Zoho, who have a family of Software as a Service, or web based office applications, have just added a very smart looking HR system to sit alongside their CRM application. The office tools and the CRM application provide a low cost, function rich, but incomplete small business suite. Zoho People adds an HR or Human Capital Management application that looks, on my first quick play with the application yesterday, as function rich as a number of applications I’ve worked with in the past, but at a fraction of the cost.
It contains:
- A drag and drop interface to customize the database or for creating new forms
- Checklists - which provide configurable business processes - these are simple workflows
- An employee portal - with all your employees basic demographic data available to all your HR & benefits staff - this provides self service facilities for the staff, alongside the administrative capabilities for the HR department
- Recruitment & resume management
- An organization chart
- No download, no install, no coding & no implementation
The application is currently in Beta, and for the Beta period it will be free for up to 10 employees. The pricing is yet to be announced, but it’s rumoured to be low cost for the self service portal and of the order of $50 a month for administrative capabilities. I can see this being really useful for small companies who would probably never bother to afford a standard HR package and struggle with data on spreadsheets, but also have enough capability for many medium sized businesses. It’s well worth checking out.
I’ll be suggesting that my friends at MyPaye.co.uk take a serious look at this application, and investigate integration and maybe partnership opportunities. I’d like to play around properly with Checklists, but they could have useful applications outside of HR processes. It’s also an obvious next step for the Zoho suite to add an accounting application, or for the folks at Twinfield or Xero or elsewhere to see if they could fill that gap. Looking at the other commentary from around the Enterprise Irregulars, this move in to HR may make them even more of an acquisition target.
Zoli asks will it disrupt or fail in two parts?
Mashable think some larger companies might switch
Webware worries about Zoho releasing so many apps so fast
Larry Dignan suggests it’s a move toward the “M” in SMB
Dennis Howlett wonders where next?
Raju Vegesna on their own Zoho blog
