Zoho Adds Orchestly Business Workflow Management, Telephony And Blockhain To Software Suite

Zoho on Thursday introduced Orchestly, a business workflow management tool it said will allow non-technical business professionals to handle everything from content and purchase approvals to employee onboarding, as part of a series of updates to its Zoho One subscription-based software suite.

Beyond Orchestly, the Austin-based firm said Zoho One would now include PhoneBridge, its telephony platform, which integrates over 50 telephony vendors on one side and several Zoho applications on the other side. Other additions include a single sign-on application to help address security concerns and the ability to use blockchain based on Ethereum to provide an additional level of verification for those handling contracts and other documents via its Zoho Sign tool.

According to Zoho chief evangelist Raju Vegesna, Orchestly will allow those across different departments to define processes with little effort and no requirement to write or understand code. The use cases have already started to proliferate directly from early adopters, he said.

“Yesterday, we had a pharmaceutical company share their Orchestly blueprint, and they were using the app to chart and manage the FDA approval process,” Vegesna told B2B News Network. “We have hospitals using Orchestly for patient check-in protocols and follow-up procedures. Another customer is using Orchestly for marketing inventory purchasing—processes around buying ad space and getting designs approved internally.”

Orchestly differs from other business process management tools that rely on developers to maintain or enhance them, Vegesna said. It promises a drag-and-drop ease of setting up various workflows.

“We believe the person within an organization who identifies the need for a process should also be the person who creates that process,” he said. “Another pain point that might lead customers to Orchestly is lack of transparency. With other tools, it can be difficult for multiple people to understand or even see where a bottleneck is occurring, say within expense reimbursement.”

Because Orchestly is part of Zoho One, administrators don’t need to build out integrations as they would using something like ServiceNow, Vegesna added.

“Whenever we launch a new product, we don’t typically rush out and aggressively market it, especially in the first year,” he said. “Our initial customers tell us a lot. Orchestly’s beta customers have already informed some of our marketing direction.”

Zoho also recently announced its customer conference, Zoholics, will take place in Toronto this November.