Ogundare: Small Businesses Should Leverage Collaborative Technology in Workplace

The Country Lead of Zoho Corporation, Kehinde Ogundare, speaks about the company’s new platform and the need for technology collaborations to improve productivity and offer businesses easier communication channels. Nosa Alekhuogie presents the excerpts

Since the unveiling of Zoho’s unified communications platform, Trident, how have the small and medium businesses adopted it, and what’s the feedback?
We have had 106 per cent growth in our revenue from Zoho workplace in the last one year. We have had 68 per cent user adoption, and migration from other applications has doubled in the last couple of years. I have onboarded many people and businesses to Zoho workplace because people are trying to cut cost and, at the same time, want to get value. So, when we built this world-class product, we didn’t compromise on the value of the things you want to get from us. The adoption has been quite impressive, and we hope for more in the next couple of months and years.
This innovation will be extremely advantageous for small and medium businesses in Nigeria that plan to scale up by adopting technology.

What are the trends affecting SMBs in Nigeria regarding innovation in technology?
SMBs often feel compelled to use expensive, big-name technologies, leading to unnecessary costs and improper implementation. It is important for them to evaluate their technology needs, choose affordable solutions, collaborate with professionals for proper implementation, and achieve desired outcomes from technology investments.

How is the team handling customer support, and what pricing options are available?
I find this particularly interesting because, for every great product, a support team must be in place. Things cannot go smoothly without these in place. Our customers need help from time to time. They need options and require assistance with how to navigate the system and the likes.
I currently have a support team in the Nigerian office, and also, from the application itself, customers can chat with the support department regarding any complaints or make calls for support anytime they are stuck with anything on the platform. Regarding pricing, what you see is what you pay for. We have two models of pricing, which are monthly and yearly pricing. You can choose to go for either of the two, and you are not restricted by how you want to pay for the two.

Zoom and Teams are your biggest competition. What are you doing differently?
We are investing a lot of resources in research and development and our customer focus. When we are trying to create software on Zoho products, we try to see how people will adopt it and have a unified experience at the same time. We bring a lot of things that are unique to do your business all in one place. Customers can see the effort from us that we are trying to give them world-class products and not compromising on the value they are getting from us even though it is affordable. It is also very good to get testimonials from people, and a lot of customers have given us credit for how easy Zoho is and recently, someone on Twitter called our product cheap and cheerful. In this present economy, if someone refers to your product as cheerful, that means they are getting benefits and value for the money they are paying to use the software. We received a lot of testimonials from customers as well. I’ll say that is one of the things driving the adoption of the system in the country currently.

Should one be worried about security vulnerabilities when downloading the app?
One of our core foundations in Zoho is security and privacy, which we take very seriously. We are at an age where data is like gold, and people’s businesses are at stake. Currently, when you are using our app, third-party tracking is not allowed, as we are not trying to get money from anybody trying to track or post advertisements. You will never use the Zoho app and get any pop-ups of any ads of any sort. We have covered all the basis for a potential attack and have set up various structures to handle the security issues that likely occur.

How many participants can your platform accommodate in videoconferencing or a meeting?
This is dependent on the type of editions you are subscribed to on Zoho. We have various editions, and that will give you a limit to the number of people that can join at once on Zoho meetings and webinars. Currently, it is only available on Mac OS and window devices. It is a desktop application that you can download to give you the unified experience of being able to work with it.

Can you give us an overview of the attraction of Zoho in other markets compared to the Nigerian market?
I can confidently say we have global reports that show that adoption across the world is impressive. It has actually doubled. We have got about 30 per cent global revenue growth year-on-year. We have also seen migration from google and microsoft double over the years as well. The Zoho workplace is the fastest-growing product on the platform.

Beyond competitive pricing, with the Zoho workplace doing great in the market, what are the other advantages of the app for SMBs?
I’ll say Zoho is an experience. When building the app, we tried to understand what people and the market needed. Looking at the initiative of growing Zoho trident to being a unified platform for communication and emailing, customers tend to see the efforts of the company. I believe that when you have tried it then acceptability automatically brings about adoption as it is a very friendly app to use.
There is also the need for SMBs to leverage collaborative technology in the workplace. A lot of people have told me that Zoho’s mail interface is the best as it gives the opportunity to streamline emails and automate a lot of things on there as well. There are also a lot of features we did not compromise on and gave our customers value.

What challenges have you faced in the Nigerian market?
In terms of SMEs, I wouldn’t say we have had a lot of challenges because businesses have realised there is a need to digitalise the way they do their business. We have got a lot of companies trying to digitalise the way they do their business. We’ve got a lot of them trying to digitalise their financing, accounting, bookkeeping, and workspace. People are now trying to adapt to a new way of doing business.
The only challenge might be that people do not really know what type of tool to use in how to address these issues, but then, we have a local team present in Nigeria that can help people get in line in regards to what they are trying to do, their processes and what it will be like to optimise.
I see them as catalysts for the adoption of new technology in the country and not a challenge.

Zoho has over 55+ apps. What Zoho apps are the specific focus for the Nigerian market?
We offer a suite of business solutions that includes Zoho Workplace and Zoho CRM, two top-performing products in Nigeria. We have also witnessed a surge in the adoption of Zoho Books, our finance application. These tools empower businesses to enhance collaboration, manage customer relationships, and streamline their financial operations. Our solutions are customisable to meet the unique needs of each client.

What privacy modules have been integrated into Zoho Workplace that protect users’ data?
We prioritise user and data privacy, and our latest offering, Trident, includes MDM and Secure Pass to restrict file download, copying, and printing. It also requires a One Time Password (OTP) for file access, providing comprehensive security for our clients’ data.

How much Artificial Intelligence has been integrated into the new unified communications platform, Trident?
We have released Bluepencil by Zoho Writer, an AI writing assistant available with our latest offering, Trident. It provides real-time feedback on grammar, spelling, and more to enhance content creation.