1. The New Paradigm: Zoho CRM for Everyone
- What It Is: This is a fundamental expansion of the CRM, designed to break down the walls between departments. Using new “Team Modules” and “Requestor Profiles,” every team—from legal and HR to finance and project delivery—can now have their own customized, yet fully connected, workspace within the CRM.
- Why It Matters: This is the ultimate silo-buster. Imagine your legal team managing contracts directly within the CRM, with each contract automatically linked to the relevant customer and deal record. No more chasing email threads or wrestling with version control. When a salesperson closes a deal, they can submit a “Request” to the delivery team’s module, triggering a seamless, trackable handoff. This transforms the CRM from a sales database into the central nervous system for all customer-related operations, ensuring everyone works from an SSOT (“Single Source of Truth.”)
- Status (as of 08/11/2025): released.
2. Your New AI Workforce: Zia Agents
- What It Is: Zoho has introduced proactive, autonomous AI agents that perform specific roles. The “SDR Agent” can intelligently nurture new leads through email, answer common questions using your knowledge base, and hand them off to a human sales rep only when buying intent is high. Meanwhile, the “Sales Coach Agent” analyzes sales call recordings to provide your team with objective feedback and actionable coaching insights.3
- Why It Matters: This is a monumental leap from passive AI (which just shows you data) to active AI (which gets work done). It automates the high-volume, repetitive tasks that consume valuable time, freeing up your human team for high-value strategic conversations. It’s like hiring a diligent junior sales rep and a personal performance coach for your entire team, both working 24/7.
- Status (as of 08/11/2025): delayed, not released.
3. Build Custom Modules in Zoho CRM with an AI
- What It Is: You can now try to build and modify your CRM using simple, plain-English commands. The new “Prompt Builder” lets you create complex custom buttons by just describing what you want them to do. Even more impressively, the “Image-to-Canvas” feature lets you upload a picture or sketch of a layout you like, and Zia will try to automatically build a functional CRM view that matches it.
- Why It Matters: This might dramatically lowers the technical barrier to creating a CRM that perfectly fits your unique business processes. Why “might”—because no AI is perfect. Yet.
- Status (as of 08/11/2025): released.
4. End Migration Headaches: The ‘Upsert’ Operation
- What It Is: “Upsert” is long-waited data import function that can simultaneously update existing records and insert new ones, all in a single operation. It intelligently matches data to avoid creating duplicates and, crucially, doesn’t alter the original creation timeline of your existing records.
- Why It Matters: Anyone who has managed a data migration or cleaned up a large dataset knows the pain of finding errors or missing information after the fact. Previously, this might have required a complex new import or manual correction. The upsert operation eliminates this headache, allowing you to systematically patch your CRM with new or corrected information seamlessly. It’s a massive time and resource saver for any growing business.
- Status (as of 08/11/2025): released.
5. Master Complex Deals: Team Selling & Revenue Split
- What It Is: For deals that require a team effort, this native feature allows you to formally add multiple contributors to a single opportunity. The “Deal Split” function then lets you allocate revenue credit among team members based on their specific contribution, whether it’s direct revenue influence or indirect support.
- Why It Matters: Modern B2B sales are rarely a solo act. This feature provides the structure and visibility needed to manage complex deals involving sales engineers, product specialists, and account managers. It ensures everyone is motivated and fairly compensated, fostering better collaboration and providing a true picture of how your most important deals are won.
- Status (as of 08/11/2025): released.
6. Quote with Precision: Advanced CPQ Enhancements
- What It Is: The Configure, Price, Quote (CPQ) module in Zoho CRM has received a significant power boost. It now supports “dynamic actions,” enabling you to build quoting rules based on multiple base products. You can also now clone existing price rules and product configurator rules, saving significant setup time.
- Why It Matters: For any business with a complex product catalog or bundled services, this provides surgical control over the quoting process. It reduces quoting errors, enforces pricing consistency across the sales team, and accelerates the creation of even the most complicated proposals.
- Status (as of 08/11/2025): released.
- Note: Zoho Books might suite your quotation needs better. Contact us to see why.
7. See Your Data Clearly: Cross-Module Criteria in Custom Views (Finally!)
- What It Is: You can now create a filtered list in one module based on data from a related module. For example, you can now easily create a view to “Show me all Contacts who have an open Deal worth more than $10,000” or “Show me all Accounts that have not had a support Case logged in the last 90 days.”.
- Why It Matters: This provides a multi-dimensional view of your data that was previously only possible through complex custom reports. It allows for highly specific, real-time segmentation and targeting. Your sales and marketing teams can now act on precise insights instantly, without ever leaving their primary list view.
- Status (as of 08/11/2025): released.
8. Unleash Your Developers: Expanded Client Scripts
- What It Is: For those who need deep customization, developers can now implement powerful Client Scripts not just on main modules, but also within Subforms and even in your Customer Portals. Furthermore, these scripts can be triggered on-demand using a command palette or custom keyboard shortcuts.
- Why It Matters: Imagine a quote subform that calculates complex totals in real-time as you add line items, or a customer portal that intelligently guides your clients through a complex onboarding form with conditional logic. This empowers developers to build slick, highly functional interfaces for both your internal team and your customers.
- Status (as of 08/11/2025): released.
9. Target High-Value Accounts: ABM for Zoho CRM
- What It Is: This new add-on provides a dedicated suite of tools for Account-Based Marketing (ABM). It helps you programmatically identify your most valuable accounts, enrich their profiles with external data, and segment them for highly targeted cross-selling and up-selling campaigns.
- Why It Matters: Moving from a “cast a wide net” approach to focusing on your best-fit, highest-potential customers is a crucial strategy for B2B growth. By building this capability directly into the CRM ecosystem, Zoho allows you to design and execute sophisticated ABM strategies using the customer data you already own, creating powerful alignment between your sales and marketing efforts.
- Status (as of 08/11/2025): released.
10. A More Intuitive Workspace: The New User Interface (UI)
- What It Is: Zoho has rolled out significant user experience improvements. The most noticeable is the relocation of the main navigation bar from the top to the left side of the screen. Other key additions include a system-wide “Dark Mode” to reduce eye strain and the ability to see chart visualizations directly within your list views.
- Why It Matters: A better interface leads to better user adoption and higher efficiency. The new left-side navigation frees up valuable vertical screen space, allowing you to see more data at once. Dark Mode makes working for long hours more comfortable. These are not just cosmetic touch-ups; they are quality-of-life improvements that make the CRM easier and more pleasant to use every day, boosting productivity across the board.
- Status (as of 08/11/2025): released.