Zoho has launched a new version of its self-service business intelligence (BI) and analytics platform, Zoho Analytics.
The updated platform benefits from more than 100 enhancements, including significant advancements in artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) capabilities.
These new capabilities enable diagnostic insights, predictive analytics, and automated reporting and dashboard generation, with the aim of improving operational efficiency, profitability, and the overall user experience of businesses, particularly in the technology sector.
The new release also introduces a custom ML model building studio, seamless integration with Open AI, and third-party BI platform extensions. These updates are designed to make Zoho Analytics more powerful, intelligent, and flexible, serving a wider range of businesses and users than its competitors.
Emma Elcombe, Senior Research Fellow at Western Sydney University, shared her experience with Zoho Analytics.
“I use Zoho Analytics to create secure online reports for multiple clients (nurses and midwives) across multiple countries. With it, I upload live data to one place, which our clients can filter to get unique, specific, and most importantly, real-time insights into the impact of visits on families and their satisfaction. With this data, we are able to improve the quality of services for families,” she said.
“Without Zoho and its live, dynamic and accessible reports, we would still be relying on static PDF reports, which have limited content and are a major burden to collect, share and update data. Additionally, Zoho Analytics is data secure, which is absolutely critical in the healthcare industry.”
“For healthcare providers, time and information are of the essence, and with the new features in Zoho Analytics, we will be able to take advantage of both even more.”
Raju Vegesna, Chief Evangelist, Zoho, said, “Zoho Analytics was launched in 2009 as Zoho Reports, much before technology had caught up with Zoho’s vision for business intelligence.”
“Since then, Zoho has made significant investments in automation, no-code/low-code development, third-party integration, machine learning, and Zia, Zoho’s in-house AI engine.”
“The latest release of Zoho Analytics is one of the first solutions in the company to leverage each of these investments over decades. The result is a democratized platform that is powerful, intelligent, flexible and easy to use.”
The new version of Zoho Analytics advances in four key areas: data management, AI, data science and machine learning, and extensibility.
Additions include:
Data management: The platform added Stream Analytics and 25 new data connectors to its portfolio, which now includes over 500 connectors. It also allows users to create and manage complex ETL (Extract, Transform, Load) pipelines and offers features such as a visual builder, Python Code Studio, and natural language data transformation via Ask Zia. A unified metrics layer and a Headless BI mode further enhance the platform’s data management capabilities.
AI and Generative AI: New AI-powered enhancements include Zia Insights for diagnostic analysis, multilingual support (Spanish and French) for Ask Zia, and Auto-Analysis for automated generation of metrics, reports, and dashboards. The platform’s integration with Open AI via Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) aims to provide more accurate query answers and simplify the use of public datasets and the creation of SQL formulas and queries.
Data Science and Machine Learning (DSML) Studio: Zoho Analytics now includes DSML Studio, which makes it easy to create custom ML models to analyze or predict factors such as customer churn. Key features include AutoML, a no-code wizard for building models, and Code Studio, which integrates Python to enable custom ML model development and import of external libraries.
Platform extensibility: Zoho Analytics offers enhanced extensibility, allowing businesses to sync data across different tools for comprehensive analysis. This includes a new BI framework to consolidate information from multiple BI platforms and a no-code data connector builder to create custom connectors.
This release also introduces over 100 updates, including new visualizations, improved dashboard creation, enhanced audit and administration controls, redesigned mobile apps, and support for right-to-left (RTL) languages.
