In recent years, small business-focused software has become more affordable and full-featured as technology has increased in availability. This is a wonderful development, as businesses of all sizes can draw substantial benefits from modern tools.

Problems arise when small businesses seek to improve their technology without properly considering what an optimized suite of apps will look like. The truth is, small businesses don’t benefit from one-size-fits-all solutions because not all small businesses can be easily categorized.

These small businesses may be tempted to begin by introducing automation into their daily operations, but even that may not be enough. Automation, or taking some tasks off employees’ plates, is a wonderful tool to help a small business scale, but integration—when apps remain in constant communication with one another—is what helps a small business grow.

This is where workflow management software can be invaluable to small business growth. It promotes integration and codifies the early days of small business operations by promoting transparency and adaptability.

Here’s more on what integration looks like for small businesses and how workflow management software serves as the missing piece of the small business puzzle:

What integration looks like

All small businesses want to grow, but not all small businesses have equipped themselves to do so.

It may not be apparent to them, either. Consider a small business that’s quite technologically savvy and decided to build a robust tech stack early in its lifespan, including capabilities for task management, communication, customer service, and more. In theory, this company has done everything right by providing tools necessary for meeting unexpected challenges as they arise.

That’s not always the case. Often, small businesses who adopt a piecemeal approach to technology across vendors will find themselves facing silos, with data sitting in one app unable to be transferred to another easily.

These problems arise because small businesses are splitting their focus on integration with two distinct methodologies: native integration and custom integration. As a quick refresher, native integration refers to the means of connecting different apps using the means provided by the software vendors themselves, while custom integration flows are built in-house by developers on a task-by-task basis to ensure a perfect fit.

Each approach has its advantages and disadvantages. Native integrations arrive ready to be of service, requiring no code to become part of a system, and provide instant value to businesses. On the other hand, these integrations often include only basic functionality and offer no ownership over how they operate—the software vendor handles this, not the company that purchased the software. Meanwhile, custom integrations are fully extendable and customizable, but require extensive resources and a more significant upfront investment due to their pricier nature. They have to be constantly monitored, as well, because if something goes awry, an employee must implement a fix right away or risk the entire system falling apart.

Workflow management software sits at the sweet spot between native and custom integrations, providing the best of both worlds with none of the downsides. The technology is easy to use and accessible to everyone at an organization, but won’t eat into a significant amount of a small business’s resources, including financial ones.

What small businesses should prioritize

Once a small business has identified a workflow management solution it thinks fits its needs, it’s absolutely worth taking a minute to consider the finer details before signing a contract.

The simplest and most direct way to guarantee workflow management software will be adopted within an organization is to find one offering a drag-and-drop interface. With so many processes and triggers to manage, it’s much simpler to have a centralized place from which to visualize how apps will be working together and make changes on-the-fly. This level of visibility improves adoption and eliminates silos, owing to how simply any employee can track the logic behind workflows and make corrections if data becomes bunched up.

It’s also important to learn how data is transferred between apps within a connected workflow environment. Too often, these sorts of transactions occur outside security measures put in place by a particular software vendor because, simply put, the disparate apps are built upon different foundations. It’s not important that an employee understand the intricacies of a particular secure exchange, only that it aligns with the rest of the ecosystem and receives constant updates to keep pace with evolving security threats and remains compliant with particular governance such as GDPR and SOC.

A shortcut exists for this level of legwork: When apps within a connected workflow management system are made by the same vendor, small businesses can rest easy knowing they’re covered within a protective umbrella. This concept of unification plays nicely alongside both native and custom integration, increasing the benefits of the positives and mitigating issues arising from the negatives. It’s not necessary that every single app share a vendor, but the more, the merrier—and the more protected.

When choosing a particular vendor to built out a tech suite, small businesses can check those companies’ stances on data privacy. Consumers are wising up to the fact that their data is a valuable thing, and they’ll expect to receive the utmost protection and anonymity, when possible. It only takes a single data breach to eliminate all trust and for a customer to abruptly take its business elsewhere; the best software vendors are the ones who place privacy above all else.

Public privacy statements are a good place to start, but small businesses should look to a vendor’s AI models, as well, to ensure they’re not trained using customer data. Sure, a small business may not think it’ll be using AI anytime soon, but the technology is finding its way into even the smallest and most basic of functions, so it won’t be long before a particular customer’s data will be in play.

Benefits of workflow management software

Once a small business has implemented a few workflows, it’ll be impossible to remember how they operated beforehand.

The benefits of workflow management software touch every facet of an organization, from front-facing to back office-facing operations. Companies can rest easy knowing customer experience will begin seeing improvement, as predetermined workflows will ensure important information makes it to the right source at the right time without employees having to seek it out. This aids with troubleshooting customer complaints and smoothing the customer onboarding process, as companies will be able to control exactly what customers see, and when, reducing the chances they will become overwhelmed and quit the process entirely. Once customers have been with a company for awhile, the automated invoicing and payment processing capabilities of workflow management software keep them up-to-date without much effort required on anyone’s part.

It’s worth considering the benefits to the company itself, as well. Employee onboarding becomes a snap when workflows don’t have to be created from scratch and can be customized to fit a new employee’s method of working or to adapt to how a team may have shifted things up. Additionally, workflow management software often offers data to be used for improving processes across the board, reducing the chances an employee will be working within an outdated framework for too long. This enables employees to be hired as specialists who are more than capable of helping a company grow, rather than requiring them to act as generalists required to maintain a bit of technical know-how—not the sorts of employees who can hit the ground running.

All told, the right workflow management solution can save small businesses tens of thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours of workforce effort annually.

Conclusion

Workflow management software ties everything together for small businesses. It promotes communication within an organization by offering visibility into processes with the ability to make changes as needed. It encourages customers to trust small businesses by allowing for robust security and a thick layer of privacy protection. The software also requires few resources to operate, allowing small businesses to remain lean in their early days when it matters most.

Any small business that feels like its growth has been stunted should look to workflow software for the growth spurt it needs.

This article, "Workflow Management Software is the Missing Piece of the Small Business Puzzle" was first published on Small Business Trends

Small business owners exploring ways to integrate AI into daily operations may want to keep an eye on Zoho’s latest development. The company has officially adopted the Model Context Protocol (MCP), launching its own MCP server that allows AI agents to securely interact with Zoho applications—and even third-party tools. For entrepreneurs juggling customer support, sales, project management, and more, this opens the door to a new level of automation without requiring deep technical know-how.

Zoho’s MCP server supports a wide library of actions across more than 15 Zoho apps, such as CRM, Mail, Calendar, Desk, Cliq, and Projects. With the integration of Zoho Flow, business owners can also link AI agents to external apps like Gmail, Slack, Salesforce, and Notion—unlocking the potential for truly cross-platform workflows.

“MCP is the protocol. Zoho MCP is the product that lets you stand up agent-ready endpoints, making Zoho apps executable by AI agents,” the company explained. That distinction matters for small businesses, because it means owners can deploy task-specific or autonomous agents tailored to their business needs—whether scheduling meetings, triaging support tickets, or managing project timelines.

The process is structured around four clear steps. First, the AI agent sends a user request. Then it gathers context by retrieving relevant information. Third, the MCP tool executes the right function. Finally, the system returns either a success or failure response. This standardized workflow ensures that AI agents can work across different applications in a consistent and secure manner.

A major benefit for smaller organizations is that Zoho MCP is model-agnostic. Whether a business is using GPT, Claude, an open-source model, or a fine-tuned proprietary LLM, as long as the model speaks the MCP protocol, it can interact with Zoho’s ecosystem. That flexibility gives business owners the freedom to choose the AI tools that best fit their strategy and budget, without locking into a specific vendor.

Security is also baked into the design. Agents operate under user-level permissions, ensuring they can only perform actions that the user is authorized to do. Zoho enforces strict access controls and encrypted data handling, offering reassurance to businesses that prioritize data privacy and regulatory compliance.

For those interested in testing the capabilities, Zoho is currently rolling out MCP servers to users on an early access waiting list. General availability is expected by the end of 2025. “Zoho expects to study the usage patterns of these customers across use cases, industries, geographical regions, and sizes during this early access phase,” the company noted. Pricing details will be announced closer to the broader release.

As AI becomes a more integral part of small business operations, tools like Zoho MCP could help level the playing field. Small teams can build AI-driven assistants that perform tasks once reserved for larger enterprises with dedicated IT departments. For example, a solo entrepreneur could create a sales assistant to automate outreach, or a support bot that handles incoming tickets and alerts the right team member.

However, the path forward isn’t without potential hurdles. Small businesses may face a learning curve when configuring agents to align with existing workflows, and some integrations with third-party tools may still require manual setup or developer assistance. Additionally, early adopters will need to navigate the offering without a finalized pricing model, which could influence long-term feasibility.

Still, for small businesses looking to automate smarter, not harder, Zoho’s adoption of MCP offers a glimpse into a more connected, intelligent, and customizable future. With its flexible architecture, built-in security, and broad integration potential, Zoho MCP could become a valuable asset for business owners aiming to scale efficiently with AI.

This article, "Zoho’s New MCP Server Connects AI Agents to Zoho and Beyond" was first published on Small Business Trends

Small business owners looking to streamline operations, cut costs, and boost productivity may soon have a powerful new ally: AI agents built into their everyday business software. Zoho, a long-time provider of business applications, has unveiled a new wave of intelligent digital assistants—called Zia Agents—designed to take over repetitive tasks and assist teams across departments. The company’s latest offering could give small businesses access to advanced automation without the need for a dedicated IT staff or expensive enterprise tools.

At the core of the announcement is the launch of a set of native AI agents embedded directly into Zoho’s platform. These agents aren’t just glorified chatbots—they’re context-aware tools trained to handle specific business tasks. For example, the new version of Ask Zia, Zoho’s conversational AI, now includes business intelligence capabilities customized for different user personas. Data engineers can build data pipelines, analysts can create reports and dashboards through conversation, and data scientists can get help with machine learning models. While these tools cater to technical roles, the assistant remains accessible to general users as well.

Customer-facing teams also benefit from the new capabilities. The Customer Service Agent, integrated into Zoho Desk, can automatically understand incoming support requests, respond intelligently, or escalate them to human reps. This makes it easier for small businesses to deliver fast and consistent service without hiring more support staff. It’s a scalable solution for growing teams, especially those handling increasing ticket volumes with limited resources.

For small business owners interested in tailoring these tools to their unique workflows, Zoho introduced the Zia Agent Studio. This no-code or low-code tool enables users to create and deploy custom agents using prompts or rules. More than 700 pre-configured actions across Zoho’s ecosystem are available out of the box. Once built, agents can act like “digital employees,” respecting the same permissions set for human users and offering audit and performance tracking features. Admins retain oversight while automating tedious processes.

Additionally, the Zoho Marketplace now includes a dedicated Agent Marketplace, giving businesses immediate access to ready-made agents. Early examples include a Revenue Growth Specialist that spots upsell and cross-sell opportunities, a Deal Analyzer that estimates win probabilities and suggests next steps, and a Candidate Screener that ranks job applicants based on criteria like experience and skills. These pre-built agents can help small businesses automate sales intelligence, recruiting, and customer engagement without additional headcount or software.

Because these agents live inside Zoho’s broader ecosystem of 55+ applications, businesses can build solutions that span everything from CRM to finance to HR. This offers a distinct advantage for small companies trying to unify operations without patching together disparate tools. Moreover, Zoho says the same development tools its internal teams use are now available to customers, making it possible for even small teams to build customized AI-driven workflows.

Zoho also teased future features. Ask Zia will soon expand its capabilities to serve finance and customer support teams more directly. Perhaps more significantly, the company is developing an Agent2Agent (A2A) protocol that will let Zia Agents talk to one another—and potentially with agents from other platforms. For small businesses, this could open the door to fully autonomous workflows that span multiple software systems.

However, some practical considerations remain. While the tools are already being rolled out to customers on Zoho’s early access waiting list, general availability won’t arrive until the end of 2025. Pricing has yet to be announced. Businesses looking to plan around these tools may need to wait until the public release for more clarity on cost and access. As with any automation solution, small business owners should also consider how much oversight and customization will be required to integrate these agents effectively into daily operations.

Still, Zoho’s agentic approach could represent a turning point in how small businesses engage with AI. By embedding intelligent agents directly into the tools companies already use and making them accessible to non-developers, Zoho lowers the barrier to entry. For small teams striving to do more with less, this evolution may provide not only a productivity boost but a strategic advantage in a competitive market.

This article, "Zoho Rolls Out AI Agents to Streamline Business Operations" was first published on Small Business Trends

Zoho is stepping up its AI game with the debut of Zia LLM, its first fully in-house large language model, built specifically with business users in mind. Designed to enhance the capabilities of Zoho’s existing suite of enterprise tools, Zia LLM is the latest move in the company’s broader push to offer powerful, private, and practical AI without relying on third-party platforms.

Small business owners already using Zoho products—or those evaluating AI integrations—may find Zia LLM a compelling development. Unlike many large language models that are trained for broad public use, Zia LLM has been trained on internal product use cases such as structured data extraction, summarization, Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG), and even code generation. That specificity could translate to more accurate, business-relevant outputs and a smoother experience across various workflows.

Zia LLM is composed of three model sizes—1.3 billion, 2.6 billion, and 7 billion parameters. Each was trained and optimized separately, giving Zoho the flexibility to match the right model to the right user scenario. “This focus on right-sizing the model is an ongoing development strategy for Zoho,” the company said. For businesses, this means the system can dynamically balance power with performance, avoiding unnecessary processing costs while still delivering high-quality results.

Another key update for small businesses comes in the form of two proprietary Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) models that convert speech to text in English and Hindi. These models are optimized to run on low-resource machines without sacrificing accuracy—a significant advantage for companies without access to high-end computing infrastructure. According to Zoho, the models “benchmark up to 75% better than comparable models across standard tests,” a claim that, if validated in real-world use, could make voice-to-text features far more accessible to small teams.

While many businesses have started using public AI models like ChatGPT or Llama, some remain cautious about data privacy. Zoho emphasizes that Zia LLM supports its long-standing commitment to user data protection. “Zia LLM continues Zoho’s commitment to data privacy by allowing customers to keep their data on Zoho servers,” the company stated. That could be a decisive factor for firms in regulated industries or for those who simply want tighter control over proprietary information.

The LLM is currently being tested internally across Zoho’s broad range of business apps and will be rolled out to customers in the coming months. Deployment will span Zoho’s data centers in the United States, India, and Europe, offering global availability from launch. Notably, Zoho confirmed that no customer data was used to train the models, further reinforcing its data-responsible positioning.

However, some limitations remain. When asked about third-party API access to Zia LLM, Zoho stated, “So with respect to the API at the moment, no, we are not looking to provide an API that would be available for consumers to directly consume, but in the long-term we may expose an API through a platform so that consumers are able to access it but yeah at the moment we don’t have plans to do it immediately.”

Still, Zia LLM appears well-positioned to help Zoho customers gain intelligent assistance without the complexity and data concerns of third-party LLM platforms. For small businesses invested in the Zoho ecosystem, this could mean stronger AI-driven functionality at lower overhead, along with more confidence in how data is handled. As the model moves from internal testing to live deployment, businesses will have the opportunity to assess whether this focused approach to AI can deliver on its practical promise.

This article, "Zia LLM: Zoho Rolls Out Proprietary AI Built for Business Use" was first published on Small Business Trends

Customers are key to a small business’s success, especially early on. Not only do customers provide capital for growing the company, but their use cases can inform the direction a business wants to grow. It’s very likely that conversations with customers will illuminate issues a company hasn’t yet considered or highlight the way a particular process can actually work versus how they expected it to work.

However, a small business can benefit the most from returning customers—those who sign up early and stay through thick and thin. It’s been demonstrated time and time again that it’s far more expensive to sign a new customer than to retain an existing one, but it can also be a lot more rewarding, too. Sales folks are able to build relationships with each customer and customers get the chance to guide, to some extent, how the vendor will grow its services.

Still, as conventional wisdom dictates, it’s difficult to make new old friends—though not impossible. It requires that small businesses prioritize building connections not only with the customers themselves but within their organizations as well. Here are some tips on how small businesses can retain customers and extend relationships:

Maintain Databases

Imagine a small business vendor lands its first customer, who loves the product and stays with this company as it grows over the years. New customers enter the periphery and pay higher prices, but this legacy customer retains its original pricing structure as a thank-you for its continued loyalty. In turn, the customer becomes an advocate for this company, supplying testimonials and speaking on conference panels about its positive relationship with the small business.

Though they may not admit anything, this customer will likely expect greater service should anything go wrong with its deployment—especially given the vendor knows the customer’s business well.

Now, imagine that this small business is growing and hires a batch of customer service folks. These new employees may be quite knowledgeable about the company’s industry but will certainly lack an understanding of the many nuances of its customers. Should any of its existing customers encounter an issue and reach out to support, these new employees must be able to serve at the level these legacy customers have come to expect.

It’s not difficult to make a customer happy when things are working well. It’s when mistakes are made, technology goes down, questions go unanswered, or information needs to be repeated that it becomes a challenge to keep customers happy.

To ensure long-term customers are never left behind inadvertently, small businesses need to consider software that unifies internal communications and bridges gaps between teams or departments. A centralized CRM, connected to the rest of a company’s technology suite, can serve as a single source of truth for customer information, history, and deal terms so the proper employees can maintain access. This is particularly important for sales and customer service, two customer-focused functions whose operations contain numerous touchpoints across an organization; no matter which representative ends up servicing a customer, small business owners can rest easy knowing that all of the relevant details have been either communicated directly or can be accessed easily.

Protect Sensitive Information

Small businesses have to consider the fact that they receive much more from their customers than fees: these days, customer data can fetch a premium and stands as the most important thing for any vendor to safeguard. It only takes a single data breach or security lapse to eradicate the trust built between a small business and its customers. This fact holds true across industries, as well, as data-collection in this digitally connected world is no longer just within the domain of tech companies and digital-first organizations.

To keep data secure, small businesses need to look inward. Do they run multiple pieces of software made by different vendors, or a unified suite of apps protected behind layers of security? Do these pieces of software receive regular updates or are they expected to function out-of-the-box for the rest of time? And, how quickly would these updates occur, in a landscape riddled with security threats requiring fast action? Even if a small business operates using a single piece of software or only a small handful of apps, it’s imperative that the wall, whatever the size, holds strong under pressure.

Data privacy plays a role here, as well. Companies that use PII-rich data (personally identifiable information) to make business decisions or train AI assistants are putting this sensitive data front-and-center in their operations. This benefits the company incalculably—better data yields better results—but, in doing so, they increase the chances that this identifying data might be abused by the wrong employee or lost in a data breach. The risk hardly seems worth the reward. Customers are becoming more educated about their data and understand that if they’re providing highly sensitive data without receiving a benefit, they’re going to take their business elsewhere.

It’s even more important, then, for small businesses to practice transparency with customers, both new and old. They can advertise whatever security measures are in place and publish privacy policies that can be viewed easily from the company’s website, ensuring no surprises. Long-time customers will appreciate being able to point to a specific place on a company website as a form of accountability, while prospects may be more likely to accept the testimonials of a legacy customer if they sense there’s trust between a small business and its customers.

Build Flexibility Into Contracts

When a customer signs on with a small business, they may not yet be fully aware of its every need, both currently and upcoming. As such, the small business has to consider how they are going to address a customer’s evolution.

Too often, the instinct of the small business is to lock its early customers into a contract that may exceed the needs of the customer, explaining that, if the customer signs now, it can avoid having to renegotiate down the line, when services may be more expensive. This is like what a car dealership might do when hawking extended warranties. And we all know how much buyers love those.

Small businesses hoping to retain customers should consider including “land-and-expand” terms into their contracts. This means that customers can sign up for whatever services they require now with the confidence that when those needs expand, contract, or change, they can tweak the terms without incurring additional fees. Better yet, this allows customers to access new products or services as soon as they are released without remorse that they signed a contract too soon or without enough information.

By meeting customers where they are and opening the door for, essentially, unlimited changes, small businesses demonstrate they’re hoping to build a relationship rather than squeeze an extra buck out of a customer.

New Beginnings

Ultimately, the act of retaining customers for the long haul isn’t something a small business can do in a single service encounter or contract signing. It’s a byproduct of repeated reminders that the customer made the right choice in choosing this particular small business. When things are good, small businesses can call customers to discuss exciting new developments that will soon be available; and, when things are tough, these businesses can troubleshoot the issues quickly and deliver reasonable, prompt solutions that keep customers happy.

A Rolodex of repeat customers serves small business growth in and of itself. New employees will be drawn to work at a company that boasts a strong roster of customers, ensuring they can focus on the work itself and not a mad dash for more business. Potential customers will applaud all of the positive testimonials a small business may have received and will become more likely to sign on themselves knowing they will be in good company.

Most importantly, customer retention is of paramount importance for growing a business of any size. The sooner a small business begins focusing on this necessity, the sooner they can start expanding.

This article, "Retaining Customers Requires Building Connections, Both Directly and Behind-the-Scenes" was first published on Small Business Trends

In addition to a web browser, a maps function, and a curated selection of emojis, most modern smartphones come equipped with a few note taking apps. Sometimes these take the form of a digital notebook, while others allow for voice recordings or short videos. A note taking app enables easy capture of ideas and personal reminders while folks are on the go.

A note taking app for businesses, however, features the same core functionality and capabilities as personal apps, while leveraging advancements in artificial intelligence and machine learning to optimize operations and sync to relevant, existing solutions in a business’ software ecosystem. This underlying, embedded technology helps businesses log and store data, enables seamless sorting and sharing—in some cases, it replaces outdated processes altogether—and more features are being added as demand grows.

What follows are just a few areas in which AI/ML is transforming digital notebooks into powerful business tools for small and medium-sized organizations.

Note Taking App Business Benefits

Intelligent Voice Assistants

These days, vocal recognition software and voice assistants are omnipresent among smart devices, and the technology is only going to improve and expand. According to Juniper Research, there are expected to be 8.4 billion voice assistant devices in use around the world by 2024.

This technology is benefiting note taking apps of all stripes. Now, users can have their voice recordings automatically transcribed and shared accurately and at breakneck speed. Some AI engines, like Zoho’s Zia, enable voice-activated search within notes, including photos, and automatic sorting into categories, calendar events, and reminders.

Example: Traveling Salesperson

Consider the traveling salesperson, always on the way to or from the airport, and out of or into meetings. With such a limited window of time during which to communicate with the team back home, virtual voice assistants offer hands-on, yet hands-free, support. This intrepid salesperson can narrate a note while waiting for a cab, and the voice assistant could automatically know which group of teammates should receive a transcription of that note, including the ability to share them as a set of tasks.

Because of note taking app integrations with other programs, they can offer real-time collaboration within an organization, even while on a call, without switching back-and-forth between apps—including setting task reminders.

Smart Scans

Other than hospital systems and the IRS, the fax machine is mostly obsolete as a way to transfer physical documents over the Internet. The other options are generally pretty makeshift, including sending poorly framed photos of files or counting on a PDF viewer such as Adobe Acrobat to allow for adding digital text and signatures.

Modern mobile note taking apps accomplish the same task and require only what comes standard with every smartphone: a camera. Simply fill out a form, snap a picture, and note apps will turn it into a properly formatted document that can be easily stored and shared. Some apps, such as Zoho Notebook, will automatically sort these photos, offering the same level of searchability as a text note.

Example: Field Workers

One potential use case is for field workers. For example, a field agent can snap photos of a faulty workstation, create a note with those images and additional comments, and share the note with their in-office support team, who can collaborate on the best course of action from within the note taking app. The technology could sort these photos into an album and send the collection to a technician.

The field worker can take photos once the problem is fixed, and the note taking app can file them for reference, including tags and time stamps, for simple sorting or to view the history of the project.

Easy Formatting

It can be intimidating to open a note taking app and be faced with dozens of text-only notes. Sure, they are sortable, but information transferred from a website, email, or chat message may be formatted incorrectly or contain too much extraneous information to be useful after the fact.

Luckily, AI/ML offers the ability to vary it up. Current AI/ML capabilities take it a step further, enabling note taking apps to format and present full websites added from only a URL or small snippets of a site. Note taking apps with this level of AI/ML also boast the ability to sense if the site should be presented as a recipe card, a video, a checklist, or a task with embedded location information, and will adapt accordingly, even from an email.

AI/ML technology might enable note taking apps to do even more with even less-organized source material. Imagine someone capturing a wealth of information across a wild assortment of websites. Note taking apps could leverage AI/ML to parse the relevant information, extract the copy, and scrub Flash images and intrusive marketing messages so the sites can be easily referenced even when offline.

What’s Next in Note Taking Apps?

The potential of a note taking app for businesses lies in how well it integrates with other apps and systems, and how seamlessly data flows between them. Advancements in AI/ML technology, coupled with the growing number of features and functions being added, could see note taking apps replace the inbox as employees’ central interface or business home page.

What we’re seeing already is note taking apps taking over many core functions of office or workplace platforms—enabling synchronized chat and collaboration, data storage, data preparation, and document creation.

Small businesses are in the best position, based on their size and relative operational simplicity, to take advantage of this rapidly developing technology.

This article, "The Overlooked Business Potential of a Note Taking App" was first published on Small Business Trends

Technology enhances business. It allows companies to operate faster, more efficiently, encourages collaboration, and in return creates growth. However, human interaction is still key in creating a positive customer experience. Taking into account of the last year, with companies forced to rapidly digitize, many business leaders have grappled with the challenge of humanizing customer experience with the new technologies that have been implemented.

Yet, in order to create a customer experience that streamlines the buying process while customizing to fit the consumer’s needs, companies must focus on an effective personalization plan that encourages customer loyalty, customer growth, and an increase in revenue. Personalization and customization are key in targeting a customer base and to make sure a business is serving their specific needs.

According to a Gartner survey 88 percent of consumers report not receiving “tailored help”, and to make matters worse brands are at risk of losing 38 percent of customers because of poor marketing personalization efforts.

Businesses often get consumed by return on investment metrics and pressure to show results, but before the focus on this, business leaders must hone in on serving their customers to seamlessly guide them through a personalized journey. Like the saying, “if you build it, they will come”, taking the time to personalize the customer experience will in return create increased customer loyalty, increase in driving sales, and positive customer experience within a business.

How to Humanize Customer Experience

Create a Hyper-personalized Customer Journey Plan

Companies tend to forget the minutiae included in one single customer journey. When generating a plan to enhance personalization and efficiency, business leaders must take into account aspects such as how interactive and easy to use the website is, how products or services are outlined, the sales process, invoicing process, communication and support.

Customers are looking for companies that provide personalized experiences that are relevant to them specifically, rather than repetitive processes that make the journey seem robotic.

A way to make hyper-personalization naturally occur is by using technology tools that remember documentation when needed the most. For example, if a sales person is on a call with a customer and can see in their CRM tool that the customer had a support ticket two weeks ago on the same issue, they’ll have better context and be able to provide a more customized experience.

Another way to hyper-personalize and humanize customer experience is through technology that provides suggestions based on buying patterns. For example, if a business sells clothing and the user has viewed a specific style of clothes on the site, the technology can generate a suggestion such as, “Since you viewed this, we think you may also like this”.

By using tools that are completely customized to the consumer’s preferences, the business achieves a hyper-personalized and streamlined customer experience. While it may seem like a lot of work to take inventory of these individual aspects, having a plan in place with technology to assist will help businesses create customer experiences that impress and keep customers for the long haul.

Use Smart Technology to Enhance Personalization

Using technology that connects with your customers on multiple channels such as telephone, email, live chat, and social media ensures strong communication so that customers are left with all their questions and needs met. Additionally, utilizing workflow automation will help streamline the lead nurturing process, which is important when wanting to make things as easy as possible for the customer.

AI is also a way to increase efficiency and help enhance personalization. AI can be used in the customer journey to generate advanced lead and deal predictions to help businesses identify specific leads and where they are in their customer journey. It can also help with finding important information from the CRM, sending task reminders, alerts, and suggestions for the best times to contact leads based on your past interactions so that you can provide a preferred experience for your customer.

Also, businesses can utilize AI for sentiment analysis to prioritize which emails should be addressed first. For example, if a consumer sends an email about a negative experience with the business, AI will identify the displeased feedback and flag the email so that it’s addressed first. There are so many technology options out there that help with streamlining and automation, by discovering tools that also help with customization will be essential.

Analyze to Nurture New Clients and Current Ones

While metrics and data points are vital in showing ROI, using analytics to detect buying trends and other data trends around the customer will enable your business to gain new clients and current ones. Using analytic tools that track key performance indicators, including current trends and future predictions will be a critical aspect of the data strategy.

Yet, before diving into the technology, business leaders must ask themselves what key information about the customer they’d like to understand and how this data will help to create a more personalized experience for the customer.

For example, analytics can be used to find out what patterns are critical for customer satisfaction. If the analytics tool detects that consumers that purchased a specific service keep submitting support tickets for the same problem, having that data will help the business quickly find a solution to avoid customer churn.

Along with these questions, business leaders must recognize how they are collecting data to uphold ethical data privacy principles and strong security measures. With the surge of customer data being tracked and collected for monetary gain, companies must consider privacy concern and scrupulously examine the technology vendor they decide to use.

Consumers are rightfully concerned about how their data will be used, and it’s important to ensure that customer data stays private. At the same time, customers are more willing to provide personal information if their customer experience is hyper-personalized. With this in mind, businesses must aim at finding a harmonious balance with creating a personalized experience without jeopardizing consumer data.

Saying technology can make business more human sounds like an oxymoron, but when used the right way technology can enrich the customer experience to fit the unique needs of an individual customer. Because most companies have digitized in the last year, competition for enhancing the online customer experience has risen drastically. This means having a streamlined customer journey is not enough to set a business apart.

However, the core lies within personalizing the customer journey so that consumers can have their unique needs met and exceeded. When it comes to humanizing customer experience, people want to feel special and taken care of; creating a personalized experience with technology that streamlines the buying process for your customers can achieve this, and in the end will be the crux of what sets businesses apart.

This article, "Humanizing the Customer Experience with Technology" was first published on Small Business Trends

Zia Hubs is designed to give businesses the ability to organize various content types into focused “hubs” within WorkDrive, where Zoho’s flagship AI, Zia, can interpret, analyze, and act on the information stored. The tool supports a wide range of data formats, including PDFs, text documents, video, and audio files. For multimedia content, Zia Hubs automatically generates transcripts and links key moments to specific topics, providing users with precise reference points across their media libraries.

“Most unstructured data is text-based, meaning pertinent information lives within email conversations, social media posts, word processor documents, or audio and video transcripts,” said Raju Vegesna, Chief Evangelist at Zoho. “With Zia Hubs built into the full product suite, Zoho is able to provide customers with a deeper integration than any comparable software platform and nearly limitless potential uses for their data.”

The feature is launching as part of Zoho WorkDrive, the company’s unified content management platform. By layering artificial intelligence into the workspace, Zia Hubs transforms passive file storage into an active knowledge engine, helping organizations surface key insights and answers across teams.

Users of Zia Hubs will have the ability to:

• Ask Zia questions and receive precise, cited answers across file formats.
• Automatically organize uploaded content using AI-driven grouping of sections, visuals, and supporting text.
• Access cross-format search and link specific results back to original content, including time-stamped video and audio snippets.

The AI system also integrates seamlessly with Zoho Flow, enabling automated workflows that ensure Zia always has the most current and relevant documents available. This includes content from third-party platforms such as DocuSign, RingCentral, and Zoom.

According to the company, Zia Hubs lays the groundwork for broader AI-native workflows across Zoho’s ecosystem. Future versions of the tool are expected to trigger specialized AI agents capable of executing business-specific tasks based on insights extracted from unstructured content. This is part of Zoho’s broader push to develop context-aware, agentic AI solutions that integrate deeply across its 55+ application suite.

The company highlighted its full-stack ownership — including its AI infrastructure, app development, and data management layers — as a key differentiator, allowing for more seamless integration and cost-efficient innovation.

Zia Hubs is now available in early access to select users of Zoho WorkDrive in the United States, with a broader rollout scheduled by the end of Q3 2025.

Image: Zoho

This article, "Zoho Unveils Zia Hubs to Extract Deep Intelligence from Unstructured Business Data" was first published on Small Business Trends

Small businesses often have to figure things out as they go. Their processes may not be established, or they may still be adjusting to industry shifts they weren’t able to understand until they were in the thick of it. As such, the early days of a company’s lifespan often include makeshift processes without an overreliance on technology, so as not to spend too much money implementing a software suite they may not wind up using.

What many of these small businesses don’t realize is that their sizes and maturity levels make them prime candidates for AI use—technology like this is no longer reserved for the most resource-rich of enterprise organizations. Instead, AI has shifted the work paradigm itself, and small businesses stand to benefit. Here are a few things for small businesses to keep in mind when considering using AI, and why this decision should be an easy one:

Building Infrastructure

One important thing for small businesses to realize is that AI isn’t a replacement for a tech stack or a full piece of software itself. Rather, they can think of AI as a cog in a larger machine that slots effortlessly into place, keeping things humming along at an expedited pace.

Even so, when a company with an elaborate tech stack tries to introduce any new piece of software, there are bound to be at least a few hiccups. Multitudes of applications have to communicate with one another, and when a company introduces AI into one piece of the puzzle, the others have to be just as equipped to handle it or the technology will fail to permeate the entire ecosystem. This rings especially true for software suites that include multiple vendors at various stages of AI implementation, operating on disparate LLMs.

The fact that small businesses are in nascent stages of developing their tech stacks is a huge advantage. Nothing is fully established, meaning AI functionality can be pushed to where it’s needed most without disrupting operations or upsetting workflows and employees who are used to doing things a certain way. Once AI is in place, the system can also be easily calibrated to track appropriate KPIs, ensuring employees are always working towards shared goals and being held accountable.

Slowing Rollout

It also matters how small businesses implement AI, not just that they implement it at all. Companies that provide AI free reign over data may be doing themselves a disservice early on. AI requires data to perform even its simplest tasks to ensure its work is accurate and actionable, and it’s unlikely a small business will have collected enough for the AI to devour and elevate every aspect of the business. Allowing AI to play within too large a sandbox could yield poor results and set operations back.

Instead, small companies should focus on easing AI into its technology gradually, starting by offloading smaller tasks for which there exists plenty of data for AI to dine on. They can analyze the results and start implementing AI’s automation features when they’re ready; then, when everything looks OK, they can expand AI’s reach slowly but surely.

This slower rollout also helps employees of small businesses understand the role AI will be playing in their day-to-day. The sustainable approach isn’t to render human employees obsolete but to augment and simplify the work they are already doing. A more targeted AI introduction provides ample opportunity to witness the benefits firsthand and become excited for the possibilities it offers. This consideration is especially important for sales folks who may be hesitant to give up their customer data otherwise; knowing AI can accelerate the sales process might tip the scales.

Continuously Measuring ROI

Small businesses can’t afford to waste even a dime. Margins are tight, and the stakes around every decision are high.  It’s understandable if they wanted to avoid AI due to concerns around cost, but they still have to consider just how much AI can help with customer and employee retention—two of the most important metrics small businesses have to measure.

AI can help, and while it’s true that AI used to be quite expensive, those times have changed. Over the last decade or so, the technology has been refined and can now be included in software packages for little additional investment. In fact, many vendors no longer offer AI as a separate piece of software, opting instead to fold it into offerings at zero additional cost.

The financial value of AI can be measured by KPIs, as well. AI is capable of constantly comparing output to KPIs and making incremental adjustments, as needed, to ensure companies reach their goals. Think of it like a brilliant and motivated employee—a rarity for small businesses to grab for an affordable price so early in their lifespan. This “employee” can help with sales improvement, cost savings, and customer satisfaction given how quickly and efficiently it can run. It could handle some preliminary customer inquiries as well; it’s been proven that the majority of customers can’t really tell whether or not they’re talking to AI or a real person.

Simplicity is Key

By overloading employees with too many new features and tools, small businesses risk having folks lose track of the company’s goals and forget how AI can help, rather than hinder, their work. With all things, a measured approach is key to enacting lasting change.

The use of AI opens the door for continued employee education, as well. By preparing employees for a company’s software, it’s also prepping them for the workforce at large, which is something that can set a small business aside from its competitors. When employees feel taken care of, they’re likely to stay longer and remain eager to contribute.

The benefits of AI can certainly be measured by AI, but small business owners will be able to witness the intangible benefits firsthand. All it will take is the right software vendor with a compatible attitude about AI, and the best time to start the search process is right now.

This article, "Now is the Time for SMBs to Overcome AI Hesitancy" was first published on Small Business Trends

Small businesses are always operating within the most narrow of margins. Every sale counts, and every team member needs to not only wear multiple hats but perform at the top of their game, as resources remain slim.

Key to small business longevity is visibility. Small business owners must know what their staff is working on and maintain open lines of communication in case priorities need to be shifted on a dime. These efforts are far more straightforward when processes haven’t yet been formalized, but scale in difficulty as new pieces of technology get added to a company’s back office operations.

A reliable piece of scheduling software, embedded in a small business’s tech stack early on, can ensure that the early days of a company’s life are productive ones. Managers can maintain visibility, employees can stay on task, and the beginnings of workflows can be laid. In fact, the key to maximizing scheduling software is to treat it as if it were hired as a slew of administrative assistants:

Issues With Traditional Scheduling Methods

It’s worth starting with a look at the early days of a company’s scheduling efforts and how these manual methods cause more inefficiencies than they solve.

Here’s a classic example: A salesperson has a productive chat with a new prospect, who expresses interest in moving forward with a deal—after they receive answers to a few questions. Normally, this wouldn’t require much more than a quick conversation between the salesperson and someone within the company who can provide the information they need, or step in and talk to the customer directly.

If a small business is going after one customer at a time, the above process sounds great: direct, no room for misinterpretation or for any information to be lost in the shuffle. Of course, the goal for any small business is to scale, and before long, sales folks may become overwhelmed with clients, and it would be understandable if a message or two were to fall off their radar. Any small business will tell you that it’s imperative that they nurture new leads right away, meaning that any delay in communication could cost the company a significant amount of capital or customer good will—not to mention the fact that salespeople would be adding a fair amount of stress to their already-stressful jobs of keeping a new business afloat.

Then there’s the amount of repetitive work such a haphazard system would require. Salespeople would be doing all the scheduling themselves, which, without a central hub for communications, would require emails, phone calls, direct messages, and whatever else fits a customer’s preference. That’s time they could be spending sourcing new leads or laying groundwork for sustainable growth.

Moreover, perhaps worst of all, manual methods are often accompanied by data siloes between departments and individuals within an organization.This rings especially true for companies whose employees operate in different time zones, as manual processes limit the amount of time there can be overlap, relegating some conversations for the following day when they’re likely to be forgotten.

Benefits of Scheduling Software

Organizations of any size stand to benefit from scheduling software, small companies most of all because their time is at a premium.

The automation capabilities of modern scheduling software can support a small business as an administrative assistant might do. For starters, it takes employees out of the middle of this process. Once they enter their availability into their own calendars, the software is ready to accept customer meetings, providing a screen where these customers can view open appointment times and slot themselves within whatever’s convenient. The system would then add the meeting to everyone’s calendars and send reminders automatically, including sending any attachments or forms to peruse beforehand.

Behind the scenes, booking software can provide a boon to employees by keeping them on target and enhancing their capacity for taking on work. Tasks can be assigned to internal employees based on the needs customers have expressed, giving these team members time to prepare responses or offering an opportunity for follow-up and additional touchpoints. Each employee can work within custom-built modules based on role, location, workload, or however else companies want to slice it, further unlocking their ability to find information quickly and provide better customer service.

Scheduling software can also play the role of an IT specialist, extending its usability. For example, a company may not want every one of its employees to be granted access to every piece of information stored on a company’s server, which is where booking software’s customizable permission settings come into play. Each employee can receive an individual login that displays only what they need to know and keeps them from inadvertently messing up someone else’s work. The software can also monitor logins and locations, providing even more visibility into how and when operations are taking place.

The above is of particular importance within the healthcare industry, where privacy is paramount and HIPAA compliance requirements hang over every company’s head. But all companies can benefit from a higher level of security, as cyber threats have become increasingly common and complicated while customers are beginning to demand higher standards for data privacy. With the right piece of booking software, small business owners won’t need to enlist an IT specialist to monitor the bigger picture and keep everything safe.

Involving Customers

Small businesses can also benefit from involving their customers in the booking process—within reason, of course. Potential customers want to feel like they are a priority and that the company is willing to cater to their needs.

Consider how scheduling software can extend a white glove experience—personalization that makes customers feel welcomed and supported from day one. The booking process can be customized for look and feel, as well as the URL used and what’s contained in emails and text messages, including how often these reminders are sent. Plus, because so much information is getting transferred and shared behind-the-scenes, customers will receive prompt and comprehensive responses to inquiries they’ve made, reducing the amount of back-and-forth required. In fact, when small businesses take advantage of automated scheduling software, they shouldn’t require as many meetings to close a deal. Demonstrating respect for customers’ time is a sure-fire way for a company to ingratiate itself.

Another meaningful way for small businesses to pull in customers is to run the company on a unified suite of apps. It doesn’t immediately sound like this decision would have much of an impact on CX, but the implications, while less obvious, are significant. Potential customers are often in the process of shopping around for the perfect tech vendor, and a company whose systems talk to each other is a big selling point for their bolstered security and communication capabilities. It can help a small business operate with the efficiency of a much larger one carrying more resources because efforts aren’t wasted trying to reconcile data across different applications. Not even a team of admins can accomplish this feat so flawlessly.

Schedule for Success

If the people at a small business are the heart of the company, scheduling software acts as the backbone, supporting all efforts almost invisibly—that is, until it’s gone. The faster a small business adopts this level of infrastructure, the sooner it can start focusing on growth, both in company size and the capabilities of its employees, as if they had employed a small army of administrative assistants.

When everyone is operating at maximum efficiency, there’s no telling what’s next.

This article, "Let Booking Software Be Your Virtual Assistant" was first published on Small Business Trends