Bigin Rewind 2023: Part 1: What's New?

Bigin is a simple yet powerful CRM—a statement we proudly stand by. We're always striving to make a CRM that's capable of not only helping you run your business efficiently, but also elevate it to greater heights.

Staying true to this sentiment, we've created an exciting number of new features and enhancements over the course of this year.

In this three-part series, we'll take a look at how Bigin has evolved to meet and surpass the needs of small businesses and startups.

A host of brand-new features and integrations, all set to boost your business

We understand the difficulties that plague small businesses, and we've made it our mission to make sure you're equipped to overcome them. Here's a list of brand-new features that will transform the way you run your business.

Team Pipelines: Different teams, different processes, one unified space 

Our first big announcement this year was introducing Team Pipelines to our customers. Spending a huge chunk of your precious budget on multiple tools to manage different customer operations is neither sustainable nor productive—and that's not to mention the complicated task of collecting customer data from different sources! With Bigin's Team Pipelines, you can run every customer-facing operation within the same CRM tool efficiently.

Each team pipeline is a complete package, featuring stages, fields, and records that represent the operations of each team. Additionally, you can customize each pipeline, fine-tune them to your company's processes, and even add sub-pipelines to establish more control over the entire process. From converting leads to fulfilling orders to resolving complaints, you can do it all with Bigin! 

Connected Records: For a seamless connection between all your teams

Now that you have different customer-facing processes for your business, how well can you connect them to work in sync? This was the challenge we solved with Connect Records.

Every team in a small business—from marketing, who acquire new leads, to sales, who close deals, and all the way to the finance team in charge of collecting payments—needs to work in sync to provide satisfactory customer experiences and hassle-free internal operations.

Bigin's Connected Records feature ensured just that! By setting up connected records, you can ensure a smooth transition from one stage to the next. As soon as a one of your teams has wrapped up their work with a customer, their data will automatically enter the next team's pipeline, thus allowing them to handle the customer with all the required context.

For example, let's say your sales team have successfully managed to close a deal. When this record is added to the final stage of the sales pipeline, a new record will be created in the first stage of the customer onboarding pipeline.

WhatsApp integration: Bring the powerful communicative features of the most popular messaging app to Bigin

The most sought-after integration by our #BiginnersClub family was finally introduced this year. Thanks to their popularity, accessibility, and usability, messaging apps have become the go-to channel for customers reaching out to businesses. By adopting such apps—and in particular, the most widely used ones like WhatsApp—businesses can easily maintain contact and build trust with their existing audiences, in addition to expanding their reach.

Bigin's integration with WhatsApp helps you connect with your customers without leaving Bigin. Every time a customer reaches out to you, their chat is assigned to a user and visible in the Messages module. Their entire chat history is associated with their record in Bigin, thereby allowing you to access all the relevant information you need while messaging them.

Now you can improve customer satisfaction by responding to them quickly with contextual information, consolidate all your communications with customers and prospects, and streamline contact management by enabling the WhatsApp integration.

Forms: A powerful and versatile form builder for collecting a wide variety of data

In 2023, we gave a whole new twist to our built-in data collection feature, Forms. Previously, Forms in Bigin were restricted to collecting entries under the Contacts module in Bigin. With Bigin's new no-code form builder, we expanded the scope of data collection by allowing customers to link new form entries to the Pipelines Module.

Whether you want to just add new contacts to your CRM from form entries or additionally create a new pipeline record for the same contact, all you have to do is select the required type of form, simply drag and drop the desired fields, format the form to suit your business' style, and set the submission rules to decide what happens to the data entered in the form—and thenvoilà! Your form is ready.

Finally, use one of the many sharing options, such as generating a unique shareable link, a downloadable QR code, or an embeddable code to distribute the form across multiple channels—social media, banners, brochures, and websites. 

Sheet View: Combine the familiarity of spreadsheets with the functionality of a CRM

Inexpensive and easy-to-use spreadsheets are often the starting point for businesses seeking to manage their data. But as your business grows, the limitations spreadsheets impose become painfully obvious.

To offer the best of both worlds, we're introducing Bigin's Sheet View, which you can use to store and access your data in rows and columns while still taking advantage of Bigin's variety of user-friendly features. 

You can update the data in any field by simply double-clicking on it. By mandating and enabling validation in fields, you can not only ensure data accuracy but also provide added security and privacy for your data, thanks to Bigin's HIPPA- and GDPR-compliant and privacy-first approach.

Calendar view: An easy-to-navigate visual representation of all your scheduled calls, tasks, and events

Improve productivity and transparency, track multiple activities simultaneously, and streamline the entire scheduling process using Bigin's Calendar view. Visualize all your scheduled activities associated with their scheduled date and time. This view also makes it easier for you to add new activities or update existing ones. Month, week, and day views—along with a mini-calendar—make navigating your schedule easier. You can also filter out required activities based on specific criteria.

Target Meter: Set and achieve your goals 

An important addition to our Dashboards module focused on achieving your targets more easily. With Target Meter, you can now track important metrics—the number of calls your team has made, the revenue you've generated in the past month, or the number deals closed you've closed this quarter—and visualize them in relation to your goals. Quit tracking your progress via lengthy reports!

Duplicates Cleanup: Identify and remove duplicates 

You can import data into Bigin through integrations or APIs, from spreadsheets, from other CRMs, or from forms or emails. Irrespective of the source, duplicates are bound to pop up. With the Duplicates Cleanup option, all you have to do is choose which fields you want to identify duplicates in and then merge them to resolve all instances of duplicates.

File Cabinet: Effortlessly collect files in a secure manner

Securely collecting and storing documents from multiple customers and keeping them organized and accessible at all times can be a daunting task! Not to mention the tedious need to upload them individually to your CRM. That's why you need Bigin's File Cabinet!

By enabling the File Cabinet topping, you can create unique links, share it with your customers, and collect the required documents safely. The uploaded documents will be associated with the contact's record and easily accessible.

Email-in: Efficiently manage the emails directed towards different teams 

Bigin's Team Pipelines create a clear distinction between your customer-facing operations, thus helping you give every operation the attention it deserves. By enabling the Email-in topping, you can go one step further by streamlining the email communication linked to each of these operations. 

You can create email aliases for the pipelines in your Bigin account and automatically convert the emails received via these aliases into the relevant pipeline, thus ensuring that you never miss out on any email and saving you the hassle of manually creating a records based on received emails. Once the record is created, you'll be able to view and reply to all linked emails from the record. 

Latest integrations: Expanding Bigin's capabilities to meet all your business needs

Zoho Directory: Enhance security and access management 

With the Zoho Directory integration, Bigin users can bolster their security efforts. Offer your employees a seamless login experience using Zoho Directory's intelligent authentication capabilities, including single sign-on (SSO), device authentication, and multi-factor authentication (MFA).

You can also provide a custom level of access to certain individuals, analyze user behavior like login time and duration, and get customized reports to prevent any security breaches.

Merge Templates in Zoho Writer: Create customized and personalized documents

With Bigin's integration with Zoho Writer, you can create a wide range of personalized documents, including estimates, quotes, contracts, invoices, and more. Create the document from scratch or use one of the many templates available in Zoho Writer, map the data from Bigin, and then sit back as the data automatically populates in the document's required fields. You can also leverage the integration with Zoho Sign to facilitate signature collection.

Streamline document creation and sharing, reduce errors that occur during manual data entry, and save a ton of time using merge templates!

Zoho FSM: Provide exceptional customer service on-the-go 

Bigin captures new requests, work orders, and estimates created in Zoho FSM. Additionally, you can create new recordsin Bigin and link them with the concerned contact—thus ensuring you're always aware of all your customers' requirements.

Zoho LandingPage: Funnel leads from your landing pages to Bigin

With Zoho LandingPage—a no-code landing page builder—you can create and launch pages that are bound to bring in leads. By integrating Zoho LandingPage with Bigin, you can also ensure that these leads are properly nurtured and converted to customers.

Map the fields in your landing page form to the relevant fields in Bigin to convert all lead information into records in the Contacts module automatically. Enable the "Enrich Leads" option to gain useful insights into your potential customers.

ZeptoMail: Monitor all your transactional email activities from Bigin 

ZeptoMail makes it easy for you to deliver your transactional emails, ranging from order confirmations to password reset emails. By integrating with Bigin, you can view the list of all the transactional emails you've sent to a particular contact. Additionally, you can view the status of each email and monitor statistics like the number of clicks and opens.

And with that, you're now familiar with the exciting new changes we've released this year. These features were curated to make sure Bigin is capable of managing every aspect of your business effortlessly. Hopefully, you've alreadyimplemented these features in your daily routine. If not, don't worry—you can start now!

P.S. Tune in to the second part of this series, wherein we'll explore the changes we've made to our already-advantageous features.