Zoho announced major updates to Zoho One, its flagship suite of applications designed to put businesses completely in the cloud. One year after its launch, Zoho One is enabling a new set of capabilities that bridge the gap between different departments and roles within an organization: Zia—Zoho's AI—will soon respond to user queries by combining information from multiple apps; Zoho One's new Analytics delivers a deeper, more contextual picture of business operations by blending data from apps across the suite; and a new unified Search feature can execute across multiple applications, bringing back richer results that significantly reduce the time and effort needed to find the right data.
Zoho also launched Backstage, an end-to-end event management tool that allows organizers, corporations, and non-profit agencies to plan, promote, and run enterprise events ranging from large-scale meetings to conferences and trade shows.
One year of Zoho One
The company announced Zoho One adoption numbers for its first year on the market: more than 12,000 business worldwide have become Zoho One customers; 36% of Zoho One users are from India. The average Zoho One customer enables 16 applications for their business, often replacing software from different vendors, preferring instead to run their business from a single cloud platform. The company has added five new apps to Zoho One in the past year—Cliq, Zoho Sprints, ZohoPageSense, Zoho Flow and Zoho Backstage—at no additional cost.
"The adoption of Zoho One has exceeded our expectations, and we hope to continue this momentum into its second year. The stats clearly show that customers will use multiple apps from a single suite, if those apps work together more deeply than a patchwork of products from different vendors," said Sridhar Vembu, CEO of Zoho Corp. "We see customers combining data from different Zoho and third-party apps—like email campaigns, CRM, customer support, and accounting—to generate new insights and make better decisions. Zoho One has already replaced more than 650 different products, and that number will only grow as we release even more new apps."
New Capabilities Added to Zoho One
Analytics: The new Zoho One Analytics tab provides analytics across Zoho's suite of business apps. Business owners, CXOs and managers can now track KPIs and trends from one tab, helping them to make more informed decisions. Users can create their own custom reports and dashboards to blend data from different business apps and do cross-functional analytics. For example, a CEO or Sales VP can see not just the revenue numbers for different accounts, but also the number of support tickets pending and, the first response and resolution times, all in one place. Currently, there are over 500 pre-built reports and dashboards available across applications. Users can also import data stored in third-party applications and analyze it along with the data from Zoho's internal apps.
Zia for Zoho One: Zia, the AI-powered assistant first introduced by Zoho CRM in 2016, will be extended to Zoho One. Zia for Zoho One functions across various applications, pulling data from different departments to provide the right contextual information. Using simple commands, Zia can handle complex queries. Drawing information from Zoho CRM and Zoho Desk, Zia can tell users how many customers in the sales pipeline have an open support ticket. Similarly, Zia can generate a chart that displays revenue-per-employee trends for the last five years by fetching figures from Zoho Books and Zoho People. Zia for Zoho One will be made available in phases starting this year. Zoho also plans to open up the Zia Platform for Zoho One users, allowing them to extend Zia with custom skill sets built to address their specific needs.
Zia Search: On average, knowledge workers spend 30% of their workday searching for information, according to an IDC research paper. The new Zia Search lets users search across all their Zoho apps instantly, dramatically improving information access within an organization. Zia Search was built from the ground up with an understanding of each application's domain, design and authorization rules, making it possible to display a more relevant, richer set of results. Zia Search also offers a results preview as well as contextual actions so users can utilize their results without having to leave the search window.
Mobile app: The Zoho One mobile app allows organization administrators and service administrators to onboard new employees, provision applications, manage permissions, set security policies, create groups and more, all from their mobile devices. With this app, admins can even take care of time-sensitive requests, like resetting a password, when they are away from their computers.
Zoho Concierge: Launched last year along with Zoho One, the Zoho Concierge is a free service available exclusively to Zoho One customers. Since its inception, this dedicated team has helped more than 6,500 customers by mapping their business processes and advising them on how best to optimize Zoho One for their particular needs.
"Zia for Zoho One, the new Dashboard, and Zia Search are organization-wide tools designed to give our customers deeper understanding of their businesses," said Vembu, “This kind of unified data ecosystem is only possible because all of Zoho’s 40+ applications have been built from scratch, over the last two decades, on the same technology base.”
Customer Statements
"For an ecosystem player like us, managing tens of projects for hundreds of business requirements to meet the expectations of our stakeholders runs into thousands of requirements that could potentially take as many hours of operating bandwidth and spend. An integrated product suite like Zoho One has truly helped ease our ever-changing requirement list. It has been an enterprise-class product from a world-class player. A big thank you on behalf of the 300+ startups that make up our community,”said Jay Krishnan, CEO, T-Hub
"When we started Eunimart, just like any other early stage business, we searched the entire market for any software that could help tie all my different customer facing and internal functions into one seamless flow. Unfortunately, all the different solutions we came across either did not have the breadth of solutions needed for a complex business model like Eunimart, or were built for large businesses and were too expensive for us. Zoho was a lifesaver as our business processes were becoming unmanageable with the growing number of customers. The easily manageable workflows, ability to build custom models and create custom solutions was exactly what we needed. Our internal team, with the help of a Zoho partner, has managed to automate almost all of our business, enabling us to achieve 30% increase in productivity and largely increased customer satisfaction. I am grateful to Zoho One for the large suite of solutions that are built just for startups such as ours. I have recommended a lot of different startups on how to implement Zoho and scale their businesses in a more efficient manner,” said ShayakMazumder, CEO, Eunimart
Zoho Backstage
"Planning and running an event is a complex operation that has traditionally required different tools for each stage of the process—a website builder, a mass emailing solution, scanners for checking in attendees, and a stand-alone app for audience engagement," said Vembu. "Backstage embraces event management from start to finish by offering a unified online platform that allows organizers to market the event, fill seats, and engage audience all from within one product. Rather than getting bogged down in the complexities of the tools being used, this holistic event management system lets organizers focus on what matters: putting on a great event."
Before the Event
Dynamic event website builder: Zoho Backstage enables organizers to create a dynamic event website from scratch within minutes. The website builder includes multi-language support, an agenda planner, sponsor promotion, direct registration (for free and paid tickets), photo gallery, speaker management, and customizable labels and sections.
Intuitive agenda planner: With Backstage's agenda builder, organizers can create unique schedules for each event, choosing from different session types and organizing presentations into multiple tracks. They can simply drag-and-drop the time blocks to build the perfect event for their attendees.
Sponsor and speaker management: To get the most out of an event, external partners—such as speakers and sponsors—need to be highlighted prominently on the event website. Important speakers can be featured on the homepage to boost interest, and the dedicated sponsor page gives credit to the outside companies that made the event possible. Backstage also allows organizers to define sponsorship categories to maximize revenue.
Promotion tool: Event planners can use the built-in promotion tools to spread the word and increase event reach. Backstage also offers the option of embedding promotional banners on third-party websites and blogs. It equips event marketers with customizable email templates directed at attendees and sponsors, both for promotional and instructional purposes. In addition to this, Backstage can also be integrated with Zoho Campaigns via Zoho Flow to run email marketing campaigns.
Monitor ticket sales: Backstage integrates with Eventbrite allowing organizers to watch in real time as attendance grows in the days and weeks before the event. In the next couple of months, Backstage will also be releasing an in-house ticketing solution that will bring the entire ticketing process onto one platform.
Custom branded mobile app: Attendees can have an engaging experience with a completely custom branded event mobile app. This can be hosted on the App Store and Play Store and is available for both iOS and Android devices.
During the Event
Content library: Presentations are an integral part of any corporate event. With its native integration with Zoho Docs and Show, Backstage offers a centralized content library to create and manage slide decks, files, images, and more. This ensures that on event day all the presentations are pre-loaded and the sessions run smoothly, without any disruptions.
Agenda personalization: Personalized agendas allow attendees to keep track of all the sessions they are most interested in. This self-selected schedule makes it easy to check presentation times, speaker bios, and assigned locations on the go.
Audience engagement: Backstage also integrates with Zoho's internal presentation delivery tool, ShowTime. Designed to encourage interaction during presentations, this tool allows attendees to provide speakers with feedback through virtual Q&A, slide likes, and instant ratings, all from within their mobile devices.
Community building: Event organizers can create an online community even before the event starts. Discussion forums provide a good opportunity for participants to not just interact with the organizers, but also keep conversations going with other participants.
Attendee convenience: Large events can be impersonal and overwhelming if attendee experience is not taken into consideration. In an effort to reduce long lines on the opening day of the event, Zoho Backstage allows staff to check in attendees with the click of a button on the web dashboard or the mobile app, rather than using an external scanning device.
After the Event
Comprehensive analytics: Zoho Backstage gives organizers insight into the key performance indicators for each event, from engagement statistics for individual session to attendance metrics for the entire event. Speakers can be evaluated by reviewing the number of likes and comments each session received and reading through post-presentation attendee feedback.
Post-event feedback: Organizers can use Zoho Flow to integrate Backstage with Zoho Survey, making it possible to gather information on how the event resonated with attendees.
Other integrations: Zoho Backstage is integrated with Eventbrite. It also works with Zoho Flow, an extensive integration platform that connects Backstage with over 100 third-party applications.
Customer Statement
"With Backstage, we were able to save time and money planning our annual conference which was attended by 700+ delegates. All it took was a few clicks to get our event website up and running. We were also able to provide our attendees with an engaging and memorable event experience through a custom branded mobile app. Backstage will surely be part of our future events,” said Ramesh C Pathak - PMP, VP Technology. PMI Bangalore, India
Data Centre
Zoho has announced opening of data centres in Mumbai and Chennai that will be operational from August 2018. Indian users who have registered through zoho.in will be served by these data centres.
Pricing and Availability
Zoho One is available for ₹1,000 per employee per month. Businesses must purchase a license for every employee in their organization to get this pricing. Zoho One is currently available worldwide, in multiple languages. Users can sign up for a 30-day trial version of Zoho One at zoho.com/one.
Zia for Zoho One is not currently available. The Analytics feature will be rolled out in phases, whereas Zia Search is available immediately at search.zoho.com. The Android mobile app can be downloaded from: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.zoho.zohoonewhile the iOS app is available at: https://itunes.apple.com/app/apple-store/id1417937496?mt=8
Zoho Backstage is available immediately. It offers four subscription plans: the Free plan, the Professional plan (₹5,900 per month), the Professional+ plan (₹11,900 per month), and the Single Event plan (₹17,999 per event) with a custom branding add-on at ₹60,000 per year. Custom branding includes a custom domain and mobile app. The Professional+ plan is part of Zoho One. For more information on Zoho Backstage, please visit https://www.zoho.com/backstage. Mobile apps are available at:
