INTELLIGENT BRANDS // Cloud
Zoho set to expand in Africa
to help businesses with
Digital Transformation
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Z
oho, a leading global cloud
provider, has announced plans to
extend its footprints in the region
to help African businesses in their Digital
Transformation journey.
The announcement was made at its first
African user conference, Zoholics: South
Africa that was hosted in the city.
“We have noticed a significant rise in the
number of customers in South Africa and
other African countries,” said Hyther Nizam,
President MEA, Zoho Corp. “We are also
expanding our presence by conducting and
participating in more events.”
The Operating System for Business Zoho’s
product portfolio consists of more than
45 apps in nearly every major business
category, including sales, marketing,
customer experience and support, finance
and back office operations, and an array of
productivity and collaboration tools.
Its most revolutionary offering is Zoho One,
a single platform comprising more than
45 products built on one technology stack
that can run an entire business in the cloud,
making it the operating system for business.
“South Africa is quite high on cloud literacy,”
said Ali Shabdar, Business Development
Director, MEA, Zoho Corp.
“Unlike some of the other markets facing
challenges with moving away from legacy
systems and adopting cloud, South African
businesses are already taking advantage of
the cloud technology.
“Even as the other parts of the world are
inching away from multiple best-of-the-
breed software towards pre-integrated
suite of products, local businesses here are
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already choosing suites, thereby significantly
lowering their IT costs and minimising
integration problems.
“This is why Zoho One, which goes one step
further by creating a platform for running
the whole business, is seeing rapid adoption
in the country.”
Customer Statement Gilt edge, an award-
winning travel company based out of Cape
Town, has been using Zoho since 2015.
Julien Perreard, Head of Digital at Giltedge,
said: “Earlier, we had no consistent,
standardised way to collect and handle
travel inquiries and we struggled with
our large database of clients. We also
faced the problem of blending data from
different sources to build a cohesive report.
We initially started using Zoho CRM, and
then Zoho Analytics. We noticed that data
extraction was significantly faster, helping
our management quickly make sense of the
business metrics and act on them. We also
liked Zoho’s integration, customisation and
the ability to streamline all our workflow
processes. We started using more Zoho
products, eventually moving to Zoho One.
“Zoho has allowed us to centralise our CRM,
social media scheduling and data analysis
activities under one roof. It meets the needs
of our digital marketing and travel advisor
team, is easy to use, nicely designed and
requires very little training.” n
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