Large GSIs are a critical part of Zoho’s push into larger enterprise deals, and they believe the TCS partnership will be a fruitful one in Canada.
Ambi Moorthy, Global Head of Zoho Partner Programs, Partner Development
In 2019, cloud software suite vendor Zoho made a strategic decision to deepen its penetration in the enterprise space, expanding upmarket from the SMB which has traditionally been their strength. The hiring of their first enterprise sales leader was a key part of that initiative. Expanding their relationships with Global Systems Integrators was another. Zoho has taken another important step in that direction with the announcement of a new strategic alliance with Tata Consultancy Services [TCS].
“This is part of the ongoing enterprise push we have had for the past 14 months,” said Ambi Moorthy, Global Head of Zoho Partner Programs, Partner Development. “We have similar partnerships with Tech Mahindra and others.” Those others include EY and Wipro.
“Adding TCS helps us a great deal because they bring the brand name to the table, with the leads they have in the global market, Moorthy indicated. “They have very strong implementation capabilities with the depth of their teams, and the technical expertise of their teams.”
TCS has a presence in 46 countries, one of which is Canada, and Zoho is expecting to see big things from the partnership in the Canadian market.
Chandrasekhar LSP, Zoho’s Canadian Evangelist
“It is a significant deal for Zoho in Canada,” said Chandrasekhar LSP, Zoho’s Canadian Evangelist. “Major companies typically have contracts with large SIs to provide maintenance and support. The way these kinds of projects are handled with GSIs, TCS can walk us through the doors with those kinds of engagements.
“We are definitely having conversations with customers with them,” LSP added.
Zoho in turn can provide significant value to TCS, both because their lower cost per suite is significant when multiplied by enterprise deployments of tens of thousands, and because the dozens of applications in Zoho One are all integrated, making them easier to manage than a patchwork quilt of applications from different vendors.
“Our primary value to them comes from providing a fully integrated suite at a much more economical price than others,” Moorthy said. “It’s not just the savings part of it through. We bring all the different suites together. If they get them from separate people, they may exist in siloes. With us, when a customer calls in, we
already show the status of the ticket. All the information is fully integrated and it provides a unified view of the customer, and it comes at an amazing price to the end user.”
Moorthy noted that in these 30,000-40,000 seat deals, an SI will typically position Zoho early in the conversation like a tool to get from point A to point B.
“They are bringing us into their TCS Centre of Excellence, and we will be training them on the Zoho skills,” he added.
The enterprise market today also isn’t as strong as the SMB is for Zoho, and the company is looking on these GSI initiatives to change that.
“With the increase in overall cloud adoption speeding up the digital transformation, we are seeing a surge of leads come in, and we are closing those deals, but not at the same speed as the SMB adoption,” Moorthy said. Things haven’t slowed down because of the pandemic, but they also haven’t been moving at the pace they did earlier in the year.”
