Skip to product menu
close
  • Recent Launches
    Press Space or Enter to display list of options
EXPLORE ALL PRODUCTS

Recent Launches

New

Payroll software with automated tax payments and filing.

Try now
New

Robotic process automation software to automate high-volume, rule-based tasks.

Try for free
New

Low-code IoT platform and solutions for connected businesses.

Try now
New

Business formation service to launch and grow your businesses.

Try now
New

Privacy-friendly application analytics solution.

Try for free

Sales

 
CRM

Comprehensive CRM platform for customer-facing teams.

CRM
 
Bigin

Simple CRM for small businesses moving from spreadsheets.

Bigin
 
Forms

Build online forms for every business need.

Forms
 
SalesIQ

Live chat app to engage and convert website visitors.

SalesIQ
 
Bookings

Appointment scheduling app for consultations with customers.

Bookings
 
Sign

Digital signature app for businesses.

Sign
 
RouteIQ

Comprehensive sales map visualization and optimal route planning solution.

RouteIQ
 
Thrive

Complete loyalty and affiliate management platform.

Thrive
 
Voice

Cloud Contact Center Software for businesses.

Voice
 
Suites
CRM Plus

Unified platform to deliver top-notch customer experience.

CRM Plus

Marketing

 
Social

All-in-one social media management software.

Social
 
Campaigns

Create, send, and track targeted email campaigns that drive sales.

Campaigns
 
Forms

Build online forms for every business need.

Forms
 
Survey

Design surveys to reach and interact with your audience.

Survey
 
Sites

Online website builder with extensive customisation options.

Sites
 
PageSense

Website conversion optimization and personalisation platform.

PageSense
 
Backstage

End-to-end event management software.

Backstage
 
Webinar

Webinar platform for webcasting online webinars.

Webinar
 
Marketing Automation

All-in-one marketing automation software.

Marketing Automation
 
LandingPage

Smart landing page builder to increase conversion rates

LandingPage
 
Publish

Manage all your local business listings on a single platform.

Publish
 
SalesIQ

Live chat app to engage and convert website visitors.

SalesIQ
 
Sign

Digital signature app for businesses.

Sign
 
Thrive

Complete loyalty and affiliate management platform.

Thrive
 
Voice

Cloud Contact Center Software for businesses.

Voice
 
NEW
LeadChain

Sync, manage, and convert leads across channels seamlessly.

LeadChain
 
NEW
CommunitySpaces

Online community platform for individuals and businesses to grow their network and brand.

CommunitySpaces
 
Suites
Marketing Plus

Unified marketing platform for marketing teams.

Marketing Plus

Commerce and POS

 
Commerce

eCommerce platform to manage and market your online store.

Commerce

Service

 
Desk

Helpdesk software to deliver great customer support.

Desk
 
Assist

Remote support and unattended remote access software.

Assist
 
Lens

Interactive remote assistance software with augmented reality.

Lens
 
FSM

End-to-end field service management platform for service businesses.

FSM
 
SalesIQ

Live chat app to engage and convert website visitors.

SalesIQ
 
Voice

Cloud Contact Center Software for businesses.

Voice
 
NEW
Solo

The all-in-one toolkit for solopreneurs.

Solo
 
Bookings

Appointment scheduling app for consultations with customers.

Bookings
 
Suites
Service Plus

Unified platform for customer service and support teams.

Service Plus

Finance

 
Books

Powerful accounting platform for growing businesses.

Books
 
FREE
Invoice

100% Free invoicing solution.

Invoice
 
Expense

Effortless expense reporting platform.

Expense
 
Inventory

Powerful stock management and inventory control software.

Inventory
 
Billing

End-to-end billing solution for your business.

Billing
 
Checkout

Collect payments online with custom branded pages.

Checkout
 
NEW
Payroll

Payroll software with automated tax payments and filing.

Payroll
 
NEW
Solo

The all-in-one toolkit for solopreneurs.

Solo
 
Practice

Practice management software for accounting firms.

Practice
 
Sign

Digital signature app for businesses.

Sign
 
Commerce

eCommerce platform to manage and market your online store.

Commerce
 
Suites
Finance Plus

All-in-one suite to manage your operations and finances.

Finance Plus

Email and Collaboration

 
Mail

Secure email service for teams of all sizes.

Mail
 
Meeting

Online meeting software for all your video conferencing & webinar needs.

Meeting
 
Writer

Word processor for focused writing and discussions.

Writer
 
Sheet

Spreadsheet software for collaborative teams.

Sheet
 
Show

Create, edit, and share slides with a sleek presentation app.

Show
 
Notebook

Beautiful home for all your notes.

Notebook
 
Cliq

Stay in touch with teams no matter where you are.

Cliq
 
Connect

Employee experience platform to communicate, engage, and build positive employee relations.

Connect
 
Bookings

Appointment scheduling app for consultations with customers.

Bookings
 
TeamInbox

Shared inboxes for teams.

TeamInbox
 
WorkDrive

Online file management for teams.

WorkDrive
 
Sign

Digital signature app for businesses.

Sign
 
Office Suite

Powerful collaborative work platform for teams.

Office Suite
 
Office Integrator

Built in document editors for web apps.

Office Integrator
 
ZeptoMail

Secure and reliable transactional email sending service.

ZeptoMail
 
Calendar

Online business calendar to manage events and schedule appointments.

Calendar
 
Learn

Knowledge and learning management platform.

Learn
 
Voice

Cloud Contact Center Software for businesses.

Voice
 
ToDo

Collaborative task management for individuals and teams.

ToDo
 
Tables

Work management tool to connect people, processes, and information.

Tables
 
FREE
PDF Editor

Collaborative online PDF editing tool.

PDF Editor
 
Suites
Workplace

Application suite built to improve team productivity and collaboration.

Workplace

Human Resources

 
People

Organize, automate, and simplify your HR processes.

People
 
Recruit

Intuitive recruiting platform built to provide hiring solutions.

Recruit
 
Expense

Effortless expense reporting platform.

Expense
 
Workerly

Manage temporary staffing with an employee scheduling solution.

Workerly
 
NEW
Payroll

Payroll software with automated tax payments and filing.

Payroll
 
Shifts

Employee scheduling and time tracking app.

Shifts
 
Sign

Digital signature app for businesses.

Sign
 
Suites
People Plus

Comprehensive HR platform for seamless employee experiences.

People Plus

Security and IT Management

 
Creator

Build custom apps to simplify business processes.

Creator
 
Directory

Workforce identity and access management solution for cloud businesses.

Directory
 
FREE
OneAuth

Secure multi-factor authenticator (MFA) for all your online accounts.

OneAuth
 
Vault

Online password manager for teams.

Vault
 
Catalyst

Pro-code platform to build and deploy your apps.

Catalyst
 
Toolkit

Complete resource for any admin-related lookup queries.

Toolkit
 
Lens

Interactive remote assistance software with augmented reality.

Lens
 
Assist

Remote support and unattended remote access software.

Assist
 
QEngine

Test automation software to build, manage, execute, and report testcases.

QEngine
 
NEW
RPA

Automate manual, tedious, and repetitive tasks easily.

RPA

BI and Analytics

 
Analytics

Modern self-service BI and analytics platform.

Analytics
 
Embedded BI

Embedded analytics and white label BI solutions, tailored for your needs.

Embedded BI
 
DataPrep

AI-powered data preparation service for your data-driven organization.

DataPrep
 
NEW
IoT

Harnessing IoT analytics for real-time operational intelligence.

IoT

Project Management

 
Projects

Manage, track, and collaborate on projects with teams.

Projects
 
Sprints

Planning and tracking tool for scrum teams.

Sprints
 
BugTracker

Automatic bug tracking software for managing bugs.

BugTracker
 
NEW
Solo

The all-in-one toolkit for solopreneurs.

Solo

Developer Platforms

 
Creator

Build custom apps to simplify business processes.

Creator
 
Flow

Automate business workflows by creating smart integrations.

Flow
 
Catalyst

Pro-code platform to build and deploy your apps.

Catalyst
 
Office Integrator

Built in document editors for web apps.

Office Integrator
 
ZeptoMail

Secure and reliable transactional email sending service.

ZeptoMail
 
QEngine

Test automation software to build, manage, execute, and report testcases.

QEngine
 
Tables

Work management tool to connect people, processes, and information.

Tables
 
NEW
RPA

Automate manual, tedious, and repetitive tasks easily.

RPA
 
NEW
Apptics

Application analytics for all apps.

Apptics
 
Embedded BI

Embedded analytics and white label BI solutions, tailored for your needs.

Embedded BI
 
NEW
IoT

Build, deploy, and scale IoT solutions for connected businesses.

IoT
 
DataPrep

AI-powered data preparation service for your data-driven organization.

DataPrep

IoT

 
NEW
IoT

Low-code IoT platform and solutions for connected businesses.

IoT

Search Result

 
CRM Plus

Unified platform to deliver top-notch customer experience.

Try now
CRM Plus
 
Service Plus

Unified platform for customer service and support teams.

Try now
Service Plus
 
Finance Plus

All-in-one suite to manage your operations and finances.

Try now
Finance Plus
 
People Plus

Comprehensive HR platform for seamless employee experiences.

Try now
People Plus
 
Workplace

Application suite built to improve team productivity and collaboration.

Try now
Workplace
 
Marketing Plus

Unified marketing platform for marketing teams.

Try now
Marketing Plus
 
All-in-one suite

Zoho One

The Operating System for Business

Run your entire business on Zoho with our unified cloud software, designed to help you break down silos between departments and increase organizational efficiency.

TRY ZOHO ONE
Zoho One
Zoho Marketplace

With over 2000 ready-to-use extensions across 40+ categories, connect your favorite business tools with the Zoho products you already use.

EXPLORE MARKETPLACE
Marketplace
Skip to main content

Digital innovation – Are you the hunter or the hunted?

  • Last Updated : April 20, 2023
  • 3.1K Views
  • 9 Min Read
digital innovation

In the quicksand that is today’s digital business landscape, staying put is tantamount to sinking. To escape this quagmire and thrive in an increasingly competitive and innovative market, companies need to continually reinvent themselves. By attacking their own operational weaknesses while simultaneously putting in place interventions that help foster customer intimacy, companies can ensure they stay ahead of the competition.

Be it business process automation, churning large volumes of complex, disparate market data, or engaging seamlessly with customers through various media channels, digital innovation is at the very heart of the modernization enterprises today need to undergo. It has grown from a luxury into an immediate business necessity, in order to keep themselves relevant and competitive.

What is digital innovation?

To strengthen competitiveness, businesses are increasingly depending on digital technologies to create new markets, build enablers that ease the way for customers and partners to interact with them, and usher in greater collaboration and cohesive efficiencies in operations. Simply put,

Digital Innovation refers to the use of mobile and web technologies to better the competitive position of a company in the market place.

10 things to consider in a digital innovation strategy

Digital innovation, like any winning business strategy, needs to be reflective of factors that are both intrinsic (your business landscape) and extrinsic (prevalent market circumstances) to your business. A robust digital innovation strategy must include an amalgamation of the following perspectives:

1. Identifying and resolving business deficiencies and bottlenecks

2. Hunting down competitor weaknesses to gain business turf

3. Redefining and expanding market presence through innovation

4. Strengthening operating teams through greater cohesiveness

5. Improving operational efficiencies through smart automation

6. Facilitating transparency for changing customer, partner needs

7. Managing enterprise-wide operations in a centralized, scalable manner

8. Reducing operational costs through a cloud-based, serverless model

9. Bringing transparency into management information flows

10.Ensuring business data security and compliance takes a front seat

Opportunities in digital innovation

Digital innovation, by virtue of its relevance and applicability across varied walks of business operations, is a necessity for enterprises looking to boost their competitive edge.

When enterprises constantly increase their competitiveness through a culture of digital innovation, remaining continually on the hunt, they become difficult to be hunted.

With the rapid evolution of technologies today, the potential for digital innovation is limitless, in terms of the depth and breadth of their relevance for business operations. Here are a few key benefits to consider:

Business development and expansion: Digital innovation can help create new user segments, enhance usage and revenues from existing segments, usher in new application and revenue opportunities, facilitate replication of product functionality in new markets, and introduce a new commercial paradigm in the market. In a digital era, where businesses have yet to build digital innovation into their business roadmap, a successful digital innovation can translate into clear business value for your customers, and an edge over your competition.

Higher through put of operational machinery: One of the most effective ways an organization can get its people to focus on innovation and value creation is to free them from routine, low-value work that doesn’t require skilled decision-making. Digital innovation occurs when routine processes, that previously required human intervention, flow smoothly through a well-defined set of decision-making rules (that only throw up exceptions that need attention). Such digital-innovation-led automations lead to faster processes, quicker response and resolution times, and the ability to scale to higher volumes, all while assuring significant cost savings.

Ease of doing business: Digitization helps you collect and disseminate information with your stakeholder ecosystem on channels of their choice. Besides keeping your interaction with your stakeholders organized, this also streamlines the collection and storage of large volumes of key stakeholder information, helping resolve customer concerns efficiently. Ease of doing business with a company is a huge competitive strength that breeds customer and partner loyalty, thus enhancing stakeholders’ lifetime value. Perceived ease of doing business with your enterprise also helps build positive brand recall from potential customer segments.

Data-backed decision-making: In a world that’s flooded with information, it’s expedient for businesses to put in place measures to collect and store large volumes of complex, unstructured market data in a meaningful manner. Digital innovation in the field of management information systems (MIS) helps businesses not only automate the collection and storage of critical business data but also help sensibly process it in real time, and derive and disseminate key business insights to relevant business stakeholders in a consumable format. This helps build customer/partner intimacy as a unique differentiator for your business to succeed.

Personalized market offerings at scale: Digital innovation helps businesses segment their customers more effectively, and create customized product offerings and pricing bundles. Depending on your business model and level of digitization, key customer and market insights gathered from the aforementioned analytics/MIS arm, can be directly fed to your personalization engine to customize business offerings and communications for different segments in real time. Keen insights into customer behavior, combined with knowledge of technological capabilities, can make a business manager sense emerging opportunities early and take proactive, data-backed business decisions to anticipate and respond effectively to market trends.

Approaches to digital innovation

Corporate culture:  “Hunting isn’t just something we do. It is fundamental to who we are.” Organizations that embody this attitude to conquer the market need to consciously recognize digital innovation as a key component of their corporate culture and communicate to their employees the need to constantly look out for areas of improvement, process automation, and digitization. Innovation should be a key yardstick for measuring employee performance and success, and training employees on the benefits of innovation should be the norm. A top-down emphasis is vital for ensuring grassroots-level internalization of this philosophy.

Initial seeding of digital innovation efforts: When a company is taking its first steps towards digitization, it makes sense to seed digital innovation projects across various functions by getting a few people from each function to champion the project implementation. It’s vital for companies to get the maximum involvement of employees who bring substantial knowledge of current processes and their rules. It may be good to start with small projects and celebrate early wins to get employees’ buy-in to such efforts.

Focus on process rather than end results: It’s highly recommended that organizations follow an agile process for digital innovation, where the feedback loop from end users is built into the product development cycle. Such a process ensures that the developed product is tested multiple times at each stage, and loopholes are identified and plugged on an ongoing basis. The final product that results also tends to be more intuitive and accepted by end users and customers.

Building an innovation portfolio: Though it’s tempting to strive for a gargantuan idea that will transform the world and make the company a runaway success, these products seldom happen. Digital innovation is never a one-off initiative that completely transforms a company. Successful companies typically manage a sizeable portfolio of innovations from across different functions of its operations. This portfolio spans from big disruptive innovations to incremental product and process innovations. As the number of digital initiatives mushroom across divisions and processes, the company gets well on its way to a true digital transformation.

Choosing the right technology: To venture into and thrive in the field of digital innovation and transformation, it’s vital for companies to choose a robust technology platform that provides it with the ability to launch cross-regional, cross-functional, enterprise-wide digital initiatives, deploy automations at scale, and seamlessly integrate various initiatives into a cohesive whole. The right choice of technology platform and tools can provide both the speed and flexibility required in a fast-changing environment.

Digital innovation, the low-code way

As digital innovation increases and more companies embrace digitization of their operations, the need for professional developers/coders has increased rapidly. Low-code  application  development  platforms (LCAPs) have emerged as an attractive model for businesses looking to lessen the workload on professional coders and instead enable their business professionals and citizen developers to take a more active role in application development. With a low-code development platform, they can automate core business processes, configure simple workflows, and handle the management/analytics of business data.

In a fast-changing digital landscape, LCAPs offer companies the ability to launch digital innovation measures 10x times faster than those powered by traditional programming. Reliance on software programmers is greatly reduced, and business managers can choose to get their programs developed entirety using these LCAP tools.

Low-code/no-code platform adoption is gaining sizeable traction, and is predicted to become a mainstay for business digitization of tomorrow.

In fact, according to Gartner, low-code app development will account for 65% of all app development activity by 2024.

Here’s a quick breakdown on how low-code platforms can help aid digitization:

● Centralized enterprise data

Low-code platforms, are usually cloud-based, allowing you to store all your business data in secure, encrypted data centers. Platforms like Zoho Creator take a structured approach to organizing your business-wide data, supporting fast and secure data migrations from your legacy databases, helping orchestrate complex data operations, and deploying relationships across different data entities in an intuitive manner.

● Organization-wide automation

Most low-code platforms support configuration and deployment of business process automations through a visual workflow designer. Zoho Creator’s development interface helps you automate routine transactions and digital operations at scale with just a few curated drags and drops. Zoho’s proprietary, user-friendly business programming language, Deluge, helps deploy complex automations with ease and with no prior programming experience.

● Empowered citizen developers

Digital transformation endeavors often go astray due to the asymmetry in information between business users and technical developers. Technical developers’ lack of understanding of specific business objectives and outcomes, coupled with business users’ limited understanding of technology is key to this dissonance. Low-code platforms empower business developers to manage digitization end-to-end, without you having to break a sweat!

● Best-of-breed architecture

While single-vendor, integrated solutions offer higher interoperability, their implementation can be both time and cost intensive. Due diligence in identifying the right vendor is paramount, as this often involves a sizeable risk and the termination of several existing business systems to accommodate the vendor’s full suite. However, best-of-breed solutions help businesses achieve cost efficiency and give more room to stitch together a digital ecosystem that truly reflects their business. Zoho Creator offers out-of-the-box integrations with 300+ applications/platforms for quick, tight integrations.

● Accelerated time to market

Low-code platforms help accelerate application development and deployment. The cost of maintenance has also proven to be lower than traditionally built applications in many cases. This becomes a critical factor in the business success of market-facing applications. Zoho Creator’s intuitive platform helps users build and deploy applications 10x faster than traditional software development approaches.

● High interoperability

This is a benefit that’s unique to Zoho Creator’s low-code platform, which is powered by our very own, business-user-friendly programming language, Deluge. Deluge also forms the core of Zoho’s suite of 50+ business applications that cater to the digitization and automation of nearly every walk of your business. This means that with Zoho Creator you can harness the potential of all your Zoho products, bringing you that much closer to digital success.

● Stakeholder management

Online client portals are secure application gateways designed to provide customers, vendors, and partners with a single point of access to a company’s products, services, and information. Zoho Creator’s stakeholder portals simplify the way line-of-business apps are shared and used by people, both inside and outside your organization, making it essential for any market-facing application that caters to more than a single target segment.

● Hassle-free operations

Low-code platforms are conceived and built to let you focus on building business apps without having to deal with any backend operation, infrastructure, or maintenance woes. You don’t have to buy and maintain servers, troubleshoot hardware, run software patches, or perform upgrades. Zoho Creator’s servers are hosted on private, geographically distributed, fully-encrypted data centers that assure 100% security and transparency in how your data is stored and managed, while assuring 99.9% uptime!

About Zoho Creator

Zoho Creator is an industry accredited, low-code application development platform that helps you streamline, centralize, and modernize business data, processes, and digital infrastructure, without requiring any prior programming know-how. Recognized as a Visionary in Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for Low-Code Application Development Platforms, for 2020, Zoho Creator provides you with endless possibilities in terms of the functionality that you want to digitize. Be it customer service apps, accounting and invoicing, or project management, Zoho Creator offers a module for every business need.

With its easy-to-use, drag-and-drop visual elements, Zoho Creator helps both business users and programmers, and has the versatility to handle complex workflows with intricate conditions and triggers. Zoho Creator enables you to connect to every piece of software you use, and run your business from a single integrated platform. It helps you draw data from multiple sources—databases, APIs, legacy ERPs, and cloud services—and presents insightful web and mobile-ready dashboards, on the go. In fact, 95% of customers have been able to successfully implement using Zoho Creator within a month!

While a low-code platform is not the be-all and end-all to digital innovation, it qualifies as a bare essential for businesses looking to accelerate their digital innovation endeavor in a structured, scalable, and time-tested manner.

The opportunity to make digital innovation central to your business strategy is yours for the taking!

Schedule an appointment with a digital practitioner today.

Get started with Zoho Creator for free.

Related Topics

  • Ram Srinivas

    Ram is a product marketer for a couple of products incl. Zoho Creator. He is an avid SaaS and automation enthusiast. In his spare time, he likes indulging in war novels, motorcycling or strumming away on his ukulele.

You may also like