Zoho Corporation IOT Integrated CRM Development - Innovation Plan

This innovation plan explores the development of IOT integrated CRM solution for Zoho Corporation. The plan includes details of the design thinking process, user involvement, prototyping, testing, and cross-functional management using SCRUM methodology.

Innovation plan
Zoho Coporation IOT Integrated CRM development
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
This project report is prepared an innovation
management plan for the proposed innovation for
Zoho corporation. The report explores the industry
and the organiation and assesses possible innovations
that the company can adopt. A choice of IOT
integrated CRM solution has been made for it would
bring the company an expansion in portfolio. The plan
gives details of the process of development that
would be used. It explains the process of design
thinking that would be used for the designing go the
solution and also presents the plan for cross-
functional management for actual development using
SCRUM methodology.

Introduction
Zoho is a leading organization that provides cloud based solutions including applications that come
from the wide range of functionalities. As the applications developed by the company are cloud based,
they can be accessed from any location and device including tablets, computers, and mobile devices.
Zoho has applications to help companies in collaborating over projects and sharing information within
teams. Zoho CRM is the flagship product of the company which is a cloud based CRM system which
helped users manage their customer relationships by streamlining sales and marketing functions
across the organization (Zoho Corporation, 2009).
CRM systems are the popular products in the industry and modern CRM systems are getting more
advanced. There are three trends that expected to dominate the innovation for CRM solutions in near
future. These include Automatic workflow adjustment, chatbots with conversational interfaces, and
IOT integration with CRM. In near future, CRM systems would make adjustments in their workflows
to enhance the efficiency of the organization. It would involve the use of Artificial Intelligence to
understand how users of the devices interact with the CRM software and based on the analysis of this
interaction, suggestions would be given to the system user for the optimization of software (Rizvi,
2017).
Companies need their employees to engage with the consumers directly. When Chatbots would be
integrated with the conversational interfaces of a CRM solution, they would introduce natural
language processing capabilities into the system such that conversations would happen between the
employees and the customers not just through normal textual chats but also the audios integrated with
the chat system. This would enhance the experience of the consumers while they are interacting with
the company representatives thereby increasing their level of satisfaction from the conversation.
They are soon expected to get integrated with the IOT devices used by the enterprise system users.
This integration would allow companies to have its CRM integrated with portable IOT devices such
as mobile phones, cards, wearables, and home appliances. Integration of CRM with the IOT devices
can unfold many opportunities for the organizations as they would be able to personalise the customer
experiences to a higher degree. This integration would provide companies a better insight into the
customer and would allow companies to access an actionable profile of a consumer (Kowalke, 2017).
Integration of CRM with the IOT devices would bring customers of the organizations closer to the
brand representatives as their experiences would be customized with enhanced interaction with
devices (Sande, 2015). Zoho corporation can integrate its CRM system with the IOT devices as the
innovation. This would help Zoho expand its offerings for corporate customers. This innovation plan
has been prepared for Zoho Corporation to develop a module that can be installed over the CRM
systems of Zoho such that they would allow integration of IOT systems with their CRM solution. The

document contains the design thinking process details that would be used in the project, user
involvement, integration, prototyping, testing, and cross-functional management (Palermo, 2015).
Design thinking
Design thinking is an approach that involves an integration of emotions and thoughts of customers
with the requirements of a business or an innovation. It enables creation of customer experiences
based on these factors to build executable prototypes of a technology solution. The technology that is
being developed must be able to drive the emotional responses of consumers to bring innovation. A
number of different design thinking approaches have been taken by various innovative companies.
Innovation by Design (IbyD3) s an approach that can be used for delivering a high fidelity prototype
that can be translated into a minimum viable product or stand alone applications within a few weeks
time. This uses a methodological approach to development of a design with two key phases including
discovery and synthesis. The same approach would be taken for the development of the IOT
integration solution for Zoho CRM application.
Discovery: In this phase, the quantitative facts about the proposed innovative solution would be
analysed by business analysts. This would allow the project team to get close with the challenges to
be addressed and understand how different user personas of CRM solution would be impacted by the
change that the innovation would bring. These personas would highlight the challenges, opportunities,
and then would help in building an action plan for designing interventions needed to bring change in
the organization to be able to adopt the innovation. Design thinking needs people to embrace the
tendency to think about emotions of consumer rather being logical and process oriented. So, if the
managers and project team of Zoho corporation is more used to logical thinking then the team would
have to be oriented towards design thinking by making them empathize with the customer while
planning a design for IOT integrated CRM solution (E&Y, 2017).
Synthesis: The objective of this phase of design thinking is to build a solution that is desirable for
customers without thinking about its viability so that unique and unconstrained ideas can emerge and
the teams can expand their thinking on development. The focus would remain on the key problem
which is to bring an all encompassing experience to the CRM users through the interconnection of the
IOT devices thy use to the CRM systems. At this point, the team may try to make improvements in
the ideas because of engineering bias but the same has to be avoided if rich and free ideas are needed.
At this point, the team would develop preliminary sketches for the prototype of the solution which
could be refined through the use of user interface mock ups. With these mock-ups, the developing
team would be able too gather the feedback on the prototype to be developed so that the same can be
injected in the next iterative phase of the project development. The synthesis phase ends with a plan
for the development of a prototype for the solution suggested (GENPACT, 2018).

Figure 1:INNOVATION by design—the process
Innovation by design process would be used in the synthesis stage in which the project would begin
with scoping of the development, refinement, co-innovation, alignment, and then the development of
the product. As shown in the figure above, the IOT integrated CRM development program project
would go through a series of processes till a prototype design is prepared which would be tested in the
field to come up with a selected design of the solution.
User Involvement
The previous section revealed a process of evolutionary development that can be used for the IOT
integration project. The use of prototype would affect the role of a user on the project. The end user
may cooperate with the IT tam during the process of development to enable development of the most
mature software. The project team involved in the development of the integrated system would need
to communicate with the stakeholders on understanding their needs and requirements so that a higher
level of usability can be achieved in the development with incorporation of the needs of the
stakeholders. Resulting from this interaction, a context-depended solution that can smoothen the
integration of IOT devices with the CRM solution of Zoho could be developed using appropriate IT
management practices (Weichbroth & Sikorski, 2014).

Fast Integration
Fast integration of the innovation of the IOT with CRM could be achieved with the team following
formalized way through the development. The following steps would be used in the process of
development:

Product Development Templates: A high-level reference document and a detailed integration
template would be developed in this stage which would contain major development milestones
and the key events of the development process. These templates would serve as the boundaries for
the development project and the development team can use it as a reference plan for executing the
work. The major milestones of the IOT integration with CRM solution would include Kick-off
stage, strategy confirmation, approval of the development program, design finalization, product
development, product readiness, launch preparation, and project sign-off for launch.
Linking Milestones with deliverables: The next involves linking of every product delivered with
the project milestones. For driving the major milestones of the development project, some key
events would have to be executed including product objectives development, failure mode and
effects analysis, design development, identifying sourcing requirements, building prototypes

testing prototype, testing prototype, release product, pilot production, feedback analysis, and
rework for improvement. Considering the current need for the development of the IOT
integration with CRM solution, the activities needed could be framed into a Work Break Down
structure to guide the development team. The WBS for the same is presented below:
1.0 Project Initiation
1.1 Project Kick-off
1.1.1 Situation Analysis
1.1.2 CRM Vision
1.1.3 Setting Priorities
1.1.4 Business Case development
1.1.5 Requirement identification
1.2 Strategy development
1.2.1 Objectives
1.2.2 Failure mode and effects analysis
1.2.3 Process mapping
1.3 Program Approval
1.3.1 Proposal
1.3.2 Assessment
1.3.3 Review and Approval
2.0 Product development
2.1 Designing
2.2 Sourcing requirements
2.3 Prototyping
2.3.1 Building prototype
2.3.2 Testing prototype
2.3.3 Release product
2.4 Testing
2.4.1 Functional Testing
2.4.2 System testing
3.0 Pilot Launch
3.1 Pilot production
3.2 Market testing
4.0 Evaluate performance
4.1 Project Outcomes
4.2 Business outcomes.

Task Assignment: Once the development milestones and the activities are frozen, the next step
would be to assign each identifies task in the WBS to the available human resources to make the
deliveries possible. At this point, an integrated team has to be developed that takes functional inputs
from the departments that may need to intervene in the development process or provide the
developmental inputs.
Integration Scheduling: The next step in the project management process would be development of
an integration schedule so that the tasks that are identified later and were remaining to be included in
the key WBS can then be integrated in the plan. After integration, the tasks that may not be needed or
are only reinstated in the integration template twice would be eliminated. They would also be time
scaled a needed in the project plan during the first milestone itself. For this, Microsoft Project would
be used and for every WBS item in the integrated plan would be recorded with details of task name,
start date, finish date, duration of task, and the predecessor to the task.

Integrating Cross-functional Details: In each functional schedule that is created in the integration
plan, details would be added. This would be based on the cross-functional analysis that should bring
the vertical as well as horizontal coordination in the organization through inclusion of up and down
processes in the schedule. Horizontal integration would be achieved by identifying the gives and gets
of the other functions. Give refers to the task that needs to provide information for another
downstream task to be completed such that give task must provide this information to proceed with
the next task. Get would include the task that cannot be completed without getting information from a
predecessor.
Product Development: Post inclusion of the cross-functional details in the integration plan, a truly
integrated project team can be formed which would be able to execute the tasks defined in the plan on
the ground and participate in the development of the IOT integrated CRM solution (Swanston &
Biggar, 2000)
Prototyping and Testing
In the initiation stage of the project, rough sketches were developed as preliminary prototype of the
IOT integrated CRM solution but in the actual prototyping stage, the designs can be converted into 3D
structures and simulation can be created to study how devices would interact with the CRM system
and the experience that a possible user would have. There can be different types of prototyping
methods that can be used from rapid prototyping, user interface prototyping, and service prototyping
or design thinking. On this project, a design thinking or service prototyping approach would be used
as it allows for development of rough prototypes and then their refinement at later stages to bring
improvements in the design (Nichita, 2008).

In the process, some of the potential users of the resulting innovation would be made as a part of the
design team so that they can provide feedback and insights during the design thinking. This would
expand customer role from being only the end user tester to becoming an active co-designer who can
bring expectations and experiences into the process so that a more interactive and accurate system can
be developed (Howard, 2016).
Cross-functional Management
As already defined in the previous stages of planning that a cross-functional team would be developed
in Zoho in order to develop the integrated solution proposed, the resulting team would have a mix of
capabilities and would be agile. This would bring in a lot of experiences and multiple skills on platter.
However, at the same time, these arrays of skills and diverse experiences in a single development
team would also bring some challenges as the different functional members may have different
perspectives and approaches to the development. At this stage, it is needed that the team is guided by
a unified project management methodology for the solution development so that these confusions can
be avoided or tackled with simplicity. Thus, the team would make use of the Agile SCRUM project
management methodology for managing the cross-functional development team (Abrahamsson, Salo,
Ronkainen, & Warsta, 2002).
Small working team would be formed while the project tasks would be divided into small sprints with
defined boundaries for development under which the teams would work. Major team roles would be
defined to avoid confusions in terms of roles and responsibilities. There would be three key roles
defined including SCRUM master, product owner and the actual development team consisting of
designers, engineers, and testers. The team members would have to collaborate and communicate
closely to be able to deliver the results of development effectively. They should be made accountable
for their work and at the same time encouraged to assist other team members through their skillsets.
Because of this type of close working environment, it can be expected that the team members would
not just utilize their skills but would also be able too develop some new skills (Cervone, 2010).
Conclusion
The innovation plan is developed for ZOho corporation to develop an IOT integrated CRM solution to
bring innovation in the organization. This innovation would expand the portfolio of the organization
and would bring in more revenues. The report presented a plan for the adoption of the new
implementation. The implementation process would follow design thinking approach in which rough
preliminary sketches would be developed for the prototyping and then by involving customers in
providing design inputs, the designs would be modified to create full prototypes. Cross-functional
teams would be used in the process of development and their needed takes would be integrated in the

project development plan. For management of the cross-functional teams, the Agile SCRUM project
methodology would be used involving cross-functional teams on project execution handled in small
time sprints. The project is expected to have a high involvement of users in the design phase such that
the design process would better understand their interaction with the CRM system and their
expectations so that development can be made closer to them and high acceptance can be achieved
post development from the customers.
References
Abrahamsson, P., Salo, O., Ronkainen, J., & Warsta, J. (2002). Agile Software Development Methods.
University of Qulu.
Cervone, H. F. (2010). Understanding agile project management methods using Scrum. Emerald
Insights, 27(1), 18-22.
E&Y. (2017). Demystifying design thinking: becoming part of the movement. E&Y.
GENPACT. (2018). Design Thinking innovation for business processes and operations. GENPACT.
Howard, L. (2016). Do Cross-Functional Teams Mean Cross-Functional People? . Agile Connection.
Kowalke, P. (2017). Five CRM Innovations You'll See in 2018. IT Toolbox.
Nichita, G. G. (2008). Using Rapid Prototyping Technologies in Concurrent Engineering Approach.
University of Oradea.
Palermo, F. (2015). A New Frontier for CRM: The Internet of Things. CMS Wire.
Rizvi, M. (2017). Implications of Internet of Things (IoT) for CRM. CustomerThink Corp.
Sande, B. v. (2015). How to integrate #IoT and CRM? Microsoft.
Swanston, W. J., & Biggar, G. T. (2000). Developing a framework for establishing cross-functional
integration within a product development project. PMI.
Weichbroth, P., & Sikorski, M. (2014). USER INTERFACE PROTOTYPING. TECHNIQUES,
METHODS AND TOOLS . Uniwersytetu Ekonomicznego.
Zoho Corporation. (2009). Zoho Projects Social collaborative project management platform.
GetApp.com.

Appendix
Figure 2: Internet of Things and Customer Relationship Management
Video Pitch
Zoho corporation is a leading cloud based CRM developer organization. It can take the benefits of
growing CRM industry innovation trends like Automatic workflow adjustment, chatbots with
conversational interfaces, and IOT integration with CRM. In this project I chose to develop a plan for
building IOT integrated CRM for Zoho customers as it would enhance the portfolio of the
organization. This innovation plan is prepared for Zoho Corporation to develop an IOT integration
module for Zoho CRM. It takes design thinking as the key approaches to bringing innovation by
enabling creation of customer experiences based on these factors to build executable prototypes of a
technology solution. Design would be developed in two key phases including discovery and synthesis.
In discovery phase, a design would be built for the solution that is desirable for customers without
thinking about its viability so that unique and unconstrained ideas can emerge. In the next stage,
solution would be developed. The development process would take six key steps including Product
Development Templates, Linking Milestones with deliverables, Task Assignment, Integration
Scheduling, Integrating Cross-functional Details, and Product Development. A high-level reference
document and a detailed integration template would be developed first. The major development
milestones for the IOT integration with CRM solution would include Kick-off stage, strategy
confirmation, approval of the development program, design finalization, product development,
product readiness, launch preparation, and project sign-off for launch. These milestones would be
linked with deliverables that include product objectives development, failure mode and effects
analysis, design development, identifying sourcing requirements, building prototypes testing
prototype, testing prototype, release product, pilot production, feedback analysis, and rework for
improvement. The milestone would then be refined with incorporation of cross-functional details in
the integration plan. Rough sketches that were developed as preliminary prototype in the design stage
would then be expanded through service prototyping. The cross-functional development team would
bring a mix of capabilities and would be agile. This would bring in a lot of experiences and multiple
skills on platter. For the development of the software, Agile SCRUM methodology would be used and
the tasks would be divided into small sprints. The software that would be developed would take inputs
from users so that the design process would better understand their interaction with the CRM system
and their expectations so that development can be made appropriate for the customers of Zoho
corporation and would get high acceptance in the market of CRM.