At its recent user conference, global technology company Zoho unveiled new AI-enhanced capabilities in its customer experience platform, while introducing an enterprise-ready version of Ulaa, its privacy-focused browser.
Zoholics, the annual Zoho user conference just wrapped in Houston; the event will return to Canada later this year.
The Zoholics USA 2025 Conference in Houston, Texas, brought together more than 1,600 customers for the latest Zoho news and updates, including hands-on training and workshop opportunities with the company’s business apps, as well as one-on-one access with members of Zoho product teams.
It’s one of several such events that Zoho stages in locales around the world; more than 45 countries have so far hosted an event. Zoholics will return to Canada later this year (more on that below).
This month, Zoho announced new features and generative AI workflow orchestration capabilities have been added to its CX software suite, CRM For Everyone.
Zoho Canada Managing Director Chandrashekar LSP says the new AI capabilities, powered by Zoho’s in-house AI engine Zia, remove technological barriers to CRM adoption across multiple workgroups, making it easier for all employees to serve the customer.
New features in the Zoho CRM For Everyone CX platform can be used to coordinate work across the many teams involved in delivering the customer experience.
“CRM For Everyone helps ensure that all teams across sales, marketing, account management, finance, and legal, have relevant access to all information,” LSP explains. That brings a higher level of consistency to customer interaction at all points in the lifecycle.”
New features like Connected Records and Connected Workflows can be used to coordinate work across the many teams involved in delivering the customer experience. Users at the annual conference (and in monthly online sessions) learn about the many features in the CX platform.
Connected Records is a feature of record creation and requires no additional setup for individual users, he detailed, nor additional system setup or reconfiguration of computers.
Zoholics is a learning and networking opportunity for Zoho customers and business users, with keynote presentations, hands-on workshops, one-on-one sessions, and multiple opportunities for connecting with peers in the industry.
As a feature, Connected Records refers to records that are capable of being linked with series of other modules’ records to define a complete orchestration of work.
The main record (or parent) owner can make a request to other teams (solutions, legal, customer testimonials, for example) for the desired records. Once connected, each individual record exists for each respective departmental stakeholder, but there’s now seamless coordination of work across each module, with full visibility for each stakeholder. With Connected Records, the tracking of jobs, follow-ups, delays, reasons for the delays, and so on, between teams is now effortless and efficient.
But, as LSP says, working with the new tools is “Incredibly easy. Over 100 reports and dashboards are available out of the box, simplifying on-boarding. We also have very simple low code/no code tools for reports and dashboard building that allow non-technical users to create custom reports and dashboards that cater to their unique needs.
To make things even easier, we have added AI capabilities via Ask Zia; users are able to type in their reporting or dashboard requirements with a simple prompt. Zia will then generate the report and dashboards quickly.”
AI capabilities have also been integrated into Ulaa Enterprise, the newly-enhanced version of the Zoho web browser.
AI capabilities, attendees at the conference heard, have also been integrated into Ulaa Enterprise, the newly-enhanced privacy-centric version of the Zoho web browser.
As LSP describes it, “Ulaa Enterprise is purpose-built with native security at its core; it has features to combat phishing and ransomware (and it) integrates advanced security directly into the browser for a more secure browsing experience.”
Any browser could be seen as the most vulnerable endpoint for corporate data loss, he added, so Zoho added data loss prevention tools that can be used to minimize security risks like unauthorized uploads, screen captures, copy-paste actions, and downloads of sensitive information.
IT administrators have centralized policy management tools to define access, manage extensions, restrict downloads, and enforce user behaviour policies in real-time across work groups or departments.
“Human error and misconfigurations remain common vectors for cyber-attacks,” LSP added. “That’s why Ulaa Enterprise is designed to reduce complexity and improve visibility.”
The Ulaa Enterprise User Dashboard lets customers manage all users, devices, and security policies from one interface location.
By embedding policy controls and security enforcement directly into the browser, Ulaa simplifies deployment and day-to-day management. And he explained how, with Zoho’s Zia integrated into Ulaa, it detects and blocks phishing attempts before a user can click. Even if policies are misconfigured, Ulaa’s AI-powered security features help identify and neutralize threats early, reducing the margin for human error.
He says a layered approach like this can keep ransomware and phishing threats at bay, even as attacks become increasingly sophisticated through their own use of AI.
Zoho has long maintained a security-centric focus in its business software apps, and it says its use of artificial intelligence is guided by the principles of customer privacy and value.
Zoholics conventions also feature full-day Masterclasses, in this case a deep dive into Zoho Books, an accounting tool that connects with Zoho CRM. Images from Zoho.
Zoho notes that its own generic AI models, used as contextual, assistive, and agentic AI, are not trained on consumer data, and do not retain customer information.
Using proprietary datasets, Zoho offers pre-trained AI models for tasks like keyword extraction and object detection; its AI models undergo continuous retraining to maintain accuracy and prevent model drift, the company adds. With the Zoho AI Modeler, customers can build various applications and train their own custom AI models using their own business data.
Chandrashekar LSP added that the majority of Ulaa Enterprise features are available across both desktop and mobile platforms, ensuring a consistent and secure browsing experience. There are slight functionality differences between Android and iOS-based devices. Likewise, for Zoho CRM, most of the features are available across both desktop and mobile, with a few features currently missing from the mobile experience which he says will be incorporated in future updates.
No guarantees, but that may be in time for the next user conference in this country: Zoholics Canada 2025 is scheduled for November 18th and 19th at the Toronto Congress Centre.
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