Zoho has released new updates to its collaboration platform and introduced Cliq Rooms, a smart conference room solution.
The CRM software company also announced it expanded its presence in its home country, India, by 37 percent last year, which it believes will be further boosted by these innovations.
Earlier this year, Zoho entered the unified communication space with the launch of Zoho Workplace, which includes a voice platform directly integrated with Zoho Cliq. The latest updates bring cross-functional collaboration to organisations.
Sridhar Vembu, CEO and Co-founder of Zoho Corp, spoke about the benefits of Cliq: “Zoho Cliq is the most refined collaborative platform in the world.
“Zoho offers the operating system for business, and we call Cliq the operating system for Zoho.
“The entire functionality of the Zoho suite is increasingly available through Cliq, with its beautiful messaging interface.
“This allows employees across a large organisation (like Zoho Corp. itself) to communicate and collaborate, provide data in real time to apps, and consume reports, all from the world-class interface, across the desktop and mobile platforms.”
Zoho Cliq is one of the most popular applications in Zoho One, providing seamless collaboration across functions, which reduces data silos and improves business continuity and operational efficiency, according to Zoho.
As a platform, Cliq has grown 30 percent in user migration from Slack and Microsoft Teams in 2022. Last month, Zoho became the first bootstrapped SaaS company to achieve a record 100 million users, who are spread out across more than 55 of its business applications.
Updates to Zoho Cliq
These updates, which were announced shortly before the Zoholics user conference in India earlier this month, include:
- New platform capabilities: Cliq provides low-code extensibility that enables developers to launch custom apps with up to one million rows. Developers do not need to use servers to run their apps; they can extend the platform and create workflows to third-party apps via Connections. Schedulers also allow developers to build workflows that give users regular updates as well as send data back into the app.
- Cliq Rooms: The Cliq Rooms app for Android TV enhances the meeting experience for users by scheduling meetings for conference rooms, enabling hybrid meetings, and connecting to the projecting screen, audio, and video. Cliq Rooms users can connect their A/V input to their phones or laptops, and it will work with any Android TV, giving it an edge over competitors.
- Live events: Cliq can host internal virtual events, with organisers being able to choose who appears on stage, share posters between sessions, and ask the audience questions. Attendees can join events from the Cliq web interface, mobile apps, or via the Cliq TV app.
- Compliance features: To assist organisations with meeting various industry regulations, businesses can access, remove, and restore data through the e-discovery module in Cliq. Data retention policies can be set up to determine how long to keep data before it is deleted, and they can be saved for longer periods in case of an investigation. Audit logs can also be used to investigate suspected data breaches and track modifications to the admin console.
- Artificial intelligence: Zoho’s AI assistant, Zia, provides users with meeting summaries, follow-up reminders, and the ability to create action items as tasks in Zoho Projects. It also functions as a writing assistant and sentiment analysis tool.
Vembu commented on the latest enhancements to Cliq: “With this launch, Zoho Cliq provides a robust platform that can enable employees to perform most of their tasks right from within the app, whether it is resolving a customer issue or approving expenses.
“This can help organisations, especially ones in the medium and large segment, improve both employee experience and customer experience by bringing in the key functions from front-end and back-end apps into the Cliq interface.”
Zoho cited a report that estimates the revenue of the Indian collaboration software market will be $276 million by 2028.
The solution, which was developed in India, is part of Zoho’s R&D efforts to create a unified technology stack that will facilitate an “unparalleled user experience”.
Rakeeb Rafeeque, Product Marketing Manager at Zoho, spoke to UC Today about the expanding scope of UCaaS following the company’s move into the unified communications market.
