At the heart of these enhancements is Zia LLM, Zoho’s proprietary large language model designed specifically for business applications. This innovative technology not only improves operational efficiency but also prioritizes data privacy, a crucial factor for small business owners managing sensitive financial information. Raju Vegesna, Zoho’s Global Chief Evangelist, emphasized the importance of security, stating, “When it comes to AI and data privacy, there is no greater concern than the safety of a customer’s financial information.”

The newly integrated AI features offer a range of practical applications that can help small businesses automate tedious tasks and gain deeper insights into their financial health. The Ask Zia function acts as a virtual finance assistant, enabling users to pose a variety of questions—ranging from basic inquiries to complex command requests—thus allowing for a more nuanced understanding of their financial situation.

Another noteworthy feature is the Co-Create Agent, which allows users to see how Zia is generating documents like invoices and custom reports. This transparency not only aids users in monitoring the AI’s actions but also empowers them to intervene whenever necessary, fostering a collaborative environment between human operators and AI.

The platform’s automation capabilities extend to bank reconciliation, where AI can suggest categorizations for transactions, significantly reducing manual input and decreasing the potential for errors. This feature is particularly beneficial for small businesses that often lack extensive financial resources and personnel.

Revenue forecasting is another critical addition. By analyzing historical data, this AI-driven tool predicts future trends, equipping small business owners with insights necessary for long-term financial planning. Coupled with anomaly detection, which flags inconsistencies in transactions in real-time, these features present a robust framework for proactive financial management.

Additionally, Zoho’s Finance and Operations Platform introduces several other AI functionalities, including Generated Blueprints, AI Custom Fields, Invoicing Agent, AI Summary, and Write with Zia, all designed to optimize various aspects of financial operations.

While the potential benefits are substantial, small business owners should also consider some challenges. Implementing advanced AI features might require an initial investment in training and integration. For businesses unfamiliar with AI tools, there may be a learning curve that could temporarily disrupt workflows. Furthermore, ensuring that all staff members are comfortable using these new technologies will be crucial for maximizing their effectiveness.

In summary, Zoho’s enriched AI capabilities present a valuable opportunity for small businesses to enhance their financial operations. By automating mundane tasks and providing deeper insights, these tools can lead to improved efficiency and decision-making. However, small business owners should prepare for the transition by investing in training and support to fully leverage these innovations. For more information on these features, interested parties can reach out to support@zohobooks.com or visit the Zoho blog.

Image via Google Gemini

This article, "Zoho Enhances Finance Platform with Advanced AI for Smarter Operations" was first published on Small Business Trends

This week, Zoho Corporation unveiled a new Enterprise Edition of Zoho Billing, expanding its Finance and Operations platform to serve larger and more complex organizations. But the move has real implications for mid-sized and growing small businesses looking to streamline billing, adopt modern pricing models, and gain real-time revenue insights—especially those with aspirations beyond domestic markets.

“Zoho Billing Enterprise Edition offers businesses the flexibility to monetize using any modern revenue strategy, with the scalability to solve the most complex billing scenarios,” according to the company’s announcement. The product includes built-in regional compliance, advanced automation, and AI-powered analytics, aiming to ease friction for businesses with increasingly complex operations.

For small business owners dealing with multiple pricing models—say a blend of subscription and usage-based pricing—the platform offers flexibility that many entry-level systems lack. Whether charging per project, by usage, or through flat-rate subscriptions, Zoho Billing adapts to those needs without requiring costly custom development or third-party plugins.

One standout capability is automated collection workflows, which could be especially useful for small teams looking to cut down on late payments without dedicating staff to constant follow-ups. By reducing “Days Sales Outstanding”—a key metric that reflects how long it takes to get paid—small businesses may see improved cash flow and fewer headaches.

The system also includes built-in revenue recognition features aligned with ASC 606 and IFRS 15 standards. That means finance teams—or often just the one person handling finances at a small company—can more easily recognize revenue in real time and shorten the month-end close process. This kind of visibility, often reserved for enterprises, could provide an edge for growing companies managing cash flow, investor relations, or future funding rounds.

Another benefit: businesses expanding into international markets won’t have to bolt on compliance tools. The software includes 15 country-specific editions with local tax compliance and supports e-invoicing in nine countries, including Mexico, India, and Germany.

Customer lifecycle management is also built into the core product, helping companies guide users from free trials through conversion, upgrades, and retention—useful for any SaaS-based or subscription-driven small business that needs to scale without manually tracking every customer movement.

Zoho also brings its AI assistant, Zia, into the billing experience. Ask Zia acts as a finance-specific virtual assistant, offering insights on billing performance, customer behavior, and operational efficiency. Meanwhile, Zia Insights highlights anomalies in key financial reports, forecasts revenue trends, and flags potential risks or opportunities. This could help small business owners anticipate issues before they become costly and make faster, data-backed decisions—without needing a full analytics team.

Of course, not every small business will need or be ready for the full scope of Zoho Billing Enterprise Edition. For simpler operations with limited pricing tiers or minimal international exposure, Zoho’s more basic plans may still offer the best balance of features and usability. The Enterprise Edition appears most beneficial for fast-growing firms that already face some of the billing complexity the software is designed to handle.

Still, the move underscores a growing trend: tools once only accessible to large enterprises are becoming more approachable—and affordable—for smaller businesses with ambitions to scale. As competition increases and pricing models evolve, having flexible, intelligent billing infrastructure could make a real difference in long-term viability.

Zoho’s latest update aligns with a broader push to integrate finance, operations, and automation into one platform. For small businesses looking to transition from startup tools to systems that grow with them, this release offers a compelling option—especially for those already embedded in the Zoho ecosystem.

This article, "Zoho Unveils Enterprise Billing Edition for Greater Control and Agility" was first published on Small Business Trends

Zoho Spend addresses a critical gap in spend management by consolidating various financial processes that are often managed through disparate systems. According to the company, many organizations struggle with fragmented oversight, compliance issues, and unmanaged costs due to this siloed approach. “Finance leaders lack 360-degree insights into company-wide expenses and purchases, and employees don’t have a unified way to track reimbursements or purchase requests,” the release noted. Zoho Spend aims to change that by providing a comprehensive dashboard that gives finance leaders the tools they need to control budgets, enforce governance, and curb unauthorized spending.

Key features of Zoho Spend include:

– Procurement Capabilities: The platform simplifies the source-to-pay process, allowing for digital vendor onboarding and management of requests for quotes (RFQs), purchase requisitions, purchase orders (POs), and bills all in one place. This integration enables businesses to gain valuable insights at both vendor and category levels, which can enhance negotiation strategies and procurement efficiency.

– AP Automation: Utilizing OCR-based scanning, Zoho Spend captures bills automatically and streamlines the matching process for payments. The system allows for payment approvals, enabling businesses to make individual or batch payments and automate reconciliation processes.

– Travel Booking: The self-booking travel tool provides employees with access to a global inventory of travel options, including 30+ direct New Distribution Capability (NDC) integrations. This feature ensures compliance with corporate travel policies while promoting cost savings and eliminating delays in booking.

– Expense Management: The platform automates the expense reporting process, from receipt capture to reimbursements, while ensuring compliance with various policies, per diem rules, and tax regulations.

– Payroll Processing: Zoho Spend simplifies payroll tasks across all 50 states, addressing the complexities of federal, state, and local tax compliance. Businesses can manage employee benefits and contributions seamlessly, making it easier for those with branches in multiple states to maintain compliance.

For small business owners, the benefits of adopting Zoho Spend are clear. By consolidating multiple financial functions into a single platform, businesses can gain enhanced visibility into their expenditures, streamline processes, and ultimately improve their bottom line. The comprehensive nature of the software means that small businesses can operate more efficiently, reducing the likelihood of errors and compliance issues that often arise from using multiple systems.

However, small business owners should also consider potential challenges. Implementing a new system can involve a learning curve for employees and may require upfront investment in training and integration. Additionally, businesses must ensure that the software meets their specific needs and integrates seamlessly with existing systems.

As Zoho Spend becomes available immediately, small business owners looking to enhance their financial management capabilities can explore its features further. The platform aims to empower organizations by transforming spend management into a strategic advantage.

For more information about Zoho Spend, interested parties can visit the official website at Zoho Spend. This launch reflects Zoho Corporation’s commitment to providing innovative solutions that cater not only to large enterprises but also to the growing needs of small businesses in the evolving marketplace.

This article, "Zoho Launches Zoho Spend, Revolutionizing Control Over Business Expenses" was first published on Small Business Trends

• What problems are we trying to solve with software?
• How will we get people to use it?
• How will we know the software is working?

However, the work isn’t complete once the software is implemented. It’s important to reflect on what you have done and whether or not the implementation has been successful. This practice will help decision-makers highlight which pain points and problems are being addressed, which results are measurable, and what unexpected benefits have arisen from changing how a company works. This process helps teams celebrate wins, build confidence with the team, and plan for future projects and implementation.

Here are appropriate follow-up questions for small businesses to ask themselves once they’ve tried their new software to determine if the implementation was a success:

Did the software help us take tangible steps towards solving our problems?

Before embarking on a software-purchasing journey, it’s imperative that small businesses take the time to understand which processes they need to focus on improving so they can work more efficiently and enjoyably. The more accurate an assessment they make, the better suited their eventual software will be because they will have understood their requirements better and found a solution that checks the most boxes.

Once the software is in place, companies that have put in this earlier work will have something to revisit and to use as a comparison point. These small businesses can start by taking stock in what the software has enabled them to do well. Which processes seem to be the most effective? Are there any that could be further streamlined? Where in the company’s workflow are communications flowing smoothly? The answers to these questions, when approached honestly, will yield guidance on how software can continue growing the business organically while offering opportunities for improvement.

To determine whether a piece of software was a successful addition, small businesses need to home in on the key performance indicators (KPIs) they will track. The more granular and specific to a facet of the business, the better, as these will be the ones that are easiest to act upon, especially once they’ve driven alignment within our organization.

Of course, no piece of software is perfect and no implementation occurs without a single speed bump. Once small businesses analyze these KPIs, it’s also important to note where there are still difficulties. Taking stock is a great opportunity to see where things have fallen short and what mistakes have been made. A clear idea of what went wrong and why is the way you learn from experience so you can do better next time.

Have we set up our team with the change and support they need?

Metrics themselves can tell a story about a software’s effectiveness, but the most important factor in determining software success is to ask the users directly. If a small business’s team doesn’t enjoy working with the software, then it’s likely any results from implementation will be temporary.

If small business owners haven’t established a means for employees to provide feedback directly to the rest of the organization, then understanding the effects of a new implementation is the time to do it. And this needs to apply to more than a select handful of employees. Often, the importance of taking a company-wide temperature gets overlooked and it becomes far too easy to assume a few employees are speaking for the whole of an organization. Perhaps we could send out anonymous surveys once a quarter, or ask managers to discuss the new software during scheduled 1:1 meetings with their direct reports. Even if a particular employee doesn’t have much experience with the new software, it is important to learn why that may be to illuminate if any software adjustments need to be made to improve adoption.

The best aspect of these feedback discussions is that we may learn about how the software has surprised users by addressing problems they didn’t even know they had. Perhaps one department didn’t realize just how much they needed new software until they were using it. Or a company’s software enables faster turnaround times that can be better handled by other aspects of the technology. These are all positive outcomes and should be noted for when decisions have to be made about further refining the tools being used or adding more to your deployment.

Treating software as a people issue is the key to long-term success, and this practice goes a long way when introducing new technology that people may be uncertain about, like AI. Checking in with staff after implementation to understand their concerns, then addressing them, is the best way to increase adoption because it allows staff to feel like part of the process. Better yet, this practice can lead to staff members becoming advocates for the technology to any holdouts that may exist.

Are we celebrating wins and building confidence and know-how in the organization?

If small businesses are working with their teams, identifying pain points in the organization’s and people’s days, creating priorities, setting realistic and achievable goals, and measuring success in concrete ways, they are operating from a position of strength. They have demonstrated that they understand the most essential point: Small changes and modest improvements over time yield pronounced, measurable, and lasting results.

And when you are doing something right in the organization, particularly when it impacts so many people, it’s important to point that out to folks and celebrate it. It’s far too easy for small businesses to remain risk-averse when they’re operating in feast-or-famine mode and the larger economic forecast is looking pretty dim. Putting any piece of software in place is a victory unto itself. It’s far easier to adjust something that already exists versus pull the trigger on a software purchase far too long in the works.

It’s worth reflecting and celebrating your successes for what they were: successes. This fosters a belief within the team that they can do more, take on bigger projects, continue growing, and make a lasting and measurable impact on the industry. Software can help, but the real victory is demonstrating to employees that there is much more success on the horizon.

This article, "How to Determine if Small Business Software Implementation Was Successful" was first published on Small Business Trends

Witness the remarkable new iteration of Zoho One. And reimagine your business as teams share insights across over 50 applications and third party apps from Google, Microsoft, Quickbooks and more.

“Now we have about 75,000 customers using Zoho One,” explains Raju Vegesna, Chief Evangelist at Zoho. “These customers are distributed all over the world and the average number of applications they use is around 22 to 23 and that has been growing and that option has been pretty significant across various org sizes, small to mid-size to enterprises as well.”

The new AI enhanced Zoho One unifies features across 50+ Zoho apps and third party integrations in a variety of ways.

One layer of integration involves Spaces, divided into Personal, Organization and Department. Take a look at how these are arranged below.

Get the Personal Touch

Say you operate a Seattle-based coffee roaster – with national distribution.

Each member of your marketing department needs personal productivity tools. Think design tools to work on the elements of a campaign and file storage to upload those assets. They also likely need a chat feature to discuss projects with other members of the team.

“You know, sometimes we want to just put our head down and do the work … and we need our own space for ourselves, that is the personal space.” adds Vegesna. “So we created a personal space with relevant tools that you may use.”

Each member of your sales team needs email to receive leads and video-call features to follow up with potential cafes or supermarket chains potentially interested in carrying your coffee.

But instead of popping in and out of 10 or 20 applications, Zoho One’s new integration offers a magic trick.

Abracadabra and each member creates a Personal Space where emails can be read and sent, calls made and files stored and shared.

All this happens within a dashboard created to improve productivity.

Expect to compete with big brands like Starbucks and Peet’s Coffee in no time, as Zoho One supercharges your sales and marketing teams.

These individuals require personal space to do their work but also they look for ways to share quickly with other members of the team.

Fortunately other aspects of Zoho One’s unified new approach fill just this need. Stay tuned.

Keep Your Organization Communicating

Of course, you also need a way to communicate and collaborate across your organization.

“If you’re in a collaboration mode within your entire organisation, well you get into the Organisation Space where there are a lot of tools out there that can help with various collaborations that you may do – various forms of collaboration.” Vegesna adds.

Say you operate a real estate brokerage in Reading, Pennsylvania. But you have regional agents throughout several counties in the Southeastern part of the state.

You need tools to help you bring those agents together on a regular basis, even when spread out over 50 miles or more.

Town Halls

The Organization Space enables you to set up town halls with your agents wherever they are located.

Set up your town halls with clearly defined durations and agendas. For example, establish a Monday morning session to update agents on new listings and the progress on existing listings.

Share exciting news on offers received as well as successful closings and other landmark accomplishments.

Set up another town hall midweek, perhaps an ask me anything session for new agents who are just learning the ropes.

Forums

Use Forums to help agents collaborate on projects, do more showings and ultimately make more sales.

For example, encourage agents in one county to post their listings, photos, asking price and other details.

This allows realtors in another county who might have the perfect buyer to set up a showing or request more information on the listing with just a few clicks.

Or suppose one realtor has an open house coming up this weekend. Forums provide a place to announce the event and ask other realtors to attend and possibly bring clients who might be interested.

Other Tools

Town Halls and Forums both reside within Zoho Connect. But make no mistake. Our hypothetical real estate brokerage need not get siloed within one application.

You see, the new Zoho One seeks to ease boundaries between apps with simple dashboards allowing collaborating teams to enable or disable apps at will.

“While you may be navigating multiple applications, it feels like a single unified interface across the board,” Vegesna points out.

So our southeastern Pennsylvania real estate company likely also uses Zoho Projects to manage staging of properties or closings on property sales to ensure nothing gets missed.

But the company also uses Zoho Social to create campaigns for individual properties – or to bring in new listings.

“So users can create multiple dashboards, pulling data across multiple applications and the default dashboards that we create themselves pull data across the operating system,” Vegesna adds.

Cool, huh?

Improve Departmental Efficiency

But most importantly, the new Zoho One’s philosophy of unification tackles the big daddy of all business challenges, departmental efficiency.

Miss this important detail and your business always ends up throwing more money out the window than you take in at the door.

The new Zoho One allows teams to create dashboards for any department you can imagine – using any tools they need.

“They are organized whether it is CRM related, whether it is HR related, support related,” Vegesna begins. “If you want to add any of these, like a help desk overview, you pin it in or you add that and it kind of shows up here.”

Imagine the accounts receivable department of a collection agency in Santa Fe, New Mexico working mainly with local hospitals and other healthcare providers.

Few businesses better exemplify the connection between departmental efficiency and profitability.

Fail to track delinquent accounts, schedule calls to make payment arrangements or track and process payments made? You soon face angry clients and the possibility of cancelled contracts.

Fortunately, a variety of Zoho tools provide the perfect solution.

Use Zoho Billing’s Accounts Receivable Aging Summary to identify delinquent accounts.

Employ Zoho Projects to create a ticket system for contact and payment negotiations. Then use Zoho Payments to make paying down that debt effortless.

Zoho Books helps track incoming payments from customers – as well as the cost of collection.

Create a dashboard – or multiple dashboards – and give your team a 40,000 foot view of your collection operations.

This allows piling up delinquent accounts, delays in contact, delayed payments and excessive costs in the collection process to stick out more clearly.

“What if we can take all of these applications … and make them behave like a single application – and where you remove the boundaries between these applications on the data and make the entire thing behave like a single unified experience where the context becomes the king?” Vegesna muses.

Can you see the potential?

New Zoho One Puts Ghost in Machine with Zia

Another important change in the new version of Zoho One happens to be the further integration of Zia – Zoho’s AI assistant.

AI already featured prominently in Zoho’s offerings. But the new Zoho One incorporates Zia into almost everything.

“So Zia is kind of sprinkled throughout the operating system,” Vegesna explains.

For example, Zia helps Zoho take its famous low code app building feature in Zoho Creator to a whole new level.

Zoho Creator already makes app creation a breeze with its simple drag and drop elements. But now give Zia a prompt and it builds what you want and even installs it.

Say you needed a checklist of CRM or other tasks for the day.

Or, as in the example of our imaginary accounts receivable department above, you need outstanding invoices ordered by the due date. This allows your team to track accounts to determine when they have reached delinquency – or when payments are late.

Perhaps you just need a simple way to create a meeting schedule for the day or for the week. This represents just a sampling of the kinds of widgets Zia can whip up for you, according to Zoho.

“It will create a widget for you and plug that right in,” Vegesna explains.

Equally important, Zia helps you sift through reports for important insights.

Vegesna adds, “ For example, in this case, I’m looking at a report. I can expand into it, zoom into it, ask Zia to do some analysis where Zia will give me a summary on that particular report.”

So, Zia parses through huge volumes of information surfacing only the important bits for your project.

Suppose you need the sales numbers on your ecommerce site from 2024 and the first half of 2025. Or perhaps you need a summary of traffic and engagement from your last social media campaign.

Zia scours reports from Zoho Commerce, Zoho Social or any other applications to provide the summaries you need.

Unification of Experience, Intelligence and Integration

Think of the way AI removes barriers between apps and data as a unification of experience.

No longer do you work in Zoho Service Plus or Zoho People Plus or Zoho Marketing Plus. No longer do you work in sales or finance or HR.

Instead, you collaborate across applications with the help of AI. You find the data you need regardless in which department it resides.

Then think of the way Zia works across all applications. It delivers widgets and surfaces and summarizes data to help you better understand what happens across your business not just in one little silo.

Consider this unification of intelligence.

Bringing Third Party – To the Party

This brings us to unified integration.

This integration happens not only between Zoho applications. The new Zoho One also integrates with third party applications – like QuickBooks, Mailchimp, HubSpot and more.

And it allows integration between these third-party applications themselves. So your business gets to choose the tools that work best for you – whether they exist in the Zoho ecosystem or not.

Imagine an SEO firm in Silver Springs, Florida. Perhaps they use Zoho Projects to manage ongoing activities. Perhaps they use tickets for ongoing tasks like optimization of clients’ sites, link building and keyword research activities, for example.

Maybe they also use Zoho CRM to nurture leads from marketing campaigns and bring in new clients.

But when it comes to bookkeeping, they prefer Quickbooks – even though they use Zoho Invoice to bill clients and Zoho Payments to collect fees.

Fortunately, with the new Zoho One, this presents no problem.

“You can bring in third party dashboards as well, plug them right in with single sign-on enable,” Vegesna explains. “You get a complete overview of it, and then the concept of boards and removing the boundaries is a critical piece and we don’t restrict it to dashboards themselves.”

Perhaps our Florida SEO company also uses GoDaddy to host the websites it builds for clients and for the domain name registration that goes along with this.

Vegesna further explains how this integration in particular works.

“So to make it really simple, we have also partnered with GoDaddy, where within the domain unification, all you need to do is login to GoDaddy, authorize changes to some of these records, and we will make these changes to their domain with their permission automatically,” he says.

Final Thoughts

No matter what your business needs, the new Zoho One offers over 50 applications to help you achieve your business goals.

More to the point, the new iteration of Zoho One eliminates boundaries that once siloed data and app functionality. It allows businesses to create their own dashboards combining app functionality and moving data seamlessly as needed.

New AI functionality including use of Zoho’s AI assistant Zia across the platform, allows businesses to build widgets and manipulate and summarize data.

The platform upgrade even allows seamless integration with other third party software outside the Zoho ecosystem.

This gives your business ultimate flexibility to choose the tools you want and integrate them the way you want.

Visit the new Zoho One today.

This article, "New Zoho One Uses AI to Reminagine Your Business" was first published on Small Business Trends

That’s why I wanted to sit down with someone who lives at the intersection of product strategy and real-world business needs. In this conversation, I talk with Ali Shabdar, Director of Strategic Growth at Zoho, about a major new update to Zoho One, the company’s all-in-one operating system for business. Over the course of our discussion, we dive into how Zoho is trying to move from a bundle of apps to a true unified platform, what that means for day-to-day workflows, and how features like Spaces, Unified Dashboards, Vani, native integrations, smarter security, and Zia AI aim to cut complexity instead of adding to it.

If you run a small business or lead a lean team, the details matter: how your calendar connects to your projects, how you off-board a departing employee without leaving security gaps, and how you get a meaningful snapshot of customers or sales without becoming a data analyst. Ali and I explore those very practical pain points through the lens of Zoho One’s latest changes. In the transcript below, you’ll see how Zoho is positioning these updates—not just as “new features,” but as steps toward making technology more invisible, so you can spend more time serving customers and growing your business, and less time wrestling with software.

Leland McFarland: All right, I am here with Ali from Zoho. We have some brand-new news coming out of Zoho, involving Zoho One, and we’re going to talk with Ali about all of this and see what he has to say about it.

All right, Ali, great to have you on. Why don’t you start off by introducing yourself and telling what you do at Zoho?

Ali Shabdar: Great to be here, Leland, and with your audience. My name is Ali Shabdar, I’m the Director of Strategic Growth at Zoho.

Leland McFarland: All right, thank you. So from a small business perspective, what problems is Zoho trying to solve with this new major update to Zoho?

Ali Shabdar: Great question, and let me go back a little bit. It’s been almost eight years, full eight years, since we launched Zoho One. We had a number of products that each served parts or entire parts of the funnel, a function, or an activity like sales, marketing, etc., etc.. And we decided at some point to bundle these up for a number of reasons.

Number one was to reduce complexity. One of the main issues of any business of any size—could be a solopreneur to even an enterprise—is that we end up dealing with a lot of products, with a lot of software, to solve our day-to-day problems or our long-term problems. The promise of technology was to make our lives easier, but in the past quarter century, I can remember, that technology actually made things more complex in a lot of cases. Which means we have to throw more technology at the existing technology to make it less complex.

So Zoho One’s promise was to remove that complexity by starting with bundling products together. And this bundle allows the user to have a singular view toward multiple functions that they might be dealing with. At the executive level, you’re looking at your entire business, almost live, and being able to connect the dots from your sales pipeline, to your cash flow, to your marketing activities, etc., etc., depending on what you’re doing.

In the eight years, one of the key tenets of our progress with Zoho One was to remove that complexity even more. So, moving from a bundle of products, bundle of apps, to a unified platform. That unification where the products talk to each other better and better, they’re tightly integrated out of the box. So you don’t need to worry about connecting sales to the finance function; it just works. And then that means that your data gets tighter and tighter, clearer and clearer. Data hygiene and data governance also gets better. These are scary, scary labels, as SMBs might not worry about data governance, but what I mean is that you have all your data in the same place. We all know what single source of truth is. We want to open one cupboard, one wardrobe, and have everything there, and that’s what Zoho One is doing with your data: putting it all next to each other and giving it a context based on the lens you want to be looking at that entire system that is helping you to run your business.

So it’s been an evolution, again, from bundle to a unified platform where everything is connected, and a small business goes back to what they need to do: working on their products and services, making their customers happy, rather than dealing with connecting technology together and having what we call the spaghetti solution—multiple vendors, multiple products, multiple invoices, so many support teams. You just deal with Zoho, and that’s about it.

Leland McFarland: Great. So, I mean, yeah, that’s going to hopefully save small businesses a whole bunch of time, a whole bunch of money, and a lot of whole bunch of effort. So diving into some of the changes that you’ve done, one aspect was in user experience and productivity. How many small businesses struggle with many small businesses struggle with app overload. How does this new Spaces concept simplify daily workflows for a small team?

Ali Shabdar: Great question. So, again, moving toward the same direction, it is all about context and simplification, as you said. Now, I’ll give you an example, a calendar. As any knowledge worker, regardless of who you are, you’re the business owner, you’re the CEO, or you’re one of the knowledge-working team, you’re doing sales, you’re answering emails, calendar is an inseparable part of our lives. Without a calendar, I can’t live an organized life at all. Now, if if I’m a user working for again, any company of any size, imagine I have my Zoho Calendar where my meetings are, where Zoho meeting links are going. Then there might be a calendar that comes from Zoho Projects if I’m working on certain projects with a number of other team members, internal or external. If I’m collaborating with my own close team, I might have some Kanban lists, which are again with deadlines and all, as another calendar on Zoho Connect. But all I care about is a calendar. I just want a view to my all my tasks, all my deadlines in one singular place. So Spaces allows you to basically bring all of those together and see everything from through one lens: the lens of the calendar.

Now, another part of Spaces, which I personally appreciate and I could see on my day-to-day it added to my productivity, is the idea of having your personal space and your organizational space. Like the way I live in my house, we have the living room, we have the kitchen, where this is more of a place of gathering, the rest of the family and friends there, we converse, we do things, we cook together. And then there’s the bedroom for, it’s a personal space, or there’s my office. And then there’s the bathroom, more, of course, more personal. So, the division here into two major spaces or the context or areas, if you will, of personal and organizational, allows me to quickly switch between Click, Connect, Email, and my Vault where I keep my passwords, versus a Connect versus Projects or our expense management, which is more of an organizational thing. So, again, same products, different lenses, which allows my subconscious mind to work faster and connect the dots better.

Leland McFarland: Perfect. All right, moving on to Action Panels and Quick Navigation features. What practical gains might a small business owner see from these new features?

Ali Shabdar: I think the the most visible improvement is the fact that they are more accessible, more visible, and organized in a more intuitive way. So, you can, of course, make modifications, but everything boils down into better access to what you already have in a more logical way. It’s more organized.

Leland McFarland: Awesome. So, dashboards can be overwhelming for a non-technical user. How does the new Unified Dashboard help a small business owner get actionable insights without needing a data analyst?

Ali Shabdar: I hope no small business owner needs a dedicated data analyst, but that could be good news for expansion and scaling. But again, I’ll go back to the point that I mentioned: it’s again about context. By having, by providing you, the user, with a clear context that is divided into concepts and ideas that that our brain is more familiar with—tasks and deadlines, calendar, data that is coming from different places—the context helps beyond just I won’t I don’t want to say beyond our imagination, but it’s surprising how putting things in different contexts helps you just see the data faster and make decisions quicker. So, clarity is a result of that contextual look into the same data, and by clarity means that your your errors are are are less, you’ll make less mistakes, and and you will be able to make better decisions. Of course, we can get carried away and still make those dashboards really complicated, but those are best practices that I would say we should start simple, small, seeing our messages, again, the tasks, and and the data that is coming from, uh, if if you’re using CRM, if you’re using finance information, to put them in one dashboard where the data is is kind of gelled into each other.

Leland McFarland: Perfect. So, Vani is a new tool. It was just announced last month, and we we actually got to sit down with Arthi to to be able to do an interview with that, and it seems like a really great tool. And it’s been announced that it’s been incorporated into Zoho One. So, for small businesses with a distributed or hybrid team, what does Vani enable that they didn’t have before? What does it bring to the table for a small business?

Ali Shabdar: I’m very glad that we added Vani to Zoho One. It’s one of my favorite apps, I used it since pre-beta when it was still not quite stable. But now it has grown into a full-on product. I’ll I’ll tell you about our idea and why we added it, and also I’ll share you my own experience as a user, not a user that works for a large company, this the scenario also applies for smaller setups. We did not have any tool in our Zoho One platform that allowed teams and even individuals to create content that was about ideate on content and collaborate. We use Writer, drafting things, you know, collaborating live, probably use some we got on Meetings and and all. But Vani allows you to create ideas, put them on digital paper. If you’re doing a brainstorming session with your with your team or with yourself, putting a diagram, a mind map. If you’re working on a draft of your next invitation to your next event or or a flyer, you don’t need fancy graphic design software, especially if you’re not a designer or you do not have designers because you have a small business. You can ideate on Vani, have as many collaborators as you want, and and then do whatever you want with with the output. We did not have such thing in Zoho One, so I I think we the addition makes Zoho One more complete in terms of helping teams work better with each other.

And some of the practical examples: we have our internal magazine, Zoho Business Pulse, and I saw the team actually putting the draft design on Vani and sharing it with respective team members. We could have done this in some other expensive software, which we have access to, but out of the box, because everybody is on Zoho One, and this could be a company of 10,000, 20,000, or a company of five, because everybody has access to the same platform, you just share the document. You you open a space on Vani, you ideate, you put your magazine ideas, and then me, as one of the members, I can go in and share a comment about, can we move this a bit to the right, without even touching the the content, actually, leave a comment and get out. And whoever is in charge of that content, they can take my feedback, use it or not, it’s their decision, of course. So, long story short, probably we added the best collaborative ideation tool that we have till date to Zoho One. Now, somebody might use Canva, somebody might use Miro, Visio, all of those are available, they have their own capabilities, some of them are cool, really cool packages. But you’re getting this product as a part of Zoho One. All you need to do is use it. You already are familiar with with the interface, you’re not paying anything extra, and it integrates with everything else as well.

Leland McFarland: Perfect. All right, so let’s move on to Native Integrations and Security. Small businesses often mix many tools together, leading to disjointed workflows. How does Zoho One’s new approach to native integration help reduce that fragmentation?

Ali Shabdar: This is an excellent point and and often overlooked point, because security, first of all, is not in the back of our mind. Secondly, we usually are not skilled enough, so we can just forget about it until something bad happens. We want to solve that challenge as much as possible for the user, for the customer, without getting them involved in the technicalities. So bringing native integrations to Zoho One is in line with that with that strategy. I’m sure you’ve seen the demo in previous sessions of how Zoho Directory actually took everything to the next level. I couldn’t believe it when I saw it. We are using it in the background as users. However, I saw all these features where you can integrate, of course, Zoho to Zoho products, no problem. Zoho to third-party product, still not a problem. But there’s a much tighter grip on the security and how things work. And then third-party to third-party integrations. So, you can bring both of your third-party products within Zoho Directory, which is the underlying layer of of Zoho One, and the entire platform, and then make sure that you’re on top of that integration and nothing bad happens there. Of course, there’s a bit of Zoho admin knowledge needed, but you don’t need to be an IT person, you don’t need to be a data scientist for that matter. It’s really intuitive, just a quick look will logically explain everything to you and and you’ll be able to do those things. I think Directory has grown leaps and bounds compared to how it was for the users even a week ago. The team has been working really hard on on adding those features, one of them is is what you mentioned, and that’s integration and security.

Leland McFarland: Perfect. All right, so the the press release that you guys put out mentioned Unified Portals. How is this different from traditional integration or dashboards, and what pain points does it solve for small teams?

Ali Shabdar: I think again, it’s about context. Until now, portals were there again, it looked to me as a user as a bundle of apps present together in an environment. Now, I can easily find myself forgetting about those barriers between certain apps and just look at them as concepts. I want to do X, I want to check my day, I want to work on my projects, I want to work on my finance. So, we move from product-focused workflows into context-focused workflows. And and the portals and the interface is trying to communicate that and drive that behavior for the users. Now, mind you, this is the best version we can come up with so far, but I’m sure that our users, starting today, we’ve officially launched it, are going to come back to us with a lot of comments and and and tell us how it can be improved. We can’t wait to hear from our users and our partners how we can take this to the next level.

Leland McFarland: All right, perfect. All right, and final question in the native integration and security. So we have Smart Off-boarding, which sounds particularly useful to SMBs that lack a robust IT department. How would this feature protect small businesses during employee transitions?

Ali Shabdar: Another favorite feature of mine. I remember probably five or six years ago, talking with a customer who had multiple different products. They were using a couple of Zoho products, but most of their stack was outside Zoho, and they did not use Zoho One. And they realized, one of their marketers, who departed, left the organization almost a year before. Of course, they removed their access from their email, the first, you know, obvious thing is, okay, remove the access to email and CRM. But they still had access to the entire marketing stack, including the Facebook accounts and other things. Thankfully, nothing bad happened, but you know, you don’t want to wake up one day and see that some somebody had access to your speakerphone, which is your marketing channel, or to your financial information. Now, Zoho One again tries to reduce that risk by allowing you to just disable one user account, and boom, boom, boom, their access is gone from all the products. This was existing. But now, if if you open the Zoho One, well, in the back end, in the admin space, you can see off-boarding. You start the off-boarding process, it takes you through a checklist of, of course, removing app access, software access, changing the reporting structure. Imagine if the person was a manager, and a couple of other people were reporting to the person. You can choose the new reporting structure, a bunch of other settings, and I need to remember how many, probably more than 10 different items in that checklist, where you slowly remove everything, terminating their accesses and all of that. And of course, all the legal considerations also happen in that space. So you make sure that the person is off-boarded in the best way possible, hopefully in good terms, so you can have a good conversation, log all the experience as well, and making sure that there is not a single gap left when the person is moved down from your organization. The admin space is is really great, really intuitive.

Leland McFarland: All right, that sounds very useful and really good when it comes to security, especially when you know, if if an employee doesn’t leave on good terms, you want to make sure that they can’t cause any damage on their way out.

Ali Shabdar: Absolutely.

Leland McFarland: All right, moving on to Zia and your AI. Small teams typically work across multiple apps, email, CRM, documents. How does Zia help unify this data so they spend less time searching and more time acting?

Ali Shabdar: Right out of the box, because you’re using Zoho One, which means all the apps, all the products are integrated. When you open, ask Zia textbox, and you ask any question, it’ll pull data from across your your entire stack. So if you’re checking, “tell me more about Ali”. The data is pulled from CRM if I’m your contact, if we had some ongoing deals in the past year or so, if there are notes about what kind of prospect I was. If I’m a customer, it pulls data from Desk where it can show you some of the recent tickets. If if I’m an employee or a contractor, it can pull data from HR, from Projects. So you get an almost immediate full picture about the question you have to the system. Of course, you can pull data the pull information that that rely on data about sales seasonalities and sales data and analytics and all of that. But to me, if I want to, let’s say, I’m about to get on a call with you, and I don’t remember much because the last time we spoke was three months or six months ago, or I’m somebody handed over your your your account to me, I’m just going to ask, “tell me more about Leland”. And it’s it’s going to give me whatever information we have about you. And the good thing is, not only it’s pretty accurate today, but also it’s learning more and more and more. So it’s not just one snapshot in in the history. So if I ask the same question two weeks from now, and if there’s a development in our relationship, from the point of data, then the information will be different. So, and and I think in the past couple of years, most of us have learned to talk to AI more or less. It is in English, but sometimes you have to be more specific to come up with the prompt. I I see Zia to be quite forgiving when it comes to writing a prompt. It understands you fairly easily. You don’t have to really get very regimented in formulating your sentence. Again, productivity.

Leland McFarland: Nice. And that really does sound nice, not having to open up 50 different apps to get 50 different pieces of information and then bring them together manually or anything like that. Just having Zia pull it out automatically just sounds like a dream.

Ali Shabdar: Absolutely.

Leland McFarland: All right, so wrapping it up. With these updates, where do you see Zoho One heading in the next few years, especially in supporting small businesses growth?

Ali Shabdar: Our focus is small businesses, multi-medium businesses, especially when it comes to, you know, development of Zoho One features. And we want to we want to make sure Zoho One gets out of the way of the customers, the users as much as possible. The best technology is invisible technology. So, if you can open the environment, if it’s a Spaces in five years, or it’s something else, or if it’s constantly, you know, on call to listen to you, to to be able to not only answer your questions, give your data in the best way possible, visually clear and all of that, but also become more and more proactive and, you know, kind of tap on your shoulder and remind you of things. The things you know that you don’t know, and the things that you didn’t know that you did not know. So I think again, simplification, more context. In the age of AI, the focus on human-computer interface is even more because the the lines are blurring. We are entering an age where we are literally talking to our computers, to our machines, and where where our workspace is becoming hybrid. By hybrid, I’m not talking about remote work. I’m talking about having digital colleagues, digital employees, where probably my my copywriter, my social media marketer, or a bunch of other people are actually agents. So we are moving towards that space with Zia Agents, with Ask Zia, with Zia as a whole empowering the entire platform. Today, if I want to use the overused iceberg cliché, you see the tip of Zoho, is Zia. A lot of it is is hidden with with the things it does in the background. It’s been doing for a long time before LLM advent. And we want to keep it that way. We want Zia to be there when you need it, but do a good bunch of things in the background and help you more and more to focus on what matters: doing your business and and scaling.

Leland McFarland: Sounds perfect. I can’t wait to see what comes next. I I’ve got to dive into what you’ve got put out now a little bit more for myself, but it’s it’s very interesting to see where Zoho is going with Zoho One. And you’re just adding more and more to it, making it such a good value, especially at what was it, $37 per person, I think it is?

Ali Shabdar: It is.

Leland McFarland: Yeah, I got that right. It’s it’s insane. That’s less than like a dollar an app. But perfect. Thank you for coming on. That’s all I got for you. And and yeah, thank you for for sharing.

Ali Shabdar: Thank you for having me. It was a pleasure.

Stepping back from this conversation with Ali, what stands out to me most is how much of Zoho One’s roadmap revolves around a simple, almost old-fashioned idea: get out of the user’s way. Small business owners don’t wake up excited about integrations, dashboards, or AI prompts. They care about finishing projects on time, serving customers well, protecting their data, and keeping costs predictable. The updates we discussed—Spaces for contextual work, more intuitive action panels and navigation, unified dashboards, Vani for collaborative ideation, stronger native integrations, and Smart Off-boarding—are all attempts to turn those goals into something the software quietly supports in the background.

From my perspective, a few themes matter for small businesses. First, context is becoming just as important as features. Whether it’s viewing all your deadlines through a single calendar, or seeing customer information pulled together in one Zia query, the value lies in how quickly you can understand what’s going on and act on it. Second, security and governance can’t be “someday” topics anymore. Tools like Zoho Directory and Smart Off-boarding may not feel glamorous, but they directly address real risks around user access and fragmented stacks—problems that hit small teams hardest when something goes wrong.

Finally, the way Zoho talks about Zia and “digital colleagues” hints at where small business software is heading: toward AI that doesn’t just answer questions, but anticipates needs, nudges you with timely insights, and handles more of the repetitive mental load. We’re still early in that journey, and there will be a learning curve for every team. But if Zoho One continues down the path Ali describes—more unification, more simplicity, more invisible intelligence—then the real opportunity for small businesses is not just saving a few hours a week. It’s being able to run a modern, data-driven operation without needing an enterprise-level IT department or a budget to match. As I continue to dig into these updates hands-on, that’s the lens I’ll use: does this help small business owners focus more on their business—and less on the spaghetti of software behind it?

This article, "Interview with Ali Shabdar: Zoho One’s Big Update for Small Business" was first published on Small Business Trends

Zoho is pushing deeper into AI-driven operations with a wide set of upgrades to Zoho One, its all-in-one business software platform, giving small business owners more ways to automate tasks, surface information instantly, and reduce time spent switching between apps. The company announced the enhancements today from Austin, positioning its expanded Zia AI tools as a way for organizations of all sizes to centralize intelligence and turn scattered data into clearer, faster insight.

For small business owners who rely on multiple cloud services—from Google Workspace to accounting, CRM, HR, and project tools—the promise of unified intelligence stands out. Instead of digging through emails, files, or individual apps, Zoho says its upgraded Zia assistant can now “aggregate and contextualize data from multiple platforms… into a single, actionable answer.” That means a quick prompt could pull up sales metrics, meeting takeaways, pending contracts, or outstanding tasks without manual searching.

Zoho is also giving its intelligent content system, Zia Hubs, a more prominent role inside Zoho One. The release notes that “executed contracts from Zoho Sign and recorded Zoho Meetings conversations both automatically go into Zia Hubs folders,” making them easy to retrieve through Zia Search. For small businesses that struggle to keep documents organized or often lose track of contract details, automatic categorization and accessible search could significantly reduce administrative friction.

Ask Zia, the platform’s prompt-based interface, is now more integrated as well. Zoho emphasizes that users can pull “relevant data across multiple Zoho apps to provide a full picture of a user’s schedule, unfinished tasks, or the latest action items from a meeting.” Small teams—especially those without dedicated operational staff—may find it helpful to have this contextual guidance when juggling deadlines, follow-ups, or customer conversations.

While the company highlights immediate improvements, Zoho also outlines upcoming capabilities. One of the most notable is multi-hub querying. In response to questions about future functionality, the company states that cross-departmental insights are on the roadmap, which would allow small businesses to view performance across sales, marketing, finance, and operations in a single unified answer. Zoho says this will “unlock a unified view of operations and performance across the enterprise,” suggesting deeper analytics ahead.

Another future development involves expanding Zia Hubs beyond Zoho products. Integration with third-party systems is planned, giving businesses the flexibility to pull outside data into the same intelligence layer. That matters for small businesses that use a mix of Zoho and non-Zoho applications and want more connected workflows without manually moving information between platforms.

Still, these capabilities come with considerations. Small businesses may need to assess whether they have clean, well-organized data for Zia to interpret accurately. Teams with inconsistent naming conventions, scattered documents, or outdated processes might face a learning curve in getting full value from federated intelligence. Privacy-minded businesses may also want to review how data flows between connected apps, particularly if integrating third-party systems.

The expanded functionality positions Zoho One as a more automated, insight-driven operating system for small businesses that want to reduce manual work and rely more on AI for everyday decision-making. With Zia becoming more deeply embedded—pulling together tasks, documents, meetings, and cross-platform data—the new upgrades could help smaller teams operate with the efficiency traditionally associated with larger organizations. As more AI capabilities roll out, the platform appears to be moving toward a future where small businesses can access enterprise-level intelligence without the complexity or cost typically required.

This article, "Zoho Expands Zia AI to Deliver Unified Insights Across Business Apps" was first published on Small Business Trends

Small business owners relying on Zoho One to run daily operations will soon see tighter security, smoother app management, and more unified workflows across their software stack. Zoho Corporation announced a wave of enhancements to its all-in-one business platform, strengthening its native integrations and introducing tools designed to reduce complexity for growing teams.

For many small businesses, maintaining a cohesive tech stack is an ongoing challenge. Disconnected apps create security risks, slow down processes, and force owners to manage multiple logins, data sources, and support channels. Zoho’s latest updates focus on removing those friction points by delivering deeper native integrations and strengthening identity management across the platform.

The company emphasized how anchoring integrations inside Zoho One helps improve security and simplify oversight. According to the release, the platform’s built-in protections—including smart offboarding, device management, and encryption key support—now extend more smoothly across both Zoho and third-party applications. Zoho also highlighted the role of Zoho Directory, which “provides admins a secure platform for workforce identity and access management,” and is included as part of Zoho One.

For small teams with limited IT resources, these enhancements may provide meaningful time savings. Native integrations reduce the number of external connections that need to be maintained, lowering the attack surface and making it easier to detect unusual activity. The company stated that “Zoho One offers native integration with Zoho apps and third-party software,” enabling organizations to monitor and configure these connections from a centralized panel.

Zoho grouped the new capabilities into several integration types that shape how different apps function together.

One category, unified integrations, aims to reduce the manual work of connecting software across a business. Users can “create integration flows and monitor their usage” directly within Zoho One, potentially replacing the need for separate tools or custom scripts to keep data synchronized.

Foundational integrations broaden how users interact with multiple software portals. The platform’s new Unified Portal “allows for control over multiple apps from a single screen,” offering a customizable space where teams can consolidate app-specific portals—even those tied to third-party or custom applications. This may help employees avoid toggling between multiple dashboards throughout the day, a common productivity drain for small business teams.

Zoho also introduced what it calls pragmatic integrations, which handle essential verification and authentication tasks. These connections support behind-the-scenes management functions, such as domain verification, ensuring critical processes are properly authenticated without requiring manual intervention.

The final category, outcome-based integrations, addresses more complex workflows that span several applications. These are designed for scenarios where data needs to move across several steps in a defined process. Zoho’s example centers on its new Smart Offboarding tool, which consolidates ownership transfers, device data management, and decisions about user-specific app data into a single workflow. According to the release, “From within a single workflow, employees can easily transfer department ownership to a new department head, manage employee device data from a single menu, and decide what happens to a user’s application data to ensure no loss of access.”

For small businesses experiencing turnover or onboarding new hires quickly, this type of structured offboarding may help prevent data loss, compliance issues, and unauthorized access.

While these enhancements promise greater efficiency, small business owners may still need to assess how deeply their current systems rely on third-party tools outside Zoho’s ecosystem. Organizations using highly specialized software may see limited benefits from native integrations unless their vendors are already supported. Additionally, streamlined oversight tools may still require someone on staff to configure, monitor, and maintain workflows, which could introduce a learning curve for teams new to consolidated platforms.

Still, the latest updates suggest that Zoho is continuing to push its all-in-one model forward, bringing together more components of a company’s tech environment under a single administrative roof. For small businesses seeking a more unified operational structure—and looking to cut down on the patchwork of independent apps—these enhancements may help reduce complexity while strengthening security foundations.

As more small teams look for ways to scale without adding IT overhead, Zoho’s broader integration strategy may resonate with owners who need streamlined systems that grow with their operations.

This article, "Zoho One Update Strengthens Security and Streamlines App Integration" was first published on Small Business Trends

Small businesses continue to grapple with the challenge of managing scattered apps, disconnected workflows, and rising software costs. Zoho is betting it can solve that problem at scale. The company announced a major update to Zoho One—its unified business operating system—and the changes focus heavily on reducing friction, centralizing information, and making collaboration more intuitive for teams that can’t afford complexity.

For small business owners already juggling multiple responsibilities, these updates aim to streamline operations by bringing apps, data, and communication into a single, customizable workspace. Zoho frames the enhancements as a way to help organizations “remove boundaries between apps” and reduce the daily inefficiencies that come with switching between tools.

At the center of the update is a redesigned user experience that seeks to simplify how teams access and manage their work. Zoho introduced new “Spaces,” which organize apps by purpose: Personal, Organization, and Department. Personal includes tools relevant to an individual employee, such as productivity apps. Organization brings together company-wide communication tools like Forums, Town Hall, and Ideas. Departmental spaces categorize apps used by HR, Finance, Marketing, and other teams. All spaces can be customized, giving smaller organizations more control over how employees interact with the suite.

The redesigned toolbar includes a unified search bar that scans the entire Zoho One ecosystem, allowing users to find information or launch actions without toggling between applications. For small teams where time is tight, this type of consolidation helps reduce the mental overhead that often slows down execution.

Another feature meant to improve daily workflow is the new Action Panel and Quick Navigation system. According to Zoho, the Action Panel gives employees “access to their full day with one click,” and users can build custom panels that display upcoming meetings, pending tasks, scheduled messages, emails, and items from a range of Zoho apps. This flexibility may help small business owners who rely on cobbled-together productivity tools and struggle to keep visibility across multiple systems.

Zoho also expanded the platform’s Dashboard and Boards capabilities. The enhanced dashboard pulls in data from all connected apps—including third-party tools—and displays it in a central, personalized location. Users can add widgets, create additional dashboards, and manage the entire suite from the hub. This approach could benefit businesses that have historically lacked the resources to build custom reporting systems, giving them a clearer view into operations without additional cost or integration work.

A standout addition to Zoho One is Vani, a visual-first collaboration space designed to support brainstorming, planning, and team communication. Zoho describes Vani as “an all-in-one, visual-first intelligent virtual space.” It offers tools for whiteboarding, flowcharts, diagramming, mind mapping, and video calling. For small teams that rely heavily on remote or hybrid collaboration but don’t want to invest in multiple specialized apps, Vani may function as a consolidated alternative.

Across all features, Zoho’s message emphasizes the reduction of app fragmentation. For small business owners, the benefits are clear: fewer tools to manage, simpler workflows, and a more cohesive view of operations. At the same time, businesses should be prepared for a learning curve, especially if employees are accustomed to their existing mix of software. Customization features require setup time, and switching to a unified ecosystem could mean rethinking long-established processes.

Still, the update signals Zoho’s continued push to offer an alternative to higher-priced competitors by integrating a wide set of business operations into a single subscription. For small businesses seeking an affordable and consolidated tech stack, the enhancements to Zoho One create new opportunities to streamline work, organize teams, and keep data connected without relying on a patchwork of separate apps.

This article, "Zoho Revamps Zoho One User Experience to Streamline Small Business Workflows" was first published on Small Business Trends

Small business owners may think they have a handle on the technology, but even seasoned AI users could benefit from a refresher given the rapid pace of AI development. And new users should know what to look for when evaluating AI deployments or risk wasting time and resources managing incorrect expectations.

Here are some important questions for small business owners to ask about AI, the answers to which can help select a new piece of AI or maximize the use of one they’ve already implemented:

How is the LLM trained?

The year 2025 has exposed AI’s potential to perform copyright infringement without users knowing. For example, last summer, Meta and Anthropic were taken to court by book authors who alleged that the companies used published, copyrighted material to train their Large Language Models (LLMs), aka the massive data repository referenced by the AI, without permission or remuneration. These companies won their respective lawsuits due to protections around “fair use,” and the damage was done—proof that traditionally protected intellectual property was available to be data mined and LLMs were consuming it voraciously. In many of these cases, the winners were massive tech enterprises that likely employed an arsenal of lawyers for their defense.

Small businesses cannot afford to find themselves on the receiving end of a similar intellectual property dispute. Not only would it be a costly affair, but customers are wising up to what these slip-ups might mean for their own data and are quick to change vendors if need be.

Problems with LLMs usually begin during the training process. Some AI vendors let LLMs roam freely throughout the internet, picking up whatever stray data happens to come their way and paving the way for potential intellectual property disputes. Others feed their LLMs synthetic data, customer data with personal identifiable information removed, and other pieces of information that exist within guardrails.

Small businesses interested in AI must find a vendor who engages in the latter—and who will provide the utmost transparency as training methods evolve or other issues arise.

How does the software maintain privacy and security?

A single data breach can spell the end of a small business’s lifespan, and the chances of this happening will only increase as the technology employed by bad actors continues to evolve. At the same time, keeping data private can be quite costly and time-intensive.

That’s not to say that privacy and security needs to be something a small business thinks about every single moment of every day. For this, it’s best for SMBs to defer to the experts. The right tech vendor will handle these efforts and keep a small business insulated from issues.

To determine if a vendor is the best fit, small businesses should ask about the vendor’s tech stack. Many will say they employ Amazon Web Services (AWS) or other third-party services, which may sound good at first. After all, these companies specialize in running tech stacks, so they must be the best choice, right? The problem with AWS specifically, which can be generalized to similar vendors, is that when too many companies hinge themselves on a single entity, when problems arise, all of those companies experience them. Look no further than the recent AWS outages for proof.

Vendors that emphasize privacy and security will likely run their software from their own tech stack. This allows them to maintain 360-degree visibility into the system and deploy fixes right away whenever suspicious activity is raised. They can also make their processes more efficient, then passing the savings onto the customers or padding the company’s R&D budget to produce better technology. Vendors worthy of a small business are those who take matters into their own hands.

How do the AI agents work?

Implementing generative AI is far more complicated than turning on a faucet. Good AI requires that small businesses remain mindful of how the technology will integrate into its existing operations and workflow. After all, the worst-case scenario involves purchasing a flashy new AI product only for it to arrive far too complicated to be practical.

The most effective AI agents—specific processes and tasks accomplished by AI—are ones that work in the background. Often, users won’t even know AI was involved because the technology simply works, which can help with adoption efforts, as well. When small businesses are seeking to incorporate AI, they must ask tech vendors about how much set-up is required before AI will be working at full capacity, and how much of it will integrate with the software a company is currently running.

To simplify these efforts tremendously, small businesses can search for a vendor whose AI arrives already embedded in the software. This eliminates the need for clunky third-party integration efforts and ensures that data will be kept within a closed system, where it will be less likely to leak and stronger protective efforts can be incorporated. In addition, AI woven into the fabric of software is easier to keep up-to-date because software updates can be accomplished effortlessly. The less work required by the small business, and the more confident that business can feel about its technology vendor, the better.

In conclusion

Small business AI adoption has been stymied by a lack of data readiness, difficulty in integrating with legacy systems, and unnecessarily high costs passed down to the consumer. When a vendor builds its software on a single, internally-developed tech stack, incorporates agents into daily business operations, and subverts the use of third-party tools, customers can make great use of the AI while keeping their fears at bay.

Small businesses may not be able to predict the future perfectly, but by asking the right questions of a potential AI vendor, they can at least ensure that future is in good hands.

Image via Envanto

This article, "Questions Small Businesses Need to Ask of Their AI Vendor" was first published on Small Business Trends