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SaaS is an Ancient Model

Posted on August 28, 2008 ·

Lots of talk today about how the SaaS market will ‘collapse’ in two years.  I don’t get it: if it survived 40 years, why would it collapse now?  Yes, that’s right, SaaS has been a successful model for 4 decades now. Need proof?   Check out Technorati linking to my post on the NetSuite IPO 11119 days ago.  That’s 38 and a half years, give and take a few weeks. smile_nerd

Oh, well, that was the fun part, for real analysis check out my fellow Enterprise Irregulars:

Jason Corsello, Anshu Sharma, Vinnie Mirchandani, Bob Warfield, Josh Greenbaum.

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Filed Under: Humor, SaaS · Tagged: , , , , , , ,
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Project Management 2.0 – What’s Wrong With 1.0?

Posted on August 28, 2008 ·

Let me quickly state that I don’t really know what the consensus definition of PM 2.0 is, but I do have a feeling based on my very 1.0-style experience.

In the 90’s I worked on a number of fairly large scale SAP Projects in a variety of roles, including Project Manager, and supervisor of several other projects.  The standard tool was Microsoft Project.  It was used for:

  • Planning a Project (initial Scoping)
  • Selling it
  • Periodic reporting to Steering Committee during the actual projects

What’s missing from the above?   Well, how about using it to help the actual daily work of project team members?

Project  team members did not even have access to MS Project, it only existed in a few copies on the PM and Team Lead’s computers.  Information-flow was one-way: feed the beast to be able to occasionally print charts that look impressive (scary) enough that Steering Committee members won’t question it.

Ok, I am admittedly sarcastic, but the point is:  PM 1.0 was all about planning, reporting and it served Management but did not help actual Project Execution.

My expectation of PM 2.0 would be that it helps all team members involved who can share information, collaborate on it and actually get clues from the system on where they are, where they should be, what their next step is, instead of just feeding the beast.

Is this the real promise of Project Management 2.0?   I hope to find out from an excellent set of panelists that I have the honor of moderating at the Office 2.0 Conference next week:

  • Andrew Filev (Wrike)
  • Bruce Henry (LiquidPlanner)
  • Mark Mader (Smartsheet.com)
  • Guy Shani (Clarizen)
  • Dean Carlson (Viewpath)

Of course this is just one of many exciting sessions – if you haven’t registered yet, you can grab a $100 discount by registering here.   Oh, and don’t forget to visit us at the Zoho Party – the address is #1 Cloud Avenue. smile_regular

(This article is cross-posted at the Office 2.0 Conference Blog)

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Filed Under: Bay Area, Business, SaaS, Social Networking · Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
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Office 2.0, a Most Irregular Conference – Get Your Discount Here

Posted on August 25, 2008 ·

Nothing about the Office 2.0 Conference is even remotely ordinary.

Start with the organizer, Ismael Ghalimi, CEO of a VC-funded startup, Intalio.  That’s normally a full-time job – not when it comes to Ismael: he is also a scuba-diving instructor, a pilot, launched Monolab|Workspace, (is that Incubator 2.0?), launched the Extreme Productivity Seminar series, oh, and have I mentioned the annual Office 2.0 Conference?  ( I actually know his secret, he has two body doubles, I just haven’t been able to prove it yetsmile_wink)

Pressed for time he is turning a necessity into a virtue: year by year the Conference is a showcase of creating a successful event out of nothing in only two months. I remember the first event in 2006, when a couple of us Enterprise Irregulars were helping him plan the sessions only weeks away from the start.  A few days and a few blog posts later Ismael got flooded with request for sponsor and speaking slots.  This year history repeats itself: just a month ago the conference site was a placeholder and one could only wonder if … then a new site was born overnight, based on Jive Software’s excellent ClearSpace platform, and now it’s alive with user participation, sponsors, registration..etc.

What’s a Web-focused Conference without wi-fi?   It’s a joke that in 2008 conferences, including brands like Web 2.0, Gnomedex …etc.  still fail to provide sufficient connection.  Ismael’s solution includes laser beams to the top of the building, another one down to a terrace, then inside – making it happen with Swisscom was quite a project in itself.  Office 2.0 set the standard once and for all, anything less at major conferences is a failure.

Then there’s the issue of The Gadget.  I believe the iPod at the first conference was just more-then-generous swag.  The iPhones handed out at the second conference had an integral part at the event: several applications released specifically for Office 2.0 allowed participants to interact with each other, navigate the schedule and find sessions.  This time all paid participants will receive a the HP 2133 Mini-Note PC.

Yes, the conference swag is not pens, stickers or t-shirts: it’s a mini-computer, which cost about half the registration fee.  It will clearly raise eyebrows, and many would prefer to skip the gadget and pay reduced fees.  I think handing out such an expensive gadget will have an interesting effect on the conference demographic: we’ll likely see an increase of corporate employees, who can expense the entire conference and are less price-sensitive than startups and freelancers – the original Office 2.0 crowd.

But that may very well be what the conference needs.   There’s a reason why this year’s theme is Enterprise Adoption.  The Office 2.0 movement wouldn’t go very far with only the early pioneers, evangelists talking to themselves, dissmissing enterprise requirements.  For the principles to become practice in business, we need a more balanced mix, and in a twisted way the gadget may just help achieve that.

Those who can’t afford the full registration are not entirely locked out: Socialtext CEO and top evangelist Ross Mayfield will facilitate Un-Conference 2.0 the day before the official conference, at a cost of $50.

Finally, startups have a chance to present the attending VCs, media, bloggers at  LaunchPad – Ismael announced this event over the weekend, and already has 10 particpants – get in there while you can.  Note to my (numerous) VC readers: I hope you will be there, too.

If you’re still hesitating, check out the Agenda, the list of Speakers,  Media representatives,  and if you haven’t done so, register now.

I’ve saved the best for last: don’t use the standard registration, save $100 by registering here.

Update: while I was typing here, fellow Enterprise Irregular Dennis Howlett explained why this is an Irregular (pun intended) Conference in more than one way.  Update to the update: see Susan’s excellent summary.

(cross-posted on the Conference Blog)

Filed Under: Bay Area, Business, Collaboration, Personal Productivity, SaaS, Startups · Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , ,
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CherryPal: Green Cloud-Computer (Almost)

Posted on July 21, 2008 ·

CherryPal™ is trying to change the world one computer at a time. We’ve created the most affordable, easiest to use and greenest desktop computer available.

That’s the statement from the company’s website. I buy the the greenest argument, not so sure about the others.  These are the specs of the new $249 tiny PC announced today:

  • Freescale’s MPC5121e mobileGT processor, 800 MIPS (400 MHz) of processing
  • 256 MB of DDR2 DRAM
  • 4GB NAND Flash-based solid state drive
  • WiFi 802.11b/g Wi-Fi
  • Two USB 2.0 ports
  • One 10/100 Ethernet with RJ-45 jack
  • One VGA DB-15 display out jack
  • Headphone level stereo audio out 3.5mm jack
  • 9vDC 2.5mm 10 watt AC-DC adapter power supply
  • Weighs 10 ounces
  • 1.3” high, 5.8” x 4.2” wide

It is indeed very small, the size of an average paperback, and the power consumption is an amazing 2W only.  That is, until you start using it – presumably you’d like to see what you’re doing and will need to attach a monitor.  Which brings us to the issue of price. It’s really hard to find an LCD display for $150 or less, even if you go down to the 15″ range – add a keyboard and mouse, and you’re likely in the $450 range, which puts the Cherry in the range of several low end desktops, even sub-notebooks.   Of course none will be as green and few as silent as the CherryPal.

CherryPal is positioned as a Cloud-PC, and it comes with 50G of free online storage, dubbed the CherryPal Cloud. Does this sound like a familiar combo?  Zonbu, the $99 Green PC that Cost You $249 is quite comparable, although they charge a subscription fee, while the Cherry-Cloud is free. How can they afford it?   The company says they will play ads when you start the applications.

Now, let’s go back to why I think it’s *almost* a Cloud Computer: it still has heavyweight desktop software. OpenOffice is a popular MS Office alternative, and is free, but is known as a resource hog. It’s not going to be fun on a 256MB computer.  If the Cheery Pal is a Cloud PC, why not go all the way: forget desktop software, just bring up the browser and make Zoho or Google Apps the homepage.

Update: CherryPal is alive, on Twitter and lives on Jelly Bellies🙂

Update# 2: TechCrunch wants to build a $200 Web Tablet. Is this real or a joke? 🙂

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Filed Under: SaaS, Technology · Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , ,
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Windows Live FolderShare No Longer Strictly P2P?

Posted on June 16, 2008 ·

Foldershare is a life-saver: a peer-to-peer file synchronization product that does its magic in discreetly in the background, with the user barely noticing it even exists. While it needs to log in to the MS servers, it does NOT sync / upload actual data, all synchronization is strictly P2P. In fact one of the setup options is to define whether you allow remote P2P sync to occur through the Net, or strictly on your LAN, behind the firewall.

I’ve been using it for years now, as part of my data sync and backup strategy: I let FolderShare synchronize data between two laptops and a desktop, then I use the desktop as the “master” which will back up data online to Mozy, the other life-saver.

Of course using two products for somewhat similar purposes is redundant, and I have previously speculated that Microsoft should tie Foldershare and Skydrive (Live Mesh, Live Drive – pick your favorite buzzword) offering both PC sync and Web backup. I wonder if it’s about to happen.

I noticed this weekend that my computers could sync without them being online at the same time – which is (used to be? ) a primary requirement for FolderShare to work. Now I could repeatedly test turning off all but one computer, update files on the one with FolderShare running, then shut down FolderShare, start another machine, and voila! – my changes got synchronized. How was that possible when it had nowhere to get the information from, other than the Microsoft servers? (unless the closed program left behind a process running, other than Foldershare.exe)

If this means FolderShare is no longer strictly a P2P product, I actually welcome that change – except for the fact that it happened unannounced. Leaving users in the belief they are only sync-ing data between their own computers when in fact it’ stored on Microsoft’s servers would be a serious violation of their privacy.

Interesting coincidence (is it?): FolderShare will have a planned outage of 48-72 hours this week. 72 hours (3 days!) is a lot of time, it should be enough for major changes. In fact more than enough – such outage would be unacceptable from any service provider – except apparently from Microsoftsmile_sad. (Yes, I know, we get what we pay for, and this is a free service – it’s still a ridiculous outage.)

Update: Further testing reveals that the actual data files are not transferred between offline computers, only the *.p2p placeholder files. Sigh of relief: your data files are not stored on Microsoft’s servers. BUT …. BUT: the index is indeed stored centrally. This did not appear to be the case with the original FolderShare by ByteTaxi, prior to the MS acquisition. I don’t know when it changed, and I don’t recall being warned about it. The former FolderShare user agreement page disappeared and I haven’t found any updated information on FolderShare’s site.

Update (6/24):

Ouch!  C’mon guys, this is so simple, even I could fix it.

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SaaS and the Shifting Software Business Model

Posted on May 28, 2008 ·

Barely two years ago we debated whether little-known Zoho was worth paying attention to. The majority view was that their Office applications were weak contenders that would never challenge the Microsoft suite’s position. I think I was in the minority stating that I really did not need more than 10-20% of Word or Excel’s functionality, but online-anywhere access and collaboration made the switch worthwhile.

Today Robert Scoble reports he is seeing online applications wherever he turns:

Today I’d say the skill set is shifting once again. This time to something like Zoho Writer or Google’s Docs. Because if you visit Fast Company’s offices in New York, for instance, they want to work with you on your copy in live time. Fast Fast Fast is the word of the day. It’s in our title, after all. Now some people still use Word, but last time I was there one of the editors told me he was moving everything over to Google’s Docs because it let him work with his authors much more effectively.

These are no longer yesterday’s wannabe applications. Zoho Sheet recently added Macro and Pivot Table support , going way beyond the average user’s needs (and certainly exceeding my spreadsheet skills, which are stuck somewhere at the Lotus 1-2-3 level). Zoho Writer today added an equation editor and LaTex support. Heck, I don’t even know latex from silicone, what is it doing in my editor? smile_wink
As I found out it’s important for Zoho’s academic and student users, once again, going way beyond an average user’s needs. (the other update today is mass import from Google Docs: nice, special delivery for Dennis, but I still would like to see a list of all my online docs, be it Zoho or Google, open them, edit them, and save to whichever format (and storage) I want to.)

Online applications have arrived, they’ve become feature-rich, powerful, and are the way software will be consumed in the future. They also change the business landscape.

Software margins choked by the cloud? – asks Matt Assay at CNet, pointing out a shift in Microsoft’s tone about cloud computing, recognizing that in the future they will host apps for a majority of their customers, and that their margins will seriously decline:

There’s not a chance in Hades that Microsoft will be able to charge more for its cloud-based offerings–not when its competitors are using the cloud to pummel its desktop and server-based offerings. This is something that Microsoft (and everyone else) is simply going to have to get used to. The go-go days of outrageous software margins are over. Done.

Matt cites Nick Carr who in turn recently discussed

…the different economics of providing software as a Web service and the aggressive pricing strategies of cloud pioneers like Google, Zoho, and Amazon.

This is fellow Enterprise Irregular Larry Dignan’s key take-away from the Bill & Steve show, too:

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer acknowledged the fact that a lot of computing is happening in the browser and not in applications. He also said that the future of software will have “a much more balanced computational model” and that Microsoft will have to compromise.

Of course it isn’t just Office. The obvious business application is CRM, where Salesforce.com pioneered the concept and delivered the first On-demand product. But now a funny thing is happening: the pioneer is increasingly being replaced by more inexpensive competitors, including my Client, Zoho. Yes, SaaS disrupts the traditional software market, but there’s another equally important trend happening: the commoditization of software.

Commoditization is beneficial to customers, but a death-spiral to (most) vendors. Except for the few that drive commoditization. Zoho makes no secret of doing exactly that.

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Filed Under: Collaboration, ERP / CRM, Personal Productivity, SaaS · Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
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Zoho CRM Enterprise Edition @ SMB Price

Posted on April 16, 2008 ·

This morning Zoho announced the Enterprise Edition of their CRM product.  The key updates are:

  • Introduction of Role-based Security Administration
    • Profiles for managing CRM module-level permissions
    • Roles for modeling organizational hierarchy and setting up data sharing rules
    • Groups for sharing the data among various departments
    • Field-level security for controlling the access rights (View or Edit) of fields in CRM modules

  • Enhancements in product Customization & Data Administration
  • Multi-language Support (11 Languages)
  • SSL Support for Professional & Enterprise Version
  • Integration with Zoho Sheet
  • Improved Business Functionality
    • Automatically update Stock information once the Purchase Order is approved
    • Find and Merge the duplicate records in Vendors module
    • Convert Quote to Sales Order or Invoice in a single click
    • Convert Sales Order to Invoice in a single click
    • Add account information automatically while creating quotes/orders/invoices from the potentials
  • Wiki-based Context-sensitive Help

     

    The key in “going enterprise” is no doubt the new security/permissioning scheme. That said, Zoho CRM has already been functionally rich even before today’s upgrade.  I’ve repeatedly stated that supporting business processes like Sales Order Management, Procurement, Inventory Management, Invoicing  Zoho really has a mini-ERP system, under the disguise of the CRM label.smile_wink.  In fact let’s just stop here for a minute. 

    Today’s announcement aside, I still consider Zoho’s primary focus to be the small business (SMB) market.  As for CRM, it really comes down to the classic breadth vs. depth of functionality question.   Zoho CRM’s breadth, along with the other productivity applications allows many SMB’s to use it as their single, only business application.  The market leader in SaaS CRM, Salesforce.com clearly supports fewer business processes, offering more depth in each – probably a better fit for larger enterprises which likely run several applications anyway.   This matrix provides an overview of Zoho CRM vs. Salesforce CRM Group and Professional Editions. (click on pic for detail)

     

    Having done a functional comparison, a quick look at pricing demonstrates why Zoho CEO Sridhar Vembu called Salesforce.com still very expensive:

     

    CRM Pricing Comparison - http://sheet.zoho.com 

     

    No wonder Larry Dignan at ZDNet declares “Zoho aims to poach Salesforce.com customers.”  But Larry (and Marc), you ain’t seen nothing yet… just wait till Zoho comes out with a Salesforce.com importer smile_tongue.   

    Clearly, Salesforce.com does keep a close eye on Zoho, otherwise why would they spend money on the Google Adword “Zoho CRM“?

     

    But again, reality check: Salesforce.com does own the Enterprise space.  For now.

    Finally, a word about integration.  After all, Zoho is known for their almost endless range of products, they should work together…  Currently Zoho Sheet, the spreadsheet application is fully integrated with CRM – most data can be edited either inside CRM or in the spreadsheet format that many business users are more familiar with.

    Zoho plans to integrate Writer, their word processor, Mail (still in private beta) as well as some of the business applications, namely recently released Invoice and People. When all that’s done, Zoho will have a more complete offering than two industry giants, Salesforce.com and Google together.   I can’t wait…

     

    (Disclaimer: I am an Advisor to Zoho. Take anything I say with a grain of salt.  In fact with a pound of salt.  Don’t believe a single word of mine about Zoho products: go ahead and check them out yourself).

     

    Related posts:  Zoho Blogs, CenterNetworks, VentureBeat, CNET News.com, Mashable!, Between the Lines, Web Worker Daily, Irregular Enterprise, InformationWeek,

     

    • Filed Under: Enterprise Software, ERP / CRM, SaaS, SMB / SME · Tagged: , , , , , , , , ,
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    3 Half-Truths about SaaS

    Posted on April 11, 2008 ·

    I am a big fan of Software as a Service, but it frustrates the hell out of me to see industry pundits over-hype it without really understanding it.  Here are 3 killer (in the bad sense) half-truths about SaaS:

    1 – SaaS is simpler, easier to implement than On-premise software (see update at the bottom)

    2 – SaaS is for the SMB market

    3 – SaaS is bought, not sold, it’s the end of Enterprise Sales

    Let’s examine them in detail:
     

    1 – SaaS is simpler, easier to implement than On-premise software.

    The only part that’s absolutely true is the technical installation, which the customer no longer has to worry about with SaaS.  But we all know that this is a fraction of a typical implementation.  Implementations are all about business process and training, hence the difficulty / duration / cost of an implementation depends on the complexity of business and the size of the organization – these two tend to correlate with each other.

    It just so happens that all SaaS solutions so far have started (and many stay) at the SMB level, so they are simpler not by virtue of being SaaS but by their target market’s needs. 

    2 – SaaS is for the SMB market

    Yes, traditionally all SaaS started with Small Businesses, but that does not mean it may not move upstream. Salesforce.com and several HCM applications have proven technical scalability, but they offer partial / departmental functionality. 
    I am a strong believer that in 4-5 years most software developed will be SaaS, and that in 10 years it will be the predominant method of “consuming” software by large enterprises – but I can’t prove it.  There’s no empirical evidence, since there has not been any Integrated Enterprise SaaS available so far.  The closest to it is NetSuite today (but it’s still SMB focused), and SAP’s Business ByDesign tomorrow.  In fact despite SAP’s official positioning, driven by market focus and current limitations (functional and infrastructure), I believe that SAP will use BBD  to learn the SaaS game – i.e. BBD will be a test bed for a future Enterprise SaaS offering. But we’re not there yet.
    (longer discussion here)

    3 – SaaS is bought, not sold, it’s the end of Enterprise Sales

    Hey, I’ve said this myself, so it must be true (?).  Well, it depends on the position of the sun, the constellation of the stars, and several other factors, but mostly the first two we’ve just covered.smile_wink

    SaaS for very small business: that’s the clear-cut lab case for the click-to buy pull model to work.  In fact in this respect (sales model) I believe the business size is the no.1 determinator.    Some solutions will have to be configured and may even require pre-sales business process consulting.  This inflexion point will clearly be higher for functionally simpler solutions, like CRM and lower for integrated business management systems, like NetSuite or SAP’s Business  ByDesign. 

    Once you reach that inflexion point, you’re in a more interactive, lengthier sales process, and that’s typically face to face.  At least that’s what we’re conditioned to: but it does not have to be that way.  That will be the subject of another post – to come soon.

     

    Update:  Ben Kepes challenged #1 on his blog, and to some extent I have to agree.  My post here is continuation of a discussion we started at the virtual SAP Marketing Community Meeting, and my mind-set was still business process software, e.g. CRM, ERP..etc, but I forgot to specify that.  Instead of replicating the argument, why don’t you read my response to his response at Ben’s place.

    Filed Under: Enterprise Software, SaaS, SMB / SME · Tagged: , , , , , , , , , ,
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    Zoho People: Will it Disrupt or Fail?

    Posted on March 10, 2008 ·

    Zoho, best known for their Web-based Productivity (Office+) Suite today released Zoho People, a feature-rich On-Demand HRMS – Human Resources Management System. For the product introduction please read my previous post, while here I focus on business analysis, specifically on what this move means to software sales in general.

    Today’s product announcement signifies a departure from what Zoho has been known for so far, in a number of ways. Their primary reputation is being the best Web-based Office / Productivity Suite provider – People is clearly a process-driven, transactional system with “enterprisey” features: organization levels, work-flow, permissions…etc.

    It’s not an entirely new field for Zoho though, as their CRM solution has been gaining traction for years now – both in terms of new customers as well as converts from the market leader. (See chart with full list of Productivity and Business Apps). As a matter of fact, I’ve often stated calling it CRM is an understatement: with Sales Order Management, Procurement, Inventory Management, Invoicing it’s really more of a mini-ERP. Add to it Accounting and HCM and Zoho can come up with an unparalleled Small Business Suite, which includes the productivity suite (what we now consider the Office Suite) and all process-driven, transactional systems: something like NetSuite + Microsoft, targeted at SMB’s, perfectly rhyming with Zoho’s stated objective of becoming the outsourced IT for small businesses.

    Except… well, Zoho People is not a small business system. All you have to do is look at some of the organizational setup, or processes, like holiday, training, leave requests, company policies to realize that this system is ideally suitable for organizations with a few hundred employees and more. (The “M” in SMB, whereas most of Zoho’s focus has been on the “S” until now). So it’s a departure from Zoho’s traditional target market, and by its very nature it’s not a system individuals or small groups would just start to use in an ad-hoc manner. It’s a system to be introduced by HR for the entire company.

    Bringing an enterprise system to the market typically requires a different approach, a coordinated marketing and sales effort, supplemented by consulting and support – i.e. all the extra weight that makes enterprise software “big and fat”. Yet Zoho just throws it out in the open, like they did with Writer, Sheet or any one of the dozen or so productivity tools. They have no clue how to market enterprise software! – one might say… and do they, really?

    Simply announcing enterprise software without marketing and sales is certainly a risky proposition. Any startup that does with their main product is doomed to fail. Yet Zoho can afford an experiment. The new HCM system is just one product in their portfolio, in fact the entire Zoho portfolio is just a big experiment of the parent company, privately held and profitable Adventnet. CEO Sridhar Vembu repeatedly stated his mission is to commoditize software, delivering it to large masses at previously unseen prices.

    There’s all this talk about how SaaS changes the economics of Software – pull vs push process, try-and-buy vs. the expensive enterprise sales process; but it mostly refers to the SMB space. The try-and-buy, self-serve model is almost unheard of amongst larger organizations and more complex software. It traditionally needs more cajoling and hand-holding. But why not break away from tradition? Why should all innovation stay on the product side? Zoho goes the extra mile to make the new system more “consumable”: screenshot tours, demo videos abound. Of course disruptive pricing does not hurt, either.

    If Zoho People fails to gain traction, so be it: the company will likely focus on their main avenue of becoming the IT provider for SMB’s, integrate features from People into Zoho Business and CRM, and figure out how to crack the HCM market later. If, however it starts gaining traction, it’s a good signal to the entire SaaS industry: an indication that transparency, online information and help works, the try-and-buy model may just be feasible even with larger organizations, which, for the first time will buy Software as a Service instead of being sold to by pushy enterprise sales teams.

    (Disclaimer: I am an Advisor for Zoho.)

    Related posts: Between the Lines, Zoho Blogs, Deal Architect, Centernetworks, Wired, SmoothSpan Blog, GeekZone, Webware, Venturebeat, Web Worker Daily, TechCrunch, Business Two Zero, Irregular Enterprise.

    Filed Under: Business, Enterprise Software, SaaS, SMB / SME · Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , ,
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    Zoho Enters Human Resources Market with Zoho People.

    Posted on March 10, 2008 ·

    (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,

    Filed Under: Enterprise Software, Personal Productivity, SaaS, SMB / SME · Tagged: , , , , , , , , ,
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