Zoho adds AI and ML capabilities in Zoho Analytics 6.0

Zoho has updated Zoho Analytics to add artificial intelligence to the product and enables customers create custom machine-learning models using its new Data Science and Machine Learning (DSML) Studio.

The advances in Zoho Analytics 6.0 are across four key areas, the company said: data management, AI, data science and machine learning, and extensibility.

It’s one of Zoho’s first products to take advantage of all of its investments in automation, no-code/low-code development, third-party integration, machine learning, and Zia, its in-house AI engine, the company said.

Integrations

More than 25 new data connectors allow users to pull in data from other sources to create a central data repository, and to create and manage ETL (extract, transform, and load) pipelines. Zoho’s Ask Zia AI copilot also lets users transform data using natural language.

“Zoho has some 500 integrations to other firms’ software products and data,” noted Brian Sommer, industry analyst and founder of TechVentive, in an email. “The sheer number of integrations they already support is unique. Their software connects to all kinds of data sources and applications. This means Zoho customers can easily access and attach data from other sources to better inform LLMs, algorithms, business plans, and forecasts. Other vendors have started their AI tools with access to data in their own systems and attach data from other third-party sources later.”

AI in the workplace

In the AI realm, Zoho has introduced a series of generative AI capabilities across its platform, including expanding the functionality of its AI copilot, Ask Zia, and adding contextual diagnostic analytics using Zia Insights.

Auto Analysis enables AI-powered automated metrics, reports, and the generation of dashboards. In addition, Zoho now has seamless OpenAI integration, enabled by retrieval-augmented generation (RAG).

“The distinguishing feature of Zoho Analytics is the deep integration with the whole Zoho suite and all its applications. That helps to create more of a unified contextual digital workplace environment,” said David Mario Smith, founder and principal analyst, InFlow Analysis. “Context intelligence is key here. This enables seamless data flow and collaboration. And so its focus on democratizing AI and providing features like Zia Insights and AutoML sets it apart.”

That integration includes a new business intelligence (BI) fabric that lets businesses consolidate outputs from other platforms, such as Microsoft’s Power BI and Salesforce’s Tableau, onto a single searchable analytics portal.

For developers, DSML Studio offers two ways to build custom ML models: AutoML, a no-code assistant, and Code Studio, an integrated Python code environment.

Customer feedback

For beta customer John Sheldon, director of new business capabilities at Renu Energy Solutions, which installs and services solar energy and battery systems, the new feature that makes him happiest is the expanded list of data connectors. He can now pull in data from all of his key applications (Zoho CRM, QuickBooks, Basecamp 3, SOS Inventory, and Zoho Projects) and run them through Analytics to get a complete picture of how a job is going, and to do what he calls “bucketing” — segmenting customers to create personas and profiles to assist with marketing and forecasting.

“Before, we couldn’t connect to QuickBooks quite the way that we needed to,” he said in an interview. “And now we are connected to QuickBooks with this new update, basically everybody’s heaving a big sigh of relief.” The integration gives a single source of truth for job costs and budgeting.

He also loves an existing feature: the way he can publish results from Analytics to a presentation or web page so external users can view them without needing an Analytics license. He enthused about the new mobile app, and new chart types in Analytics 6.0, such as geomap, which allows him to see at a glance where each team is working, and to visualize the locations of all of the installations across the company’s service area.

Faster business results

Zoho Analytics offers other advantages too, said Thomas Wieberneit, owner and principal analyst at aheadCRM. “What I think makes Zoho analytics quite special is the wide range of addressed user groups and the pretty unique approach that Zoho calls ‘Decision Intelligence’ — giving reasons for a situation, for example, answering the ‘why,’” he said. “Combined with giving a solution recommendation, this can be extremely powerful, and I think that this makes Zoho unique at the moment. The benefit is that information presented is translated into actionable insight far faster — and when there are recommendations, even potential actions are given. Add the metrics layer and auto analysis, every business user can get powerful analytics without bothering the IT department. This is governed by an authorization system, of course. All this helps business users get results faster and this speeds up business.”

However, he observed, “In general, ‘AI enabled analytics platforms’ has become a kind of tautology. There has been (predictive) AI in analytics platforms for many years now. We just revive that term ‘AI-enabled’ because of the overhyped generative AI topic. What has changed in the industry is that it becomes easier and easier to query analytics using text instead of structured query languages or drag and drop interfaces.”

Zoho Analytics 6.0 is available now.