Zoho has upgraded Zoho One, the self-described operating system for businesses that is designed to run an entire organization—from sales and marketing, finance and HR, operations and business intelligence, and more—all on a unified technology platform. Added is a new business workflow management application, Orchestly, that lets customers effortlessly create, manage, and optimize their business processes through a drag-and-drop interface. In the two years since its launch, Zoho One has seen considerable growth and now serves more than 20,000 customers.
Approximately 25 percent of Zoho One customers use more than 25 applications on the platform and more than 50 percent utilize beyond 16 applications. These are pretty impressive numbers.

Zoho One consists of over 45 applications, along with several built-in services including AI, Business Intelligence, Messaging, Search, and more. Zoho One is today a customizable, extendable, and integratable platform all at the same cost to customers.
“Technology is supposed to help businesses. Instead, it has evolved into a complex beast customers have to tame—from juggling apps from multiple vendors to trying to solve the multi-app integration puzzle to dealing with vendors forcing customers into expensive, lengthy contracts. The technology industry has gone too far down this path and this has to change,” said Raju Vegesna, Zoho’s Chief Evangelist. “With Zoho One, we want to change all of that. It’s a technology platform to run your entire business with a vendor that is easy to do business with and you can trust. With Zoho One, you are not just licensing technology. You are licensing peace of mind.”

Above: An interview we conducted Raj Sabhlok, President, Zoho from 2012
Here are the new features:
Communications

• PhoneBridge, Zoho’s telephony platform, which integrates over 50 telephony vendors on one side and several Zoho applications on the other side, is now available within Zoho One.
• PhoneBridge integration enables telephony in Zoho apps like CRM and Recruit. It allows customers to make calls from Zoho apps, and provides contextual information on incoming calls. Enabling PhoneBridge will give users context for all incoming calls from Zoho CRM, Zoho Recruit, Zoho Mail, and 20+ other apps. 

Single Sign-on

• The new Single Sign-On service from Zoho One allows customers to integrate any third-party applications onto their Zoho account. Zoho Single Sign-On now supports around 50 third-party applications and is growing day-to-day.
• Zoho’s SSO works with third-party systems like active directory, meaning it can integrate nicely with larger organizations.
• Zoho One admins can now enforce YubiKey authentication as an added factor for increased security, on top of existing multi-factor authentications already supported.

App Management and Provisioning

• Zoho One currently enables provisioning for all 45+ Zoho apps. This is now being extended to custom apps created through Zoho Creator as well as external apps available through Zoho Marketplace. 
• Zoho, third-party, custom, and SSO apps can be provisioned either individually to users or as groups conditionally provisioned with custom criteria.
• Zoho One’s new Admin Panel with dashboards and reports allows admins to monitor user activity and app usage, enabling them to find and manage underutilized resources. Admins also get extensive reports on user management, sign-in activity, app usage, and account security.

Business Workflow Management
Orchestly

• With an intuitive drag-and-drop interface, Orchestly enables managers with no coding skills to define processes with little effort.
• Using Orchestly, managers and administrators can automate and run their regular workflows, including cross-departmental workflows such as purchase approvals, content publishing, asset management, and onboarding.
• In the case of onboarding a new employee, the recruitment, interview, offer submission, and onboarding is handled across the recruiting department, HR department, legal department, and whatever team the applicant is joining. Because so many departments and applications are involved in this process, Orchestly is able to cut across these various teams and applications to create comprehensive workflows and automate complex processes. 
• Onboarding a new employee involves multiple departments, each potentially with their own workflows. Orchestly is able to manage and automate a process that bridges each of those departments and their workflows.

Products and Services Innovations
Zoho Sign

• The enhanced Zoho Sign now provides an additional level of verification for customers by adopting blockchain-based timestamping through Ethereum, the globally accepted, open-source platform. 
• Whenever a document is signed using Zoho Sign, an Ethereum transaction will happen in the background, to which the hash of the signed document will be added to the transaction notes. 

All Levels of Support

• Zoho One offers free Concierge service, where potential customers can consult with the Zoho team to better understand how Zoho One can help their business.
• Additionally, Zoho is introducing Jumpstart for Zoho One, helping customers through their initial implementation. All Zoho One customers are provided support, out-of-the-box, but now enterprise customers can request premium support.

“Simply put, Zoho One is the operating system for every need our company has across the board. Our network of answering services, business process outsourcing, and contact centers requires us to work remotely to see our daily business operate at peak capacity. Zoho One was built to facilitate that need. We use the platform for everything — from Analytics to CRM to Desk — and it continues to impress us with new additions while staying at the same price-point. When we first started using Zoho One, the suite instantly became an integral way of how we managed customer relationships and employee productivity,” said Marc Fishman, Director of Marketing at One, Inc. “With the most recent Zoho One updates, we plan to continue growing our company footprint while running a smart, insightful, and customer-focused business. We are especially excited for Orchestly and PhoneBridge, both applications will particularly advance our complex workflows, enabling more in-context and seamless cross-department collaboration. Zoho One is a complete and total game-changer for nearly any business… especially ours.” 

In an age where app stores and integration increases cost and complexity, possibly at the risk of security, Zoho One is bucking the trend by integrating a suite of business apps into one smooth package where the apps are designed to play nicely with one another. This remains the case when there are upgrades as an improvement in one application should work more seamlessly with others than if they were purchased from a 3rd-party store.