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| Mathew introduces Zoho BackToWork in a virtual session for media. The dashboard for the solution, pictured, covers a wide range of aspects in the implementation of social distancing and compliance required in the corporate environment today, including wellness self-assessments and procurement. |
Zoho, a global technology company offering software for sales, marketing, HR, finance and IT teams, has announced BackToWork, a solution enabling businesses and organisations to safely transition back into the workplace.
BackToWork is the latest program to be introduced as part of the company's ongoing relief efforts, which support businesses impacted by the COVID-19 crisis:
- In March 2020, Zoho introduced Remotely amid global office shutdowns. The free suite of 11 business applications is designed to help companies of all sizes transition to remote work, and includes functionality such as videoconferencing, file management, and project management. Since its release, more than 25,000 organisations have adopted Remotely, which will remain free for businesses through to September 1.
- Zoho then unveiled the Small Business Emergency Subscription Assistance Program (ESAP), which continues to provide Zoho's small business customers free access to existing Zoho applications for three months. Nearly 20,000 organisations have taken advantage of ESAP.
- In April, Zoho's Vertical Relief Plan was rolled out, offering businesses in the retail, education as well as government and non-profit verticals custom-built tools created with the company's build-apps-yourself platform Zoho Creator, and assistance programmes to navigate pandemic-related issues.
Free for the remainder of 2020, BackToWork, also powered by Zoho Creator, supports COOs, Chief Human Resources Officers, Facility Heads and their teams in making critical decisions around returning to the workplace without compromising on the safety and compliance aspects.
"Now that organisations are planning to re-open in some parts of the world, we want to help them resurge, this time through BackToWork, an application enabling companies to maintain end-to-end workplace safety and meet compliance needs, without affecting productivity," said Gibu Mathew, Vice President, and GM, Asia Pacific Zoho Corporation.
"The next phase of normality in the workplace would also need confidence-building steps from employers and this application would help in that direction."
Mathew elaborated that employee and community confidence in a business underlies the current push to generate demand and enable e-business. He said that BackToWork is driven by best practices and provides a broad framework to help businesses adopt safe work practices post-lockdown.
"We wanted to make sure businesses can go back to work smoothly," he said.
He also shared that Zoho decided that its employees should work from home when the pandemic struck. "We were able to switch to that model in less than three days," he said. "We were able to use our own products to get our employees productive."
BackToWork consists of six modules designed to address every concern involved in the process of re-entering the workplace, all within a secure, easy-to-navigate solution, Feature highlights include:
Safe Entry
Define multiple buildings and locations and control facility access based on employee wellness and travel history via a contactless end-to-end check-in system through generated QR codes.
Employee wellness assessment
Track workplace wellness by defining self-assessment, safe entry, and travel policies. Employees can securely and privately submit a wellness questionnaire reporting travel history, recent medical history, and details of possible exposure.
Maintenance and assets
Define and manage assets and building maintenance requests for employees. Repair/replacement requests can be handled in the app.
Dashboard
Gain a 360-degree view of workplace data in preconfigured dashboards as well as add and manage employees, and define roles for tasks such as approvals and emergency contacts.
Communication
Materials such as announcements, FAQs, and best practices, policies and safety documents can be shared with employees and managed in the Communication module.
Integration
It can be easily integrated with HR platforms like Zoho People and BambooHR. BackToWork can also be integrated with Active Directory and Zoho Directory.
Customisation
The application allows organisations the option of advanced customisation through Zoho Creator.
Zoho software is continually being enhanced based on customer feedback, and can be customised easily, either directly with Zoho Creator, or with Zoho's help. New features in the pipeline for BackToWork include a travel management module and integrations with popular videoconferencing platforms.
Zoho BackToWork users have the assurance that their data is confidential and protected, and only users themselves maintain ownership of that data. The company says it respects user privacy and does not have an ad-revenue model in any part of its business, including its free products. Zoho does not allow any third-party trackers to monitor usage behaviour on its cloud services, and does not sell data to ad-based companies.
Mathew added that real-life applications of Zoho software can be surprising. "Customers are the most creative out there. They use the products and they know the products better than us," he noted.
When Remotely was introduced, the company learned that the remote control offered by Zoho Assist was actually the most popular functionality, ahead of video and chat as everyone suddenly needed help in configuring their laptops and upgrading them to work from home.
A Zoho customer who normally travels to sites to train others is considering the use of Zoho Meeting as a remote training tool, he said.
More than 50 million users in 180+ countries around the world rely on Zoho every day. The US-headquartered privately-held company has more than 8,000 employees. Its international headquarters are in Chennai, India, and it also has offices in the APME region in India, Japan, China, Australia, the UAE and Singapore.
Zoho offers apps in nearly every major business category. Its 45+ apps include solutions for sales, marketing, customer support, accounting and back office operations, as well as productivity and collaboration tools. Customers have built 2 million custom apps through Zoho Creator.
Details:
BackToWork is available in Arabic, Chinese, Japanese and accessible via progressive web app, iOS and Android. Progressive web apps use the latest technologies to combine features of desktop web and mobile apps. They are designed to work on any standards-compliant browser.
As part of Zoho’s ongoing effort to support businesses during these uncertain times, BackToWork will be offered free of charge until the end of 2020. After that, it will cost US$2 per user every month for all regions.
