Zoho Corporation, a leading global technology company, announced extensive updates across its collaboration portfolio to accelerate momentum in this age of flexible, asynchronous work. On the heels of a 78% increase in migrations from top competitors to Zoho’s collaboration solutions, Zoho is driving new AI, workflow automation, and industry-specific capabilities across core collaboration tools. Together, these developments promote unified project management and support productive asynchronous collaboration for global businesses whose employees, customers, and partners operate on different timetables.
“Our research finds that over 62% of organizations are challenged to manage and integrate multi-vendor solutions, and 66% struggle to align IT, communications, and collaboration investments with business strategies,” said Robert Arnold, Industry Director and Program Manager for Frost & Sullivan. “With its latest developments, Zoho continues to strengthen its broad, tightly integrated software applications portfolio to further enable seamless workflow collaboration, which drives better user experiences, productivity, and process efficiencies. End-user organizations can leverage Zoho solutions for holistic collaboration spanning both asynchronous and synchronous capabilities that reflect how people perform their work.”
“Companies today are working on multiple devices and networks, in and out of the office, in varying time zones, making collaboration extremely difficult and time-consuming to manage,” said Raju Vegesna, Zoho’s Chief Evangelist. “We’ve developed a tightly integrated set of collaboration tools powered by platform-layer services like AI, unified search, and process automation underneath—all in an effort to help businesses be more productive. When people work well together, regardless of their timezone or network or device, and never once consider the technology that’s driving that work, that’s when we feel we’ve done our job.”
Zoho is introducing new capabilities to four core collaboration tools—Zoho Projects, Zoho Notebook, Zoho WorkDrive, and Zoho Sign. The following developments drive better outcomes for businesses by addressing three critical engines of seamless collaboration and productivity: AI, automation, and industry customization.
New AI Capabilities
Zoho Projects, the company’s powerful project management platform, has introduced Natural Language Processing (NLP) capabilities powered by Zia, Zoho’s in-house AI engine. Using colloquial voice commands, users can now enlist Zoho’s deep, unified search engine to source information stored across Zoho’s apps, significantly reducing the time employees spend extracting contextual information. Within Zoho Projects, Zia can summarize custom charts and analytics dashboards via Zia Insights to generate task recommendations based on analysis of large data sets, improving visibility for all stakeholders across asynchronous teams.
Zoho Notebook, the company’s dynamic note-taking application, adds significant AI features to its latest release. The app deeply leverages Zia to enable smart summarization, task management, automatic tagging of topics, data analysis from notes, visual chart creation from notes, and calendar creation for next steps. Zoho Notebook interprets and tweaks message tone and inserts context, ensuring information can be easily acted upon. Closely integrated with Zoho Projects and WorkDrive, Zoho Notebook empowers users to contextually take notes, share, and collaborate with peers effortlessly. With a new feature called Whiteboard, users can conduct real-time brainstorms by easily embedding audio or video meetings within the application.
New Workflow Automation Capabilities
Blueprint, the company’s visual workflow automation technology, is now accessible within Zoho Projects, WorkDrive, and Sign. Blueprint enables users to build scalable, repeatable, and easy-to-follow project workflows. The technology provides the proper materials and context at each step of process creation, such as reviewing a shared document or analyzing particular data, to ensure accuracy, maximize employees’ productivity, and facilitate quicker onboarding for new employees learning the process.
Zoho WorkDrive, the company’s file management solution, now includes workflow automation, empowering users to map, manage, and automate content procedures across departments and teams—reducing 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.
Zoho Sign, a digital signature and ID verification solution, slots into unified systems at any stage of a workflow and ensures companies never lose time tracking down a signature. The software now offers the ability to create reusable templates, sales orders, HR documents, legal documents, and more, which can be routed automatically to appropriate team members. Zoho Sign now offers Knowledge-Based Authentication for financial technology companies, and controls for US FDA 21 CFR Part 11 to support the healthcare and life science industries. Using Zoho Sign, businesses average 80% faster document turnaround over requiring physical signatures, saving 50 hours per employee, per year, on average.
New Capabilities Developed for Industry-Specific Workflows
Construction managers running Zoho Projects can troubleshoot issues remotely via its integration with Zoho Lens, the company’s augmented reality remote assistance technology. Managers can request remote access to on-site workers’ device cameras using Zoho Lens, allowing them to troubleshoot in real-time and maintain accurate, instantly updated records of machinery.
Healthcare administrators can access Zoho WorkDrive’s new Data Loss Prevention (DLP) security control, enabling users to manually flag or automatically check and classify sensitive data such as personally identifiable information, customer data, financial records, or intellectual property, and protect it from being accessed or shared by unauthorized entities. Additional industry-specific capabilities include customizable workflows with Zoho Projects and HIPAA-compliant digital signature with Zoho Sign.
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.
Aviation, an industry that by law requires high transparency and regular third-party oversight, can now access custom, unified dashboards, offering a single source of truth, which can be securely monitored and regulated by internal and external stakeholders. Additionally, aviation industry users can access hybrid project management aligned to DMAIC process methodology to carry out iterative business improvement.
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