Zoho is an online office collaboration suite that contains word processor, spreadsheets, presentations, Wikis, Note keeping, Databases, Project Management, Customer Relationship Management (CRM), Invoicing and other value added applications. The suite is developed by Zoho Corporation (erstwhile AdventNet Inc). The incorporation of spreadsheets and presentations is pretty recent to their product stack. All the applications are a typical example of a SaaS (Software as a service) model where-in these are not installed on the host machines and can be accessed any time from the remote clients. The entry level applications are free to use and the extensive ones are available on a paid mode. As a part of their recent development it has integrated some of its applications with Google Apps. The robust support to the business users and developers has made it a differentiating service provider in short span of time. The growing subscriber base and increasing competence of Zoho’s services in the market has made the organization a cutting edge provider amongst the league of the best in class.
Management Information
The company was started in 2005 with a web based word processor as its premium product. Tony Thomas is Zoho’s Chairman in charge with Sridhar Vembu as the CEO of the organization. Jai Anand is company’s controller in-charge and operates from India. The management operates in an Onsite-Offshore business model for powering their business needs. The onsite team has roughly 8-10 members operating from US and core team offshore the work to low cost centers including India and China. The app developers are hired from not so great engineering schools to cut down on the cost aspect. The strong focus on internal training and skill development has given sheer edge to the overall low cost business model of the company. The business model has been put to use by most of the Indian IT majors too and is ideal for a SME company. The company has become cash rich in shorter span of time and hence the effort of management has paid off.
Hard Numbers
•Employee base of the company is 800
•Zoho has a branch offices in Tokyo-Japan, Chennai- India and Beijing - China apart from the California’s HQ
•The company has registered $40 million revenue under Vembu’s leadership and monthly revenues are estimated to be around $1 million.
•Zoho has received numerous awards, including an InfoWorld 2009 "Product of the Year" award, a 2008 PC World "25 Most Innovative Products Award" and a 2007 TechCrunch "Best Enterprise Start-up."
•Till date Zoho.com has launched 22 online applications — from CRM to Mail, Office Suite, Project Management, Invoicing, Web conferencing and more
•Zoho serves the technology needs of about 40,000 customers spanning across territories and cutting across wide industry segments in a seamless manner
Critical Success Factors
•The SaaS model reduces a lot of cost and optimizes resources as far as the customers are concerned. The overall IT investments went substantially down when Zoho took their core model in the market. As a result, more of them were interested in experimenting from it and today they have totally transitioned to the model.
•Low cost of operations due to onsite-offshore model led them in offering competitive rates to global clients and hence helped in winning their interest in the IT investments.
•The core set of solutions target on online sharing, collaboration and managing operational level transactions on the go. As a result, they have emerged as a one stop shop for the customers. The customers can get their products customized and use the business services on the go without any hassles.
•The other major success raging factor for Zoho has been the flexibility and scalability. The application’s user base can be scaled up with the cost without any upgrade need for the end customers. They can concentrate on their services while the technology frontiers are taken care by Zoho Corporation.
•The developers and partners across the globe wanted to know about the new technological business agility possibilities. And Zoho was up to the task by offering free demo products and opened up Web 2.0 frontiers with official forums too. The collective learning and implementation of best practices in case of Zoho has been substantially faster.
•The best breed multichannel support has been a boon for the customers. As a net result the satisfied customers have outsourced even more work and new set of projects to Zoho Corporation. The repeat customer Pareto rule of 80-20 fits perfectly for the company.
•High quality compliance and certifications have enabled Zoho in sustaining their business operations even in the competitive space over a period of time.
•They have been able to leverage from the latest technological products and have added great set of features to the custom created tools for driving through online collaboration change.
Key Challenges
•The major challenge for Zoho in the competitive arena has been to stay upbeat with constant innovation. It faces threat from competition for prospective Mergers & Acquisitions. It recently rejected the bid from Salesforce.com for acquisition. However, the future will decide if they are able to sustain their business operations as a stand alone entity.
•The cloud based solutions still have an unclear aspect of security such as on whose front would the services will preside over the cloud? What happens if cloud ownership passes from free to someone exclusive? As a result customers are still not able to buy the idea of cloud based solutions
•The lower cost competitor threat who all works on the same Onsite-Offshore model has been a real bother for Zoho. There are one too many startups which operate on same model as a result; it is hard for Zoho to keep a differentiation until they innovate drastically.
•Customers are becoming demanding by the day and want more set of features at lower price tag. Hence, eroding the profit percentage. Apart from profitability aspect not all customers are keen on Onsite-Offshore model as some require pure Onsite model too. In all such cases, Zoho loses to be in contention.
Review: Zoho
By : agiliq
Zoho is an online office collaboration suite that contains word processor, spreadsheets, presentations, Wikis, Note keeping, Databases, Project Management, Customer Relationship Management (CRM), Invoicing and other value added applications. The suite is developed by Zoho Corporation (erstwhile AdventNet Inc). The incorporation of spreadsheets and presentations is pretty recent to their product stack. All the applications are a typical example of a SaaS (Software as a service) model where-in these are not installed on the host machines and can be accessed any time from the remote clients. The entry level applications are free to use and the extensive ones are available on a paid mode. As a part of their recent development it has integrated some of its applications with Google Apps. The robust support to the business users and developers has made it a differentiating service provider in short span of time. The growing subscriber base and increasing competence of Zoho’s services in the market has made the organization a cutting edge provider amongst the league of the best in class.
Management Information
The company was started in 2005 with a web based word processor as its premium product. Tony Thomas is Zoho’s Chairman in charge with Sridhar Vembu as the CEO of the organization. Jai Anand is company’s controller in-charge and operates from India. The management operates in an Onsite-Offshore business model for powering their business needs. The onsite team has roughly 8-10 members operating from US and core team offshore the work to low cost centers including India and China. The app developers are hired from not so great engineering schools to cut down on the cost aspect. The strong focus on internal training and skill development has given sheer edge to the overall low cost business model of the company. The business model has been put to use by most of the Indian IT majors too and is ideal for a SME company. The company has become cash rich in shorter span of time and hence the effort of management has paid off.
Hard Numbers
•Employee base of the company is 800
•Zoho has a branch offices in Tokyo-Japan, Chennai- India and Beijing - China apart from the California’s HQ
•The company has registered $40 million revenue under Vembu’s leadership and monthly revenues are estimated to be around $1 million.
•Zoho has received numerous awards, including an InfoWorld 2009 "Product of the Year" award, a 2008 PC World "25 Most Innovative Products Award" and a 2007 TechCrunch "Best Enterprise Start-up."
•Till date Zoho.com has launched 22 online applications — from CRM to Mail, Office Suite, Project Management, Invoicing, Web conferencing and more
•Zoho serves the technology needs of about 40,000 customers spanning across territories and cutting across wide industry segments in a seamless manner
Critical Success Factors
•The SaaS model reduces a lot of cost and optimizes resources as far as the customers are concerned. The overall IT investments went substantially down when Zoho took their core model in the market. As a result, more of them were interested in experimenting from it and today they have totally transitioned to the model.
•Low cost of operations due to onsite-offshore model led them in offering competitive rates to global clients and hence helped in winning their interest in the IT investments.
•The core set of solutions target on online sharing, collaboration and managing operational level transactions on the go. As a result, they have emerged as a one stop shop for the customers. The customers can get their products customized and use the business services on the go without any hassles.
•The other major success raging factor for Zoho has been the flexibility and scalability. The application’s user base can be scaled up with the cost without any upgrade need for the end customers. They can concentrate on their services while the technology frontiers are taken care by Zoho Corporation.
•The developers and partners across the globe wanted to know about the new technological business agility possibilities. And Zoho was up to the task by offering free demo products and opened up Web 2.0 frontiers with official forums too. The collective learning and implementation of best practices in case of Zoho has been substantially faster.
•The best breed multichannel support has been a boon for the customers. As a net result the satisfied customers have outsourced even more work and new set of projects to Zoho Corporation. The repeat customer Pareto rule of 80-20 fits perfectly for the company.
•High quality compliance and certifications have enabled Zoho in sustaining their business operations even in the competitive space over a period of time.
•They have been able to leverage from the latest technological products and have added great set of features to the custom created tools for driving through online collaboration change.
Key Challenges
•The major challenge for Zoho in the competitive arena has been to stay upbeat with constant innovation. It faces threat from competition for prospective Mergers & Acquisitions. It recently rejected the bid from Salesforce.com for acquisition. However, the future will decide if they are able to sustain their business operations as a stand alone entity.
•The cloud based solutions still have an unclear aspect of security such as on whose front would the services will preside over the cloud? What happens if cloud ownership passes from free to someone exclusive? As a result customers are still not able to buy the idea of cloud based solutions
•The lower cost competitor threat who all works on the same Onsite-Offshore model has been a real bother for Zoho. There are one too many startups which operate on same model as a result; it is hard for Zoho to keep a differentiation until they innovate drastically.
•Customers are becoming demanding by the day and want more set of features at lower price tag. Hence, eroding the profit percentage. Apart from profitability aspect not all customers are keen on Onsite-Offshore model as some require pure Onsite model too. In all such cases, Zoho loses to be in contention.
Contact Information
Website:
http://www.zoho.com/
HQ Address:
4900 Hopyard Rd, Suite 310
Pleasanton, CA 94588, USA
Phone: +1-925-924-9500
Fax: +1-925-924-9600
Corporate E-Mail Address:
partnership@zohocorp.com