Zoho adds AI, ML capabilities to Business Analytics Platform

By Gloria Methri

Zoho Corp., a global technology company, has launched a new version of Zoho Analytics, its self-service business intelligence and analytics platform. The update introduces enhancements, including AI-powered features, custom machine learning model building, integration with OpenAI, improved data management, and platform extensibility.

These features enable businesses to analyse data and make more informed decisions, in addition to helping them understand their customers, predict future trends, and improve operations.

Zoho Analytics has been enhanced with AI and ML capabilities, allowing for diagnostic insights, predictive analysis, and automated report and dashboard generation. This, combined with improved data management features, empowers businesses to make data-driven decisions.

The platform now offers expanded data management capabilities, including more data sources and data pipelines. This enables businesses to connect to a broader range of data sources, automate data workflows, and centralise business metrics.

“Zoho Analytics launched in 2009 as Zoho Reports, long before technology had caught up to Zoho’s vision for business intelligence,” said Hyther Nizam, President of Middle East and Africa (MEA). “Since then, Zoho has made considerable investments around automation, no-code/low-code development, third-party integration, machine learning, and Zia, Zoho’s in-house AI engine. The latest version of Zoho Analytics is one of the first solutions from the company that takes advantage of every one of these decades-long investments. The result is a democratised platform that is powerful, intelligent, and flexible enough to benefit everyone and anyone,” Hyther added.

In addition to these enhancements, Zoho Analytics has incorporated AI-powered features such as natural language queries through Ask Zia, which understands different languages, including English, Spanish, and French. The platform has become more flexible and extensible, allowing businesses to customise it to meet their specific needs, integrate it with other BI platforms, automate tasks, and create custom data connectors.

The platform’s latest version offers a Unified Metrics Layer that allows users to manage all their business metrics in one place. This includes defining, standardising, monitoring, controlling access to, and cataloguing metrics. It also features AutoML, a no-code assistant that simplifies the model-building process. It automatically handles tasks like feature engineering, hyperparameter tuning, and model analysis, allowing users to focus on training, testing, comparing, deploying, and managing their models.

For users who prefer a more hands-on approach, Code Studio provides an integrated Python code environment. This allows users to write custom ML models, import Python models or external libraries, and execute them within the platform.

The new Zoho Analytics release features over 100 updates, including new visualisations, enhanced dashboard building, audit and admin controls, revamped mobile apps, Right-to-Left (RTL) support, and more.