Formbuilder services for tablet / phone ...
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@Dashrender said in Formbuilder services for tablet / phone ...:
@scottalanmiller said in Formbuilder services for tablet / phone ...:
@Pete-S said in Formbuilder services for tablet / phone ...:
@scottalanmiller said in Formbuilder services for tablet / phone ...:
@Pete-S said in Formbuilder services for tablet / phone ...:
Yes, they got a lot of interesting stuff. We recently went with the zoho one subscription so we now have access to all zoho apps. There is a lot of stuff you can do but it takes time to wade through everything.
We keep looking at that but for the way that we work it just doesn't pan out financially. We have lots of people who only need the $1 plan, and lots of others that only need the $3, and almost no one needs $30 of combined products. So we can't justify it. If we were a smaller team with deeper "per person" needs, then it'd be amazing.
We had a slightly different approach. We have not been looking at what we need and how much it will cost. We have been looking at what we can leverage from the Zoho apps and how much time it will save us in the end. And how much better we can utilize the resources we have.
While better teamwork is always good, our primary goal is actually automation. That's how I think we can get the most out of zoho one.
Same here, there's just a lot of pieces that we can't figure out how we'd use and when we add up what we would want to use, it never seems to come out to $30.
Maybe that's not the way to look at it - but instead look at it - do you save $30/user/month because of the features that subscription brings you?
And saves is likely the wrong term - how about, do you gain $30 or more in productivity from those users because of the tools?
That's a terrible way to look at it. This is the "comparing to something known bad" fallacy. Instead of trying to figure out what's "best" you are simply attempting to eliminate what is "worst" and once you do so, skipping any further analysis. This is something we talk to businesses and IT people about all the time. It's called a false comparison.
Example: Find the worst computer system, worst email product, have no backups, etc. Now compare that to having to work on stone tablets and carrier pigeons. Ask your users, isn't this better than the alternative?
Of course, it's better than one ridiculous alternative that you should have not even considered. But is it the best thing for you? Not likely. When you want to determine what's best, you have to keep comparing, not intentionally avoid meaningful comparisons.
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@Dashrender said in Formbuilder services for tablet / phone ...:
do you save $30/user/month because of the features that subscription brings you?
So let's say we gain $100 per month in productivity from spending $30. But we only use $10 worth of the $30. We could only spend $10 to get the same $100 gain.
By this logic, you would intentionally overspend by $20, but why? Why throw away money when you get all the benefits more cheaply simply by selecting only what you use/benefit from?
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@scottalanmiller said in Formbuilder services for tablet / phone ...:
@Dashrender said in Formbuilder services for tablet / phone ...:
@scottalanmiller said in Formbuilder services for tablet / phone ...:
@Pete-S said in Formbuilder services for tablet / phone ...:
@scottalanmiller said in Formbuilder services for tablet / phone ...:
@Pete-S said in Formbuilder services for tablet / phone ...:
Yes, they got a lot of interesting stuff. We recently went with the zoho one subscription so we now have access to all zoho apps. There is a lot of stuff you can do but it takes time to wade through everything.
We keep looking at that but for the way that we work it just doesn't pan out financially. We have lots of people who only need the $1 plan, and lots of others that only need the $3, and almost no one needs $30 of combined products. So we can't justify it. If we were a smaller team with deeper "per person" needs, then it'd be amazing.
We had a slightly different approach. We have not been looking at what we need and how much it will cost. We have been looking at what we can leverage from the Zoho apps and how much time it will save us in the end. And how much better we can utilize the resources we have.
While better teamwork is always good, our primary goal is actually automation. That's how I think we can get the most out of zoho one.
Same here, there's just a lot of pieces that we can't figure out how we'd use and when we add up what we would want to use, it never seems to come out to $30.
Maybe that's not the way to look at it - but instead look at it - do you save $30/user/month because of the features that subscription brings you?
And saves is likely the wrong term - how about, do you gain $30 or more in productivity from those users because of the tools?
That's a terrible way to look at it. This is the "comparing to something known bad" fallacy. Instead of trying to figure out what's "best" you are simply attempting to eliminate what is "worst" and once you do so, skipping any further analysis. This is something we talk to businesses and IT people about all the time. It's called a false comparison.
Example: Find the worst computer system, worst email product, have no backups, etc. Now compare that to having to work on stone tablets and carrier pigeons. Ask your users, isn't this better than the alternative?
Of course, it's better than one ridiculous alternative that you should have not even considered. But is it the best thing for you? Not likely. When you want to determine what's best, you have to keep comparing, not intentionally avoid meaningful comparisons.
I hear what you are saying, but I'm also assuming you're getting some type of value out of the $30 stuff, and that it's not all for not... if the $4 ($1 + $3 you mentioned earlier) doesn't give you this forms thing... then you need to move to the $30 AND you get more than $30 in payback from those using it - it seems worth at least considering...
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@Pete-S said in Formbuilder services for tablet / phone ...:
@Dashrender said in Formbuilder services for tablet / phone ...:
@scottalanmiller said in Formbuilder services for tablet / phone ...:
@Pete-S said in Formbuilder services for tablet / phone ...:
@scottalanmiller said in Formbuilder services for tablet / phone ...:
@Pete-S said in Formbuilder services for tablet / phone ...:
Yes, they got a lot of interesting stuff. We recently went with the zoho one subscription so we now have access to all zoho apps. There is a lot of stuff you can do but it takes time to wade through everything.
We keep looking at that but for the way that we work it just doesn't pan out financially. We have lots of people who only need the $1 plan, and lots of others that only need the $3, and almost no one needs $30 of combined products. So we can't justify it. If we were a smaller team with deeper "per person" needs, then it'd be amazing.
We had a slightly different approach. We have not been looking at what we need and how much it will cost. We have been looking at what we can leverage from the Zoho apps and how much time it will save us in the end. And how much better we can utilize the resources we have.
While better teamwork is always good, our primary goal is actually automation. That's how I think we can get the most out of zoho one.
Same here, there's just a lot of pieces that we can't figure out how we'd use and when we add up what we would want to use, it never seems to come out to $30.
Maybe that's not the way to look at it - but instead look at it - do you save $30/user/month because of the features that subscription brings you?
And saves is likely the wrong term - how about, do you gain $30 or more in productivity from those users because of the tools?
Well put. That what was I was trying to say.
But since it's impossible to know what you actually gain until you have implemented it, it has to be some kind of guesstimation followed by a leap of faith.
I get the "impossible to tell" point. But we've tested a lot of the apps and found that we can't use them. And we've tried pretty hard. Like Books, we can't find a cost effective CPA that will let us use that. And trust me, we tried. We found very few that were willing to use it, and they all charged an arm and a leg to do so. We really want to move to it, but until we are big enough to pressure a firm to do it, we are stuck.
Going through the apps that they have, we've not found any users that would benefit from more than about $15-$20 of software, and most max out at $4-$11.
We keep looking at it, but keep finding that we can't get any additional value from the extra spend. Maybe if we spent it and had all that software and started playing with it more we'd find more value. Certainly possible. But for us, the cost of moving from the Zoho level we are on (which is maxed out on value that we can predictably gain) to the Zoho One level is enough money to hire one or more additional full time workers who we know would provide us a lot of value, whereas Zoho One would be purely all that salary lost based on "to play with and see if we were wrong about additional value."
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@scottalanmiller said in Formbuilder services for tablet / phone ...:
@Dashrender said in Formbuilder services for tablet / phone ...:
do you save $30/user/month because of the features that subscription brings you?
So let's say we gain $100 per month in productivity from spending $30. But we only use $10 worth of the $30. We could only spend $10 to get the same $100 gain.
By this logic, you would intentionally overspend by $20, but why? Why throw away money when you get all the benefits more cheaply simply by selecting only what you use/benefit from?
I was making an assumption you couldn't just spend $10, but that you HAD to spend $30 to get that $100.... OF course if you can get the $100 for $10, do that. I don't know the Zoho plans at all... so I was working from my just stated POV.
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@scottalanmiller said in Formbuilder services for tablet / phone ...:
@Pete-S said in Formbuilder services for tablet / phone ...:
@Dashrender said in Formbuilder services for tablet / phone ...:
@scottalanmiller said in Formbuilder services for tablet / phone ...:
@Pete-S said in Formbuilder services for tablet / phone ...:
@scottalanmiller said in Formbuilder services for tablet / phone ...:
@Pete-S said in Formbuilder services for tablet / phone ...:
Yes, they got a lot of interesting stuff. We recently went with the zoho one subscription so we now have access to all zoho apps. There is a lot of stuff you can do but it takes time to wade through everything.
We keep looking at that but for the way that we work it just doesn't pan out financially. We have lots of people who only need the $1 plan, and lots of others that only need the $3, and almost no one needs $30 of combined products. So we can't justify it. If we were a smaller team with deeper "per person" needs, then it'd be amazing.
We had a slightly different approach. We have not been looking at what we need and how much it will cost. We have been looking at what we can leverage from the Zoho apps and how much time it will save us in the end. And how much better we can utilize the resources we have.
While better teamwork is always good, our primary goal is actually automation. That's how I think we can get the most out of zoho one.
Same here, there's just a lot of pieces that we can't figure out how we'd use and when we add up what we would want to use, it never seems to come out to $30.
Maybe that's not the way to look at it - but instead look at it - do you save $30/user/month because of the features that subscription brings you?
And saves is likely the wrong term - how about, do you gain $30 or more in productivity from those users because of the tools?
Well put. That what was I was trying to say.
But since it's impossible to know what you actually gain until you have implemented it, it has to be some kind of guesstimation followed by a leap of faith.
I get the "impossible to tell" point. But we've tested a lot of the apps and found that we can't use them. And we've tried pretty hard. Like Books, we can't find a cost effective CPA that will let us use that. And trust me, we tried. We found very few that were willing to use it, and they all charged an arm and a leg to do so. We really want to move to it, but until we are big enough to pressure a firm to do it, we are stuck.
This seems to be a common theme - that's why there's so much crappy QuickBooks out there.
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@Dashrender said in Formbuilder services for tablet / phone ...:
ut I'm also assuming you're getting some type of value out of the $30 stuff, and that it's not all for not
That's fine, but it's a big assumption considering we've already looked and determined that there isn't anything we'd use. So if we paid for more, nothing would be expected to change. As it is, it's a struggle to get people to use what all we already have (just because there is so much.)
It's more than just potential benefit, it's potential problems. It's a LOT of software that they'd suddenly all have access to and it brings almost as much risk of costing us extra in productivity as people get lost using so many pieces of software or trying to use things that we don't need. Suddenly people using multiple CRMs, using multiple meeting softwares, using CRM vs Project Management tools, it gets messy and suddenly we'd have the problem that people need to learn loads of different applications. All great apps if they fit your need, but we could lose a lot of productivity from app sprawl, too.
You are basing the idea of "but wouldn't yo umake more" on "they evaluated it and determined it's not even close" being completely wrong. Which is a big assumption.
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@Dashrender said in Formbuilder services for tablet / phone ...:
@scottalanmiller said in Formbuilder services for tablet / phone ...:
@Pete-S said in Formbuilder services for tablet / phone ...:
@Dashrender said in Formbuilder services for tablet / phone ...:
@scottalanmiller said in Formbuilder services for tablet / phone ...:
@Pete-S said in Formbuilder services for tablet / phone ...:
@scottalanmiller said in Formbuilder services for tablet / phone ...:
@Pete-S said in Formbuilder services for tablet / phone ...:
Yes, they got a lot of interesting stuff. We recently went with the zoho one subscription so we now have access to all zoho apps. There is a lot of stuff you can do but it takes time to wade through everything.
We keep looking at that but for the way that we work it just doesn't pan out financially. We have lots of people who only need the $1 plan, and lots of others that only need the $3, and almost no one needs $30 of combined products. So we can't justify it. If we were a smaller team with deeper "per person" needs, then it'd be amazing.
We had a slightly different approach. We have not been looking at what we need and how much it will cost. We have been looking at what we can leverage from the Zoho apps and how much time it will save us in the end. And how much better we can utilize the resources we have.
While better teamwork is always good, our primary goal is actually automation. That's how I think we can get the most out of zoho one.
Same here, there's just a lot of pieces that we can't figure out how we'd use and when we add up what we would want to use, it never seems to come out to $30.
Maybe that's not the way to look at it - but instead look at it - do you save $30/user/month because of the features that subscription brings you?
And saves is likely the wrong term - how about, do you gain $30 or more in productivity from those users because of the tools?
Well put. That what was I was trying to say.
But since it's impossible to know what you actually gain until you have implemented it, it has to be some kind of guesstimation followed by a leap of faith.
I get the "impossible to tell" point. But we've tested a lot of the apps and found that we can't use them. And we've tried pretty hard. Like Books, we can't find a cost effective CPA that will let us use that. And trust me, we tried. We found very few that were willing to use it, and they all charged an arm and a leg to do so. We really want to move to it, but until we are big enough to pressure a firm to do it, we are stuck.
This seems to be a common theme - that's why there's so much crappy QuickBooks out there.
Yes, and we plan to push hard to get Zoho into the big accouting firm we use. We start really heavy team integration with them next week and we hope to get Zoho on the docket. In which case, we'll move for sure.
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@Dashrender said in Formbuilder services for tablet / phone ...:
if the $4 ($1 + $3 you mentioned earlier) doesn't give you this forms thing... then you need to move to the $30 AND you get more than $30 in payback from those using it - it seems worth at least considering...
Problem is is that it doesn't work that way, Not for us anyway. Maybe for Pete because he has different workflows or workers in different countries.
For example, if you use their HR, Accounting, CRM, Helpdesk apps across the board, then it's pretty easy to see where $30 would be a slam dunk obvious win.
But given how we work, the HR tools can't be used, accounting can't be used, CRM we have different needs for different teams, helpdesk is only useful for a few people (few enough that we get it free), etc. So what might be the core of value for Pete, we can't even use regardless of if we pay for it or not.
For the rare users that need something, it tends to be CRM related and we can add any CRM package we want, or even multiple ones, per user that needs them, for still less than the $30. No matter what we do, we can't come up with any one user that could benefit from Zoho One, let alone enough to make it make sense. Most of our users would never go above $4.
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Some things that I bet work for Pete and don't work for us...
Helpdesk: Zoho Desk is nice, I like it. But we mostly work from customers' helpdesks so paying for our own in addition to theirs for users that only need theirs is purely a financial loss. We can't really make use of both.
HR Tools: These cover a lot of ground from insurance management to recruiting. None of which we can use because of our international nature. It's all worthless to us, or effectively so. But if you are US or Canada based, I bet that they make your life way easier and are of great value.
Just two examples, but big ticket item ones, that just being based in NA would totally change their value from zero to easily close to $30 alone.
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@scottalanmiller said in Formbuilder services for tablet / phone ...:
Some things that I bet work for Pete and don't work for us...
Helpdesk: Zoho Desk is nice, I like it. But we mostly work from customers' helpdesks so paying for our own in addition to theirs for users that only need theirs is purely a financial loss. We can't really make use of both.
HR Tools: These cover a lot of ground from insurance management to recruiting. None of which we can use because of our international nature. It's all worthless to us, or effectively so. But if you are US or Canada based, I bet that they make your life way easier and are of great value.
Just two examples, but big ticket item ones, that just being based in NA would totally change their value from zero to easily close to $30 alone.
Yes, I can see how it doesn't make sense for everyone. While we are not using Zoho's HR or finance apps, we are using a few of Zoho's big applications - Zoho Desk, Zoho Projects and Zoho CRM. So the step up to Zoho One was from $20 on average and not from $4 or so.
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@Pete-S said in Formbuilder services for tablet / phone ...:
@scottalanmiller said in Formbuilder services for tablet / phone ...:
Some things that I bet work for Pete and don't work for us...
Helpdesk: Zoho Desk is nice, I like it. But we mostly work from customers' helpdesks so paying for our own in addition to theirs for users that only need theirs is purely a financial loss. We can't really make use of both.
HR Tools: These cover a lot of ground from insurance management to recruiting. None of which we can use because of our international nature. It's all worthless to us, or effectively so. But if you are US or Canada based, I bet that they make your life way easier and are of great value.
Just two examples, but big ticket item ones, that just being based in NA would totally change their value from zero to easily close to $30 alone.
Yes, I can see how it doesn't make sense for everyone. While we are not using Zoho's HR or finance apps, we are using a few of Zoho's big applications - Zoho Desk, Zoho Projects and Zoho CRM. So the step up to Zoho One was from $20 on average and not from $4 or so.
Yeah, and that makes it make sense quickly. At some point, even if you get zero application value, you might make up the difference from simply time savings in not having to manage carefully which apps go to which person, there is a little value there, too.
We do use both Desk and CRM. But for us, each is limited to a pool so small that it is free. If we needed both for everyone, things would change really quickly. CRM is like $12 alone. Desk isn't far off from that. Add in the $4 for the "base things" like Connect and Workspace and voila, essentially $30 even without Project or anything else.
For us, even when we grow, the pool of people who need CRM, Desk, and Books (if we can ever get there) aren't expected to ever overlap. So even when we pay, the per person cost doesn't scale up, even if we added Projects for everyone which, at this point, we don't use at all (but keep kicking around.) Right now we are using Bigin instead of Projects, seems to work well for us.
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@scottalanmiller said in Formbuilder services for tablet / phone ...:
Yeah, and that makes it make sense quickly. At some point, even if you get zero application value, you might make up the difference from simply time savings in not having to manage carefully which apps go to which person, there is a little value there, too.
You might not know it but when you have Zoho One there is an admin console where you have all the users and can decide who will have access to what. You also have groups and can add apps to the group instead of each user and also set up who the admin for what applications.
Of course you could let everyone have everything but as you mentioned before there is some drawback to that as well.
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@Pete-S said in Formbuilder services for tablet / phone ...:
@scottalanmiller said in Formbuilder services for tablet / phone ...:
Yeah, and that makes it make sense quickly. At some point, even if you get zero application value, you might make up the difference from simply time savings in not having to manage carefully which apps go to which person, there is a little value there, too.
You might not know it but when you have Zoho One there is an admin console where you have all the users and can decide who will have access to what. You also have groups and can add apps to the group instead of each user and also set up who the admin for what applications.
Of course you could let everyone have everything but as you mentioned before there is some drawback to that as well.
I assumed that, although it's nice to know that it is true, but that is the lesser of the concerns. What would be awesome was if you could lower the cost by not providing everything, to everyone.... but that would undermine the point of Zoho One, I understand.
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@scottalanmiller said in Formbuilder services for tablet / phone ...:
Like Books, we can't find a cost effective CPA that will let us use that. And trust me, we tried. We found very few that were willing to use it, and they all charged an arm and a leg to do so. We really want to move to it, but until we are big enough to pressure a firm to do it, we are stuck.
I thought you were using Wave?
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@stacksofplates said in Formbuilder services for tablet / phone ...:
@scottalanmiller said in Formbuilder services for tablet / phone ...:
Like Books, we can't find a cost effective CPA that will let us use that. And trust me, we tried. We found very few that were willing to use it, and they all charged an arm and a leg to do so. We really want to move to it, but until we are big enough to pressure a firm to do it, we are stuck.
I thought you were using Wave?
That was a LONG time ago. We moved to Xero like five or six years ago, I'd guess. But then three years ago had to move to QB for forensic reasons.
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@scottalanmiller said in Formbuilder services for tablet / phone ...:
@stacksofplates said in Formbuilder services for tablet / phone ...:
@scottalanmiller said in Formbuilder services for tablet / phone ...:
Like Books, we can't find a cost effective CPA that will let us use that. And trust me, we tried. We found very few that were willing to use it, and they all charged an arm and a leg to do so. We really want to move to it, but until we are big enough to pressure a firm to do it, we are stuck.
I thought you were using Wave?
That was a LONG time ago. We moved to Xero like five or six years ago, I'd guess. But then three years ago had to move to QB for forensic reasons.
What happened to that Manhattan place you used before? I thought they liked Wave but must have been Xero.
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@stacksofplates said in Formbuilder services for tablet / phone ...:
@scottalanmiller said in Formbuilder services for tablet / phone ...:
@stacksofplates said in Formbuilder services for tablet / phone ...:
@scottalanmiller said in Formbuilder services for tablet / phone ...:
Like Books, we can't find a cost effective CPA that will let us use that. And trust me, we tried. We found very few that were willing to use it, and they all charged an arm and a leg to do so. We really want to move to it, but until we are big enough to pressure a firm to do it, we are stuck.
I thought you were using Wave?
That was a LONG time ago. We moved to Xero like five or six years ago, I'd guess. But then three years ago had to move to QB for forensic reasons.
What happened to that Manhattan place you used before? I thought they liked Wave but must have been Xero.
We had to move to the forensic specialists needed by our attorneys. We didn't have the luxury of using bookkeepers anymore.
That place was just our bookkeepers, They weren't accountants.
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In the short time since this thread was active, we've moved into the Zoho Workplace suite now. It's almost nothing more than we had before, but a little bit of additional collaboration, some new interfaces, and hopefully some team storage. However, their conversion team hit a snag and WorkDrive isn't working yet. So we haven't been able to realize any of the real benefits, yet.
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@scottalanmiller said in Formbuilder services for tablet / phone ...:
In the short time since this thread was active, we've moved into the Zoho Workplace suite now. It's almost nothing more than we had before, but a little bit of additional collaboration, some new interfaces, and hopefully some team storage. However, their conversion team hit a snag and WorkDrive isn't working yet. So we haven't been able to realize any of the real benefits, yet.
What was the problem with workdrive? Or was it moving your data to workdrive that was the problem?
