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Posts Tagged ‘Business Sector’

Zoho Makes Another Move to be the IT of the Small Business Market

Zoho is making another move to serve as the IT department for the small business market. Its latest offering is a service for staffing agencies and human resources to automate the process for hiring people.

The new service, available now, is an applicant tracking system that helps staffing agencies and recruiting departments track job openings, resumes and candidates. The enterprise is stil heavily dependent on email and manual processes for any number of practices with human resources being no exception to the rule.

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Zoho’s strategy is to create a level of automation that makes a human resources functions manageable, a model they have used for the services they offer for sales, marketing and other functions in the enterprise.

Zoho Recruit has a number of features including web forms; the ability to aggregate resumes from social sites and ways to track the status of a client within the application.

Activity streams are emerging as a standard for new social enterprise products. In Zoho Recruit, though, the activity streams look more like simple views into the status of a job opening, profiles of other people on the team and the interviews on schedule for the day.

Here’s an overview of Zoho Recruit:

It’s clear that Zoho s gunning for the enterprise market with a focus on the small business sector. The company is increasingly perceived as a competitive threat to larger, more established companies. This is illustrated by a Microsft executive’s remark earlier this month that Zoho is a “fake” Microsoft office.

Zoho responded with FakeOffice.org, featuring a video they made in September, renaming it “Fake Office – the Movie.”

Zoho is a challenger to Salesforce.com in the small business market, whic has moved up market in the past few years. That approach has worked for Salesforce but in these markets the company faces deep pressures from larger competitors such as Oracle.

Zoho faces its own competition but it has a unique approach. Its products are varied, giving customers the feeling that they are using a service that is customized for their particular needs.

Plus, we like their videos. They explain their products. How about that?

Discuss

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Apple iPhone closing in on BlackBerry market share

Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Apple, iPhone

Paul Carton, Director of Research at ChangeWave Research, reported yesterday at investorplace.com that Apple iPhone is gaining steadily on BlackBerry’s market share, a great feat considering BlackBerry’s entrenched position in the business sector. iPhone market share is now a heady 30%, still behind BlackBerry’s 40%, but RIM products are not gaining new users at nearly the same rate. As for Palm? Well, the Pre seems to have leveled out the free fall, but there’s nothing terribly encouraging about the data. My guess is they are still pining for those halcyon days of 2006 when Palm was king.

The smartphone market itself is rising; according to Mr. Carton’s research, a full 39% of consumers now own some kind of smartphone. Compare that with last summer, when the smartphone market was just cracking 25%.

The good news for Apple is that RIM’s stranglehold on the smartphone market appears to be loosening, and with so many consumers still to reach, Apple has the momentum. CNNMoney.com characterized Apple’s market gains as putting Apple within “striking distance” of BlackBerry. What’s driving the momentum? Customer satisfaction. Among those who plan to buy a smartphone within the next 90 days, 36% plan to buy an iPhone. And among current users, fully 73% of them are satisfied with the device, compared with only 43% of BlackBerry users.

Mr. Carton notes that BlackBerry is planning product launches this year, and Apple has already released the 3GS. If Apple holds true to its history, we won’t see a significant upgrade to the phone until next June. Either way, Apple has carved itself out quite a niche and the iPhone can no longer be dismissed as a toy to BlackBerry’s business device.

TUAWApple iPhone closing in on BlackBerry market share originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Wed, 28 Oct 2009 17:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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