Zoho aims to transform enterprise project management with new AI-powered DDPM platform
Project Management Tools
by Taryn Plumb
Building on Zoho Projects
The data-driven project management (DDPM) platform pulls together disparate data so that internal and external teams can collaborate, communicate, and get projects done more quickly and easily.
Using data from time tracking, budgeting, task completion, and team and deliverability metrics, Projects Plus supports predictive analysis (to estimate timelines or anticipate risk or resource needs); progress tracking (moving beyond static project management tools like Gantt charts); and quality control analytics throughout a project’s timeline.
Zia's ability to generate real-time insights based on various project metrics significantly increases the success probability of the project, and conversational AI enables users to ask questions about the project. For instance, teams can ask Zia to show them overdue tasks, and Zia will automatically pull out that data.
Multiple use cases
One Zoho customer, a commercial automobile manufacturing team, uses Projects for both simple redesigns and more complex new projects. The team uses the platform for everything from R&D redesign to production, unifying metrics to understand common delays and risks. Using these insights to modify their processes, they have improved client satisfaction by 20%.
Elizabeth also pointed to another customer, a financial institution, that undergoes a half dozen internal audits a year, leaving employees with a list of issues and action items to track and resolve under deadline. Zia helps them pull together the materials and data they need to remediate flagged issues, providing progress reports via dashboards along the way.
"Zia can break down the progress perfectly for them," said Elizabeth.
Supports Zoho’s 'upmarket trajectory': analyst
The new platform is an extension of Zoho Projects, one of Zoho's earliest products. The company has steadily built upon Projects over the last two decades, finding that nearly 20% of customers use it alongside other Zoho apps such as Analytics.
The goal with Projects Plus is to help customers from different verticals get started with a single platform. Zoho has many competitors in an increasingly cluttered field — including Zendesk, HubSpot, Microsoft, Salesforce, and Creatio.
Zoho said that Projects has pulled ahead of other third-party apps in the market, with 55% of new users migrating from Microsoft Projects and Jira. Elizabeth noted that the company owns its entire tech stack — data centers, hardware, software, and apps — and integrates with other components of its software suite, as well as with third-party software including Microsoft Office 365, Google Workspace, and popular repository management, collaboration, customer service, and analytics tools, via its online business app store, Zoho Marketplace.
"The Projects Plus Platform launch underscores Zoho's continued commitment to meeting customers where they are," said Evelyn McMullen, research manager at Nucleus Research. For customers not yet ready to adopt more advanced project management capabilities, the new offering is a good option to support them as their requirements evolve over time, said McMullen. And large enterprises should take note that the platform is designed to meet the specific needs of organizations in complex verticals such as e-commerce, construction, manufacturing, and automotive.
"Overall, this move supports Zoho's upmarket trajectory while offering different levels of functionality to support the entirety of its broad client base," said McMullen.
Projects Plus is available for immediate use globally. Cost in the US is $16 per user per month, which Zoho said is 27% lower than the licensing price of its individual components; regional pricing is available on the Zoho website.