to interact with the business.
- Advanced Security Features – Customize user access to data and control their permission to read, edit, or delete information. Thus ensuring that sensitive data is protected.
- Standardization and Scalability – ZPortals is designed to allow specific needs and requirements, ensuring standardization and scalability.
- Integration with Zoho Apps – ZPortals integrates seamlessly with a variety of Zoho apps. Unlike Zoho, ZPortals brings all of these apps together in one portal instead of separate portals for each app. This allows businesses to sync data and information across multiple apps and provides a unified customer experience.
- Vendor and Affiliate Coordination – Increase website traffic by bringing customers back to the business website improving engagement, and increasing revenue.
- Public Directory – ZPortals simplifies website management with a public access feature that allows businesses to display up-to-date product catalogs, resource directories, and interactive maps, improving engagement and user experience.
Zoho App Integration:
ZPortals offers seamless integration with a range of Zoho apps, including:
- Zoho CRM – The CRM integration allows you to sync all modules and fields from Zoho CRM to the client portal. Additionally, the drag-and-drop editor lets you customize the look and feel of which modules you want to display.
- Zoho Subscription – Sync your active Zoho subscriptions directly to the portal to easily manage multiple subscriptions. This feature allows clients to explore new subscriptions and manage payment methods while still accessing their existing subscriptions.
- Zoho Inventory – Create an online store for users to purchase products directly from Zoho Inventory in your portal. Custom features also allow you to show or hide products and fields.
- Zoho Vault – This integration allows clients to upload login credentials for their organization. Thus making it easier to view the passwords they’ve shared, update credentials, and increase password security.
- Zoho Desk – Users can submit tickets, and view existing ticket threads and statuses from directly in the portal.
- Zoho Books – Within the portal, users can pay for their invoices and sales orders. They can also view retainer balances, review and accept or decline quotes, and display any financial information pertaining to the organization.
- Zoho Sign – Zoho Sign integration with the client portal enables document upload and electronic signature, efficiently managing multiple documents.
- Zoho Workdrive: Access or upload new documents to Workdrive directly from within the client portal. Each user will only have access to the contents of their folder.
For more details on each application’s portal features, check out the ZPortals Integration page. Also, Zoho Projects is coming soon!
Ready To Setup Your Portal?
Overall, ZPortals is a powerful tool that can help businesses improve customer satisfaction, increase efficiency, and boost revenue. We’d love to help build out your perfect client portal with ZPortals. So what are you waiting for? Drop us a line!
