The privately-held company, which recorded
an impressive growth rate of 74 percent last year in Nigeria, also announced
that it will be opening an office in Lagos and hiring more employees locally
for customer-facing roles.
The announcements were made on the sidelines
of the company’s first user conference in the country held in Lagos.
Commenting on the development, Hyther
Nizam, president, Zoho MEA, noted that enterprise technology is prohibitively
priced and inaccessible for many small businesses across the country, creating
the need for the company to bring its global expertise to support the creation
of self-sufficient economic clusters as part of ‘transnational localism’
strategy where its growth is underpinned with that of the Nigeria region.
Nizam, who described Nigeria as Zoho’s
largest and fastest growing market in Africa, said the company is committed to
eliminating the technology adoption barrier facing small businesses in the
country by helping them kickstart their digital transformation journey, that will
in turn help them stay nimble and accelerate adaptation to changing market
conditions.
“We started by offering our products in
local pricing, hiring locally and now by opening an office here to cater to our
growing customer base, even as we continue to grow our partner network in the
country,” he added.
Speaking on the relevance of the Zoho
Africa Digital Enabler package to small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), he
said businesses utilising the package will have access to standard support
available to them, adding that the package will provide new users a collection
of 10 leading apps at a 50 percent discount starting from July 1, 2022 for a
period of three months.
This, he explained, allows access to
knowledge base, community forums, a self-service portal, email support, remote
assistance, live chat support and telephonic support during working hours five
days a week.
Other services introduced by the company to
foster the growth of the Nigerian digital ecosystem include:
Zoho Workplace: A unified platform that
brings together collaboration, productivity, and communications tools and
integrates them into other business processes. Centred around its secure
business email (Zoho Mail), team chat (Zoho Cliq), and online office suite
(Zoho Writer, Zoho Sheet, Zoho Show, and Zoho WorkDrive), Zoho Workplace
features eight tightly integrated apps that hybrid teams can use to get work
done and collaborate with each other easily. The platform also includes video
conferencing (Zoho Meeting), an enterprise town hall (Zoho Connect), AI-based
search (Zia Search) and other security and administrative tools, enabling
businesses to communicate and collaborate effectively in a hybrid environment.
Bigin: A pipeline-centric customer
relationship management (CRM) platform designed specifically to help small
businesses keep track of their customers and improve customer relationships
without having to worry about high costs or complicated features. It can be set
up in 30 minutes, with options to create multiple pipelines with customisable
stages based on a company’s operation style.
Repetitive tasks can be automated, and
prospects can be engaged through email, web forms, online meetings and Twitter.
It also provides contextual dashboards to help businesses to have an overview
of their sales. Bigin also integrates with popular third-party business apps,
such as Google Workspace, Microsoft 365, Zoom, Mailchimp, etc.
Zoho Invoice: This platform allows
businesses to create and send customised invoices, manage multiple projects,
track time, and bill customers accurately.
They can also improve their cash flow by
automatically sending payment reminders to customers, and get paid online
faster through debit/credit cards and PayPal. In addition, businesses can
record and track expenses by simply scanning their expense receipts and also
track tax levied on every transaction, allowing customers to view their
invoices, projects, and make payments through the self-service portal.
Zoho Invoice is available for free globally
and enables businesses to have complete visibility of their finances with
access to 30+ real-time reports on metrics such as best-selling products,
pending payments, and more.
With over 75 million users around the
world, the company’s digital offerings are available on mobile apps for iOS and
Android devices and designed in such a way that businesses can integrate Zoho
Invoice and Bigin to sync customer information and items, thereby eliminating
the need to enter redundant information. They can also contextually integrate
with Zoho Workplace applications for increased collaboration and productivity.
According to Nizam, the products are
available at local pricing, helping businesses to avoid cost fluctuations due
to changing dollar value, which is beneficial in the current turbulent economy.
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