Zoho Challenges The Commerce Industry Status Quo with New Omni-Channel Platform

Zoho announced today at Zoholics
Austin its new, comprehensive commerce platform, Commerce Plus.
Built on top of Zoho One, the operating system for business, Commerce
Plus is a fully integrated, end-to-end platform for the commerce
vertical. From sales to fulfillment to customer loyalty, Commerce Plus
leverages Zoho's customer experience, finance, analytics, and
intelligence software to provide businesses an interconnected,
first-of-its-kind commerce experience platform.

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"Businesses today are forced to navigate the technology jungle to figure
out the right applications needed to run their operations—this is no
different, and can be even more challenging, in commerce," said Raju
Vegesna, Zoho's Chief Evangelist. "With Commerce Plus, we offer one
platform to run an entire commerce business, allowing businesses to
focus on what is important for success. Built on Zoho One, Commerce Plus
is the operating system for commerce."

"The digital commerce landscape is extremely competitive. For
organizations looking to successfully sell online, constant innovation
and a superior customer experience are prerequisites to success," said
Jordan Jewell, Research Manager, Digital Commerce and Enterprise
Applications at IDC. "Zoho's new Commerce Plus product offers a unique
approach to commerce as it offers native integrations with both front-
and back-office applications, better equipping customers to achieve
omni-channel commerce operations. The company’s international customer
base also bodes well for Zoho Commerce Plus, since emerging markets will
become the largest sources of growth over the next five years.”

Comprehensive E-commerce Platform

• For businesses looking to set up an online store, Commerce Plus offers
  quick and easy ways to construct an online presence. By offering
  built-in templates, the platform allows users to quickly digitize
  their commerce business with minimal effort.
• Commerce Plus allows users to sell across channels. Businesses can
  sell online through their own e-commerce store, third-party
  marketplaces, brick-and-mortar storefronts, or other channels.
• The Commerce Plus platform helps businesses maintain a single
  inventory of items sold across multiple channels. Whether a business
  sells though its online store or third-party marketplaces like Amazon,
  Ebay, or Etsy, Commerce Plus offers a unified inventory system.

Personalized Commerce Experience

• The best commerce experience is one that is personalized for each
  visitor. The Commerce Plus platform is integrated with Zoho's Customer
  Experience platform, enabling businesses to offer a personalized
  experience to every visitor by combining information across customer
  touch points. For example, Commerce Plus can tailor the commerce
  experience based on whether a visitor is new, returning, or
  high-valued.
• With each visitor/customer taking a different path, Commerce Plus
  enables businesses to build customized journeys based on the
  customer's stage in the process. For example, Commerce Plus has
  built-in journeys for visitors with abandoned carts. Journeys can be
  created and personalized based on additional information available
  across the platform and deployed to provide a personalized experience.
• Omni-channel customer communication—available as part of our customer
  experience platform—is inherited by Commerce Plus, enabling
  context-aware dialogue with prospects and customers. With customer
  information seamlessly flowing across multiple communication
  channels—email, chat, phone, and more—marketing, sales, and support
  representatives have a unified view and context of each customer and
  can deliver a consistent, cohesive experience.

Efficient Back-End Operations

• With Commerce Plus, the customer experience doesn't end when an order
  has been placed. Order management, fulfillment tools, shipping,
  labels, notifications, inventory management, warehouse management, and
  more are included out-of-the-box with the Commerce Plus platform.
• Commerce Plus is integrated with more than 40 global shipping
  providers, enabling businesses to create shipping labels directly from
  the software. Items can be shipped from either a single location or
  multiple warehouses, making the process seamless.
• All sales orders, purchases, expenses, and other transactions,
  including deposits to business bank accounts, are integrated with
  Zoho's world-class accounting system. This is a first-of-its-kind,
  comprehensive integration between an accounting system and a commerce
  system.

Powerful Analytics for Commerce

• Zoho Analytics, one of the most comprehensive analytics platforms on
  the market, offers several pre-built dashboards and reports for
  Commerce Plus. These built-in reports and dashboards span e-commerce,
  operations, and more, offering numerous insights out of the box.
• Several reports in Commerce Plus offer visibility into visitor
  behavior on any e-commerce store, including heat maps, scroll maps,
  and more. Reports also provide insights into conversions for every
  product sold on the e-commerce store. For example, conversion
  percentages for adding an item to a cart to a successful checkout is
  tracked for every product, region, and more, offering insights into
  conversions based on various parameters.
• Data from any third-party system can be imported into Zoho Analytics
  and analyzed alongside data from Commerce Plus, providing blended
  insights.

Intelligence & AI

• Commerce Plus inherits all the AI capabilities from Zoho One.
  Intelligence from sales, marketing, support, and other Zohos apps is
  combined with commerce data, offering intelligent insights to the
  user. Zia, Ask Zia, Zia Voice, and Zia Search are all available
  throughout the platform.
• For example, users can ask Zia, "What are my most popular items in
  Canada?" and Zia can dramatically create reports pertaining to that
  request. Users can then automate their commerce sites to promote the
  most popular items on the homepage specified by region.
• AI is a key factor in Commerce Plus' fraud detection. By
  cross-referencing IP address information available from other Zoho and
  third-party systems, Zia will notify businesses of suspicious or
  fraudulent activity from a particular customer.

Third-Party Integration & Extendability

• Zoho understands that businesses use multiple third-party
  applications. Through Zoho Flow, the company's integration platform,
  Commerce Plus enables seamless integration with third-party systems.
  Zoho Flow is pre-integrated with more than 200 applications.
  Businesses can hook Commerce Plus into any third-party system and
  during any transaction. For example, if a business wants to push
  customer data or order data into a third-party system whenever an
  order is placed, it can be done with the platform.
• Commerce Plus inherits extensibility from individual Zoho
  applications, making Commerce Plus customizable and extendable to the
  needs of any growing business.

Setup and More

• Zoho will be launching Concierge, a jumpstart service, that allows
  businesses to set up and configure a commerce business for a flat fee
  of $1,000.
• Zoho is launching its own store
  on the Commerce Plus platform, where customers can purchase Zoho
  merchandise.

Pricing and Availability

Commerce Plus can be licensed either as an entire platform or
specifically for creating an online store. Pricing starts at $20/month
to get started with e-commerce. To license the entire Commerce Plus
platform, it is $100/month plus $30/employee or $75/user. Additional
details are available here.

About Zoholics

Zoholics, our annual series of user conferences across the globe, is an
opportunity to meet our team face-to-face and learn directly from the
staff behind our applications. Visitors will have ample opportunity to
network with like-minded people from companies of all sizes and
industries who have turned to Zoho to transform their business. For more
information, please visit www.zoho.com/zoholics

About Zoho

Zoho is the operating
system for business—a single online platform capable of running an
entire business. With 40+ apps in nearly every major business category,
including sales, marketing, customer support, accounting and back office
operations, and an array of productivity and collaboration tools, Zoho
is one of the world's most prolific software companies.

Zoho respects user privacy and does not have an ad-revenue model in any
part of its business, including its free products. More than 45 million
users around the world, across hundreds of thousands of companies, rely
on Zoho every day to run their businesses, including Zoho itself. Zoho
Corporation is privately held and profitable with more than 7,000
employees. Zoho is headquartered in Pleasanton, California, with
international headquarters in Chennai, India. Additional offices are in
Austin, Texas (U.S.); Renigunta, India; Tenkasi, India; Yokohama, Japan;
Beijing, China; Singapore; Queretaro, Mexico; Byron Bay, Australia;
Utrecht, Netherlands; and Dubai, United Arab Emirates. For more
information, please visit www.zoho.com.

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