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Zoho Enters Human Resources Market with Zoho People.

(I broke up my originally long post into two pieces: this one about the product announcement, and the next one with the business analysis)

Zoho, best known for their Web-based Productivity (Office+) Suite today released Zoho People, a feature-rich On-Demand HRMS – Human Resources Management System.

Several modules support the work of managers, HR professionals:

  • Organization for defining corporate and departmental structure
  • Recruitment for managing recruitment processes and maintaining resume databases
  • Checklist for defining business processes and workflows in the organization
  • Forms for defining custom business forms using the integrated Zoho Creator
  • Dashboard to overview it all

All the setup, be it form changes, new forms or field, org chart changes ..etc happens via a friendly drag-and-drop interface.

While all the above is for Management, HR, perhaps Training, Travel professionals, most “regular” employees in a company would only access the Self Service Module, which is split to an Employee and a Manager Self-Service section. Requests can be sent to the HR department on job openings, employees can submit information like Expense Reports, Vacation, Training Requests to the relevant departments/managers as pre-defined in the workflow…etc.

For a detailed feature overview, watch this demo video.


Zoho People from Raju Vegesna on Vimeo.

The application is currently in Beta, and for the Beta period it will be free, independent of the number of users. After the Beta pricing will likely involve a dual scheme, with ad-hoc users (regular employee accessing Self Service) paying less than full users (typically HR professionals.) While no numbers have been announced, Zoho claims the blended price level will be disruptive – something to the scale of Zoho CRM, which is about 10% of the cost of it’s main competitor.

Talk about CRM, it’s worth mentioning that while Zoho’s fame comes from the Office Suite (or the extended suite of Productivity Apps), this is not their first foray into business applications. Zoho People joins Zoho CRM, Zoho Meeting, Zoho Projects and Zoho DB. Below is an overview of the entire Zoho Portfolio:

Please read my next post for a business analysis on what Zoho’s entry to the HCM space means.

(Disclaimer: I am an Advisor for Zoho.)

Related posts:  Between the Lines,  Zoho Blogs, Deal Architect, Centernetworks, Wired,

Comments

  1. Regarding HR issues, being the owner of a small business is no easy task, in fact it can be a daunting one. Most business owners are good at what ever they went into business for, but business growth is slowed by the day to day paperwork that piles up on their desks. PML has the solution that business owners have been searching for. PML takes all of the employee related paperwork and tasks and reduces the hassle to one single check per pay period. Yes, you heard right. The small business owner will write one check per pay period, which covers your payroll processing and taxes, employee health benefits, workers compensation, unemployment and much more. PML will custom tailor a plan that best fits your small businesses needs. Our small business Peo or small business employee leasing solution is an advantage over your competition you can’t go without. Your competition is probably already using employee leasing and if not soon will. You can find information about peo and employee leasing companies at http://www.onlinehrhelp.com

  2. I just started to make a blog on freeware Human Resources software in order to help new employers, starting businesses, small companies, … to streamline their Human Resources Department without spending money for those resources they might need.
    As a HR-manager and SAP HR certified consultant I add weekly an interesting freeware software dealing with HR-issues.

  3. Looks cool..

  4. HR issues can really bog a business down with payroll hassles, benefit concerns, and worker compensation claims. Hiring a PEO can make life so much easier as HR outsourcing can free your business up to actually focus on business and not internal hr issues.

  5. Jeff
    you are cent percent right
    but the Issues of HR management are quite complex,as HR department wants to pay the benefits to the employess and retain them but the High level management want to lay off the employees then what HR department can do in it.
    Every one has limitations

Trackbacks

  1. […] and could prod folks into trying more Zoho applications such as CRM and its online database (also see Zoli Erdos’ take). Zoho said that pricing for Zoho People is yet-to-be-determined, but the company is pondering […]

  2. […] by smoothspan on March 10, 2008 Got an email note from Zoli Erdos, whom I read religiously, about a new SaaS HCM offering from Zoho that’s being launched this morning.  Cool!  Love to see more SaaS entrants.  I believe […]

  3. […] the launch of Zoho People, Larry Dignan speculates that Google should buy the company. Huh? Not much chance of that while […]

  4. […] Zoho Enters Human Resources Market with Zoho People. […]

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