The new Zoho MarketingHub app provides coordination of other marketing applications, both ones which are part of Zoho One and those outside it, while Zoho Orchestly enhances business process automation.
Vijay Sundaram, Zoho One’s Chief Strategy Officer, onstage
AUSTIN – On Tuesday, the first day of the Zoholics Austin event, Zoho announced two new applications that become part of their Zoho One suite, their flagship offering of over 40 business applications which they sell for a flat fee of $30 per user per month. The higher profile one, Zoho Marketing Hub, is a new platform that strengthens Zoho One’s marketing capabilities, while the other, Zoho Orchestly, is a Business Process Management tool. The company also indicated other features which will shortly be added to the Zoho One suite.
The big news highlight of the event was the announcement of Commerce Plus, a new eCommerce platform that sits on top of Zoho One.
“As we go through the next set of things beyond Commerce plus, we are announcing two other products,” said Vijay Sundaram, Zoho One’s Chief Strategy Officer. “One provides marketing automation, while the other is about the orchestration of work itself, which is the fundamental reason that you use business software.”
In his keynote address, Sundaram reviewed how marketing fits into the modern business, emphasizing that as windows of opportunity shut quickly and time is a priority, marketers have to move fast to measure things. This has led to the growth of templates that save time by re-using processes that do most of the work, to automated processes that create a repeatable workflow process, and to dynamic marketing that let things that work be reinforced on the fly, while things that don’t work can be quickly killed.
“These marketing programs must be planned and orchestrated,” Sundaram said. He reviewed Zoho’s existing applications that impact marketing, starting with their core Zoho CRM offering, and including Zoho Campaigns, Zoho Sites, Zoho Survey, Zoho Backstage, and Zoho Social.
“What has been missing across all this, however, is the ability to orchestrate all this, which is what Zoho MarketingHub does,” he stated. “MarketingHub does not exist on its own. It is an orchestrator. It connects across the circle to a whole range of products, as well as to many third-party products. It provides a way for marketers to craft a unique personalized path for each prospect, based on what they do.”
“Zoho MarketingHub adds to the comprehensiveness of the platform,” said Raju Vegesna, Zoho’s Chief Evangelist. “It’s not just another checklist item. Each of the applications in our marketing story can be considered to be ingredients. But to create that beautiful recipe, you need to integrate each of the ingredients together. This is what Zoho MarketingHub does. Salesforce doesn’t do that.”
MarketingHub integrates out-of-the-box with the other marketing-related Zoho applications, as well as with third-party applications including Shopify, Eventbrite and SurveyMonkey, and others, and through over 20 different marketing channels, including website, social, events, text, email and ads. It also uses advanced analytics to assess the ROI on the campaign, and help to better plan the next one.
Sundaram then turned to Orchestly, the second new orchestration application being announced.
“Choices in software have been between commercial software or custom-built software,” he told the audience. “It is surprising how big the custom app market still is. We do some of that ourselves, even though it is complicated and a lot more expensive. Why do companies do it? Because they are looking to model unique business processes. This is the orchestration of work, and it is about doing both things, retaining this ability to uniquely differentiate, while enjoying the cost advantages of commercial software.”
This, Sundaram said, is what the new Business Process Automation app Zoho Orchestly was built to do.
“It is a platform to model business practises using workflows,” he said. “It automates and models business processes to allows you to execute efficiently. And it works for every kind of business because it is generalized. It respects the fact that people have business processes that they want to adapt, and gives them the flexibility with adapt it within commercial software.
Both Zoho MarketingHub and Zoho Orchestly are now a part of Zoho One, so are added as new applications within the $30 per user per month offering. Zoho MarketingHub does sell qualified leads. The price starts at $240 per year per user for 1,000 leads. The Premium edition starts at $480 per year per user for 1,000 leads.
Vegesna also provided a preview of what’s coming next in Zoho One in the Sneak Peek tech preview keynote.
“We are bringing Mobile Device Management [MDM] to Zoho One,” he stated. “This is an important one. We know MDM. ManageEngine, another of the Zoho Corporation companies, sells an MDM software, and we have thousands of customers using it. What can you do with it? You can push out configurations to all the devices across your own organization. This is an incredible amount of functionality in terms of centralized deployment and control, and it will be available for free as part of the Zoho One Admin Panel.”
Vegesna previewed a second upcoming addition to Admin Panel as well.
“Within the next few months, you will be able to look up an app in the Apple App Store or Google Play Store, purchase the license. and distribute them to users through the Zoho One Admin Panel,” he said. “Something like this doesn’t exist today in the market. It is powered by our MDM capability.
“We are also building a new dashboard, which will be rolling out in a few weeks, that will provide more information about business impacts,” Vegesna indicated this will include information like whether customers are using apps, and what the most popular apps are.
“This will all be built into the Admin Panel and will be rolled out for free,” he said.
Also on the near term road map is a new suite, People Plus for HR. While it pulls a number of existing things together, it will also add a new payroll application, Zoho Payroll. It will initially support two U.S. states – California and Texas.
