Skip to main content

Zoholics 24 - exciting news from the Zohoverse

Zoho’s annual main customer event Zoholics took place in Austin, TX last week. The company presented updates to products and strategy and gave partners the opportunity to present themselves on a big show floor. In parallel to the event, Zoho published some interesting news about product enhancements in four areas, namely security and privacy, CRM for Everyone, collaboration, and platform tools. In addition, Zoho reaffirmed its AI strategy.

Of course, CEO Sridhar Vembu set the scene in his usual humble, yet no-nonsense way. He detailed why Zoho is truly different. Zoho’s strategy of transnational localism with a clear focus on investing into employees is well known by now, and we see it working. Explaining the strategy with another twist, Vembu laid out five principles that will continue to be essential for every business software vendor to thrive:

  • Investing in a full product portfolio with breadth and depth
  • Offering attractive bundles that have deep value
  • Investing into exceptional service and support
  • Improving interoperability with more prebuilt integrations
  • Getting close to the customer with a strong local partner ecosystem

With 55 tightly integrated apps and growing, value-oriented bundles, and a thriving ecosystem, Zoho is certainly on a strong way following these principles.

Another topic is the way applications get built by software developers. Vembu compares developers to artisans and postulates that software development will become ten times more efficient with the help of generative AI. The developer’s role will change to become far more one of a scientist, leaving the mundane tasks to the system. This way, the whole development cycle as such changes considerably, also enabling vendors to deliver more value by keeping cost in check – or ultimately at close to the cost of the infrastructure that is needed to run the necessary code generators. It will be interesting to see how Zoho’s internal as well as external development environments evolve, based on this prediction.

AI

Apart from development tools, Zoho’s aspiration is to sprinkle AI contextually across the board, i.e. have relevant – productivity increasing – AI capabilities in all applications. Doing this, Zoho focuses on use cases where AI actually adds value. What is interesting is that, defying the current LLM hype, Zoho insists that not one LLM fits it all but that there is an ongoing need for more specialized, narrow, small, and medium models.

Acknowledging user choice, Zoho besides the own ZIA also supports systems delivered by OpenAI, Anthropic, cohere and Vertex.ai.

Collaboration

Zoho Projects as well as Zoho Notebook get enriched by AI capabilities by adding NLP capabilities to Zoho Projects and smart summarization, tagging and task management plus more in a significant upgrade to Zoho Notebook. 

In addition, Zoho invested into making Blueprint, the company’s visual workflow technology available in Zoho Projects, Zoho Workdrive, Zoho Sign. What is more interesting is that Zoho uses collaboration and workflows to offer vertical capabilities, first for the construction, healthcare, manufacturing, and aviation industries on top of the collaboration apps. The overall goal is improving collaboration through a combination of industry specific workflows, automation, and AI. Taking the manufacturing industry as one example, manufacturing companies can now leverage Blueprint in Zoho Projects to chart and manage their process pipeline, as well as automate steps in processes like prototype testing, phase gates, or inventory management. Manufacturing companies can also take advantage of Project's integration with Zoho Lens, allowing off-site managers to track and troubleshoot on-site operations using AR technology. Or, Zoho Workdrive now includes workflow automation. This empowers users to map, manage, and automate content procedures across departments and teams — which in turn reduces human error. This includes legal policy or contract review and approval, streamlining data collection for seamless onboarding, consistent HR operations, and more transparent task management.

Integrated security

“Security should not be the price any of us should be paying” is a good headline for this topic. To follow through on this aspiration, Zoho offers a suite of 4 integrated applications with

  • Ulaa, Zoho’s privacy first browser, which got enhanced by M/L-based phishing detection, crypto mining detection in addition to the already strong ad blocking
  • Zoho Directory, Zoho’s workforce IAM. It now helps businesses manage their users, apps, devices, and networks securely and from one single console with one secure credential. With conditional access and routing policies IT Admins can securely automate access management Users can upload their own encryption keys from an external key manager to encrypt their data thereby ensuring that only they have access to it using the Bring Your Own Key (BYOK). With Zoho Directory Cloud RADIUS, businesses can also now authenticate enterprise WiFi networks and VPNs. Additionally, Windows, Mac, and Linux devices can now be authenticated using Zoho Directory. 
  • OneAuth, Zoho’s multi-factor authentication solution, now offers Smart Sign-In to provide faster ways to log into their Zoho accounts by scanning a QR code. MFA can be enforced more easily. Accounts can be locked via a tool named Restrict Sign-In. Unauthorized sessions can be easily killed using Remote Logout.
  • Zoho Vault, the company’s enterprise password manager. It offers a password generator, policies, breached password detection, compliance reports, browser extensions, and mobile apps. Additionally, Vault provides storage of confidential data, including credit card information, private notes, and software licenses, allowing administrators to set and maintain access privileges for employees based on need and compliance. Vault offers browser extensions, mobile apps, and desktop apps for all popular platforms. 

CRM for Everyone

CRM for Everyone is what puzzled me most. It is the implementation of the idea that by far not all teams that are involved in customer operations activities have access to the CRM system, which leads to siloed information and broken workflows – or in the words of Mani Vembu, Zoho’s COO, lacking context. “This is fundamentally antithetical to a great customer experience. Zoho CRM for Everyone breaks down those silos for the first time, enabling different teams in a sales process to contribute productively by reducing CRM complexity and encouraging participation.”

CRM for Everyone is a strategy to break the silos and to enable cross-departmental workflows and collaboration, in an enterprise security context. One can think of it as a step towards breaking down the artificial differentiation between front-end and back-end users. CRM for Everyone does this with the help of three main innovations:

  • Team modules that can be built by business teams while being governed by IT, to support their specific needs. Team Modules can have their own fields, permissions, workflow automation, and other customization that is specific to each team. These modules are housed within a dedicated space for each team. Together, this helps unite all customer-facing processes onto a single platform enriched with complete customer context.
  • Requester Profiles support the raising of trackable requests of deliverables from, or the contributions of, a colleague from a different team. A requester can simply raise a request in the appropriate team module and track the status of their own requests, eliminating any guesswork involved in collaborative work.
  • A refreshed user interface that supports better organization of data and a better usability. 

Customers and partners

Zoholics is predominantly a customer and partner event. So, I spent what little spare time I had on the shopfloor talking to some partners and customers about what traction they see in the Zohoverse. 

The short version is that the present partners are quite happy. One objective for participating in an event like this being leads, I heard general happiness with the quantity and quality of attendants. They were also happy with their own access to Zoho. Good news.

Customers came with various objectives in mind. The ones who are already Zoho customers, however, often claimed getting fast and efficient support as one of their main challenges. This means that Zoho – like pretty much every other software vendor – is still on a way of fulfilling. However, this is something the company actively works upon, and it is also something that partners can and do help with.

One other topic might become a bit more of a challenge. Zoho wants to provide value while maintaining a reasonably low price point. And the company does a good job at this with a wide set of fairly well integrated apps. Still, at one point, partners come into the picture. They need to charge market rates. This reduces the cost advantage that Zoho has to some extent. And there is no perfect solution for this, as consulting is a people business. I am quite interested in seeing how this topic evolves – and of course also happy to help.

All this together shows how unusual Zoho really is. Starting from a culture angle, the company looks at challenges vastly different than the usual software or technology company. The breadth and width of software and the hardware stack that reaches from communication via collaboration, business apps and productivity apps, on an own technical infrastructure is matched – ok, probably surpassed – only by Microsoft. No other vendor has this broad and deep functionality, not Oracle, not Salesforce, not SAP, not Odoo, and surely not any other mid-sized vendor.

Kudos!


 

Comments

Last Year's Top 5 Popular Posts

SAP CRM and SAP Jam - News from CRM evolution

During CRM Evolution 2017 I had the chance of talking with Volker Hildebrand and Anthony Leaper from SAP. Volker is SAP’s Global Vice President SAP Hybris and Anthony is Senior Vice President and Sales GM - Enterprise Social Software at SAP. Topics that we covered were things CRM and collaboration, how and where SAP’s solutions are moving and, of course, the impact that the recent reshuffling in the executive board has. Starting with the latter, there is common agreement, that if at all it is positive as likely to streamline reporting lines and hence decision processes. First things first – after all I am a CRM guy. Having the distinct impression that the SAP Hybris set of solutions is going a good way I was most interested in learning from Volker about how there is going to be a CRM for S4/HANA. SAP’s new generation ERP system is growing at a good clip, and according to the Q1/2017 earnings call, now has 5,800 customers with 400 new customers in the last quarter alone. Many...

How to play the long game Zoho style

The news On February 7 and 8 2024, Zoho held its annual ZohoDay conference, along with a pre-conference get together and an optional visit to SpacX’s not-too-far-away Starbase. Our guide, who went by Chief, and is probably best described as a SpaceX-paparazzi was full of facts and anecdotes, which made the visit very interesting although we couldn’t enter Starbase itself. The event was jam-packed with 125 analysts, 17 customer speakers, and of course Zoho staff for us analysts to talk to. This was a chance we took up eagerly. This time, the event took place in MacAllen, TX, instead of Austin, TX. The reason behind this is once more Zoho’s ruralization strategy, transnational localism.  Which gives also one of the main themes of the event. It was more about understanding Zoho than about individual products, although Zoho disclosed some roadmaps. More about understanding Zoho in a second.  The second main theme was customer success and testimonials. Instead of bombarding us with...

Reflecting on 2023 with gratitude - What caught your interest

A very happy, healthy and prosperous new year to all of you. This is also the time to review my blog and to have a look what your favourite posts of 2023 have been. With 23 posts, I admittedly have been somewhat lazy in 2023. Looking at the top ten read posts in 2023, there is a clear clustering about a few topics, none of them really surprising. There is a genuine interest in CX, ChatGPT, and vendors.  Again, this is not a surprise.  Still, there are a few surprises in the list! So, without further adoo, let’s hear the drumroll for your top five favourite posts on my blog – in ascending order. After all, some suspense cannot harm. The fifth place gets claimed by my review of ZohoDay 2022 – “ Don’t mess with Zoho – A Zohoday 2022 recap ”. Yes, you read that right. This is a 2022 post. The fourth place got claimed by another article on Zoho, almost one year younger: Zoho, how a technology company reimagines business software . It is a reflection on the Zoholics 2023 conference ...

Salesforce stock tanks after earnings report - a snap analysis

The news On May 29, 2024, Salesforce reported its results for the first quarter of the fiscal year 2025. Highlights are a total quarterly revenue of $9.133bn US, resembling a year-over-year growth of 11 percent a current remaining performance obligation of $26.4bn US a remaining performance obligation of $53.9B US an operating margin of 18.7 percent. diluted earnings per share of $1.56 The company reported a revenue guidance of $9.2bn - $9.25bn US for the next quarter and a full year guidance of $37.7bn - $38.0bn US, resembling growth rates of 7 – 8 percent and 8 – 9 percent, respectively. With these numbers, Salesforce ended up at the lower end of last quarter’s guidance on the revenue growth side while exceeding the earnings per share projection and slightly lowered the guidance for the fiscal year 2025. The result: The company’s share price dropped from $272 to bottom out at $212. The bigger picture Salesforce is the big gorilla in the CRM and CX industry. The company has surpassed ...

Zoho - A True Unicorn

End of January Zoho held its 2020 Zoho Days, an analyst summit, which I was happy to attend, along with more than 60 colleagues, as the only analyst from Germany, as it seems. Sadly, it took me quite a while to complete this – Zoho deserves a faster commentare. But hey, let’s look forward and get rolling. Zoho is a privately owned enterprise software company that has quietly evolved from a small software company in 1996 to an ambitious global player that serves the SMB- and enterprise CRM market with cloud applications. The company has a set of 45+ business apps with more than 50 million users, 10 data centres and counting, and is available in 180 countries. The company is profitable and maintained a CAGR of more than 30 percent over the past five years. But why quietly? Because Zoho managed its growth pretty unusually (almost) fully organically with only very minor acquisitions. Crunchbase lists one. Following this unique approach, which defies the tradit...