WordPress & Zoho The Opportunities & Challenges
Are you trying to understand the opportunities and challenges of using WordPress and Zoho together? Then this video is for you! We’ll review the differences between these two powerful platforms and how they can be used together to maximize your success. Find out how WordPress and Zoho work together, what potential problems you may encounter, and tips for getting the most out of both tools.
#1 – Can you give us some general info on Zoho and what are some of the essential products and features?
#2 – Internally (Zoho), how is WordPress viewed at the present moment over 43% + of all websites is run on WordPress.
#3 – Are there plans internally for Zoho to get more involved in the WordPress development community this year?
#4 – What are some of the most extensive growth areas Zoho sees connected to some of its critical services in 2023?
#5 – If you return to a time machine at the beginning of your career, what essential advice would you give yourself?
#6 – Are there any online recourses or books you like to recommend to the audience-
This Week Show’s Sponsors
Zoho: Zoho.com
Sensei LMS: Sensei LMS
LifterLMS: LifterLMS
LaunchFlows: LaunchFlows
Episode Transcript
[00:00:00.200] – Introduction
Welcome to the WP-Tonic This Week in WordPress and SaaS podcast, where Jonathan Denwood interviews the leading experts in WordPress, eLearning, and online marketing. WordPress professionals launch their own SaaS.
[00:00:11.340] – Jonathan Denwood
Welcome back, folks, to this week in WordPress and SaaS. This is episode 765. We’ve got Sheriff from Zoho. Com. We will discuss Zoho, a great platform, and a great partner for WordPress. We will be discussing Zoho’s plans to build more presence in the WordPress community. It should be a great discussion. Basically, I’ve got my co-host, Kurt, as well. Kurt, would you like to quickly introduce yourself?
[00:00:57.490] – Kurt von Ahnen
Certainly, I own a consultation and WordPress agency called Manyana No Mas. We specialize in learning and membership sites.
[00:01:07.200] – Jonathan Denwood
Thanks. Sharath, would you like to introduce yourself to the listeners and viewers? Give us a 20, 30-second introduction.
[00:01:17.310] – Sharath Sriram
Sure, Jonathan. First of all, thanks for having me on your show. Episode number 765 does sound very significant. It feels great to be here on your show.
[00:01:27.420] – Jonathan Denwood
It feels very diplomatic to say significant. I just feel totally back, and basically… Sorry to interrupt.
[00:01:37.010] – Sharath Sriram
No, not at all, Jonathan. I’m Sharath. I am with Zoho, a SaaS company based in India, and we also have offices in California. Zoho is primarily a SaaS company, and I’ve been handling partnerships at Zoho. I’ve been with the company for a little over six years now, and I handle different partnerships, affiliate partnerships, platform partnerships, and distribution partnerships over Alliance and some of the strategic partnerships as well. And so it’s been a ride for me here in Zoho.
[00:02:11.300] – Jonathan Denwood
That’s fantastic. We’re going to be discussing some of the best press products. So it’s got a very large group of services and products. We will be asked what Xero feels are some of the key ones that can work with WordPress. How they see WordPress, how they see WordPress, do they see it as an excellent opportunity to build connections in the WordPress community, and much, much more. But before we go into this great interview’s main meat and potatoes, we got a couple of messages from our major sponsors. We will be back in a few moments, folks. Are you looking for ways to make your content more engaging? Sensei LMS by Automatic is the original.
[00:02:54.140] – Sharath Sriram
WordPress solution.
[00:02:55.100] – Jonathan Denwood
For creating and selling online courses. Sensei’s new interactive blocks can be added to any WordPress page or post. For example, interactive videos let you pause.
[00:03:04.620] – Sharath Sriram
Videos and.
[00:03:05.350] – Jonathan Denwood
Display quizzes, lead generation forums, surveys, and more. For a 20 % off discount for the tribe, just use the code WP Tonic, all one word, when checking out and give sensei a.
[00:03:15.810] – Sharath Sriram
Try today.
[00:03:20.640] – Jonathan Denwood
Hi there, folks. It’s Jonathan Denwood here, and I want to tell you about one of our great sponsors, and that’s Zolo. Com. If you got a WordPress website, membership website, and you’re looking to link it with a great financial management package, Zolo can provide this solution. So all your bookkeeping needs are done through Zolo. If you need new inbox email functionality and you don’t want to pay the high charges that Google will charge you, Zolo offers a great email inbox platform. They’ve got over 50 apps and services that all integrate fantastic with WordPress at great value levels, and they almost always offer a fully functioning free product as well. So it’s just amazing value. Also, if you’re a WordPress developer or agency owner, Zolo are looking for great partnerships in the WordPress space. To get all this information, all you have to do, folks, is just go over to Zolo. Com and they have the products that you’re looking for. Thank you so much, Zolo, for supporting WP Tonic and the Machine Membership Shows. It’s much appreciated. We’re coming back, folks. I just want to point out we got some great special offers from our major sponsors, plus a curated list of the best WordPress plugins for your clients.
[00:05:03.110] – Jonathan Denwood
Or if you’re looking to build a WordPress website that will save you a load of time, crawling the internet trying to find the best recommendations, they’re all listed. To get all these free goodies, all you have to do is go over to WP Tonic deals, WP Tonic deals, and you’ll find all the goodies there. So let’s go straight in it. So what do you think are some of the key products and services? You’ve got a very extensive library of services now, I think over 50 plus. What are some of the key ones that you think our audience, which are WordPress developers, designers, and online entrepreneurs that listen to this show, what are some of the ones that you think might be of the most interest to our audience?
[00:06:03.230] – Sharath Sriram
Sure, J undred. So Zerho is a SaaS company that provides a wide range of cloud based software solutions for businesses. We have a little over 90 million users worldwide and 55 plus applications that cater to different business needs across various domains, including customer relationship, finance, HR, collaboration, productivity, and more. Some of our top products are CRM, workplace, books, projects, and Desk. These are already recognized by agencies like Gartner and Forester in their Magic Quadrant, etc. And if you look at what are the ones that are relevant for WordPress, I would say, workplace, which brings together email, chat, and calls in one place. Begin, a simple pipeline management solution. Forms a powerful online form builder. These are some of the apps that I can think of. As soon as a WordPress developer builds a website, all these apps can add tremendous value for those creating websites because the moment a business, they have a website in place, the next thing would be to have a form builder to collect information from website visitors, a pipeline management solution that can help put together all the business inquiries that they get in one place. And also, they would necessarily need email, chat, and calls for their collaboration requirements.
[00:07:28.910] – Sharath Sriram
I think some of our products are really firsthand in love with the WordPress community.
[00:07:34.320] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, I agree with you. But two others that I really love is Z oo CRM. I use it myself. Not the marketing, you’ve got a separate product. And I actually think there’s better WordPress solutions for marketing optimization. But for your digital hub, your business hub, I just love Z oo CRM, and I use it for my own company. And the other one that I think is fantastic is books, I think, because compared to some of the other solutions, it’s great value, it’s reasonably easy to utilize, and it’s reasonably easy to utilize, and the technical cost of getting it set up with Zolo CRM or books is very attractive. So ow do you… Because I see Zolo CRM really pitched at the medium. It can deal with larger organizations, but the sweet spot I really see is in the small to medium sized organization space where they just don’t have the IT staff, maybe, or the resources to deal with something like Salesforce. Is this how you see, and I presume that you see Zoho CRM as one of your core products. Do you agree with what I’m outlining?
[00:09:07.740] – Sharath Sriram
That’s right, J onten. So in fact, CRM is our flagship product. In fact, we are known by our CRM product. Most of our customers know Zoho by the Zoho CRM offering that we have. So in fact, it’s one of our most popular products. And then we started with small businesses who were looking at a very simple product with the great ease of use. We initially had a free version of it as well. Then once our products was started used by a lot of businesses, and then we had a lot of bells and whistles in place. Now, if you look at the enterprise version of a CRM, it has a little more than 220 features. It’s as capable, if not as fully efficient and capable as Salesforce CRM with respect to the features and functionalities that it offers. It’s so extensible as well that it can work along with any of the third party app or even with the native Zoho app as well. You’re very right in saying that CRM is one of the most popular and well recognized products within Zoho. We are known for that. You also mentioned Zoho Books. Books is a product that came much later from CRM.
[00:10:22.140] – Sharath Sriram
Crm was one of our first products that came in 2008. Books came much later. Books is an accounting software which is used by most of our businesses in India and a lot of our businesses in US as well. Any of your tax filing requirements and accounting requirements, any of that can be fulfilled through the Hope books. And that is also fairly easy to use, Jonathan. So it’s great that you highlighted these two products of ours.
[00:10:48.910] – Jonathan Denwood
That’s fantastic. Over to you, Kurt.
[00:10:51.980] – Kurt von Ahnen
I’m still stuck on the 90 million number. He said 90 million and I was.
[00:10:58.820] – Jonathan Denwood
Like.
[00:10:59.320] – Kurt von Ahnen
What? So I guess my question is more like, I look at Zoho and I see this menu of products and this menu of things. And then I work a lot in WordPress. So immediately I start thinking about integrations and use case and how would my clients use this and things like that. So internally, how does Zoho view WordPress? And then how is it… I guess that’s my main question is how is Zoho internally looking at WordPress? And then maybe we can get into it over the next couple of questions about how we’re going to integrate or use some of those products within that platform.
[00:11:39.340] – Sharath Sriram
Sure. So given its enormous popularity among bloggers, developers, and business owners, WordPress has, in our opinion, achieved remarkable success in the CMS landscape. In terms of the platforms, ease of use, extension capabilities, customization capabilities, and integration options, both WordPress and Zoho share a similar brand ethos. We have always been willing to cater our software to any business requirement, regardless of the customer segment they come from. It’s here where I feel there’s a lot that we have in common. In terms of the integration requirements as well, we are really flexible from that point as well. So we open, like I said, to work with any business requirement. And then what is is no different for us.
[00:12:29.100] – Kurt von Ahnen
Nice. I’m just going to be transparent here. When I look at the Zoho menu, I get that shiny object syndrome. There’s so many choices. I have a hard time focusing on, Well, which tool do I need? Or Which one is doing? What’s a really good way for people to embrace or start working within the Zoho environment to pick things out? What would you recommend people start with?
[00:12:55.200] – Sharath Sriram
I think it would be great to start with mail because it’s a product that’s fairly understood and it’s a commoditized product as well. It’s where everyone uses mail for their email requirements. I think they can just start with that. Then once they get fairly familiarized with how the UI is and how it works, it’s very simple to set up. It’s very simple to use. The mail is always a great starting point for the getting the full roster of apps. Then they can just slowly get used to the much more some of the other apps within Zoho, like let’s say a Zoho meeting, which is also fairly well recognized. Maybe Zoho Click, because everybody would have used some collaboration or messaging app. It’s always important to get started with some of these apps, the commoditized apps that are already there in some form or shape that some of the other vendors provide. Then maybe go on to some of the other high concept or other people or app that offer much more functionality, something like a CRM or a desk or a project that would be more extensive with the features and functionalities.
[00:14:00.400] – Jonathan Denwood
But having.
[00:14:01.120] – Sharath Sriram
Said so, there’s nothing to intimidate the user. I understand that seeing all these apps in one shot can be a little overwhelming for any user, but it’s always better to start off somewhere, and that would be email, which is slightly easier to use. Then I think once they get used to the hangover and then it’s… Even though there are so many different apps, the way we started is that we wanted a single text tag so that we have a centralized control over all these apps. Even if they use different apps, but the user experience would be more or less the same because it all has the same back end frameworks and everything. The moment they start using one app and then they switch over to the other, they will feel that although they perform different tasks or different requirements, but the experience or the interface is more or less the same. It will always be like a one Zoho experience when they use any of the apps together. But if that answers your question.
[00:15:02.070] – Kurt von Ahnen
Excellent. Thanks, S haranth. Jonathan, back to you.
[00:15:05.970] – Jonathan Denwood
Yes. So to be honest with you, I think what our audience really want to hear because there’s a lot of SaaS companies that say, Well, we provide a WordPress plugin. And to be truthful about it, you could take a short code or iframe and you probably get more functionality than the plug in. What the WordPress community is looking from an external partner is a really active commitment around providing a really robust and ever growing API and really signs of commitment through documentation and outreach to the community that the player is in there for the long term. Because the last thing the developer wants to do is recommend a solution, then find that player just after a year just dumps its commitment to WordPress. So what is the internal discussion to your knowledge about really building out the API access and the documentation with some of your key products like Zolo CRM books? Because I think when it comes to email, that really appeals to end users that may be looking at a cost effective solution than Google Workspaces, which is great, but if you’ve got multiple inbox needs, it becomes very expensive very quickly. And we recommend Zolo mail to our particular audience.
[00:16:57.360] – Jonathan Denwood
It’s one of the solutions that we recommend. So that was a bit of a long winded question, but I think you were following it.
[00:17:05.040] – Sharath Sriram
Yes, I did. In fact, we are very committed to the WordPress developer community, like you said. A ll our products do have API documentation along with the products. If you were to extend the product for any of the other requirements, it does have deep extensibility capabilities. But over and above that, what we do have is something called Zoho Catalyst, which is like a cloud native platform that can be used by WordPress developers as an underlying infrastructure to build, host, and test their websites or deploy custom applications. It can also enable them to build plug ins and implement micro services to enhance their WordPress based application. So it’s so catalyst, it sits apart from the regular Zoho apps. It’s more like a platform as a service offering more than like a software as a service offering that we gently offer. It’s fairly new that we do because we saw a need for that as well. And the pricing is also fairly flexible. It’s more like a pay as you go model. So giving developers enormous flexibility towards what they can achieve through capitalist.
[00:18:12.870] – Jonathan Denwood
Right. So that’s fantastic. I just want to slightly push on the API because my experience is utilizing a key WordPress plugin called WPFusion, which really is the hub. If you want to utilize WordPress for a learning management system or community based website, and you want to do integrated marketing marketing, optimization. And if we get such needs, we fall back to WPFusion and it integrates with all the major CRMs. And it does integrate with Zoho CRM. But I personally know the developer and compared to, let’s say, ActiveC ampaign and a couple of other popular CRMs, the ability of WPFusion to work with Zoho is a little bit less. So is it really on your radar to really work? Is this why you’re looking at building more connection in the WordPress community? Because maybe you need more communication because I just feel that you’re just missing a fantastic opportunity to build something really fantastic in the WordPress community. Is this making any sense?
[00:19:47.400] – Sharath Sriram
It does, it does, Jonathan, especially with 43 % of the websites built on WordPress and with the host, the whole lot of developers using an enormous number of plug ins and tools that connects with WordPress. I think it’s definitely a great opportunity for us and a huge audience that we can leverage and tap into to make our apps widely available across a wide range of use cases like the one that you mentioned that ActiveC ampaign currently does with WordPress. I think we can look into it in much greater detail to see what is the opportunity and scope that we have in place that we can have worked with some of the developers and the community in WordPress. We are really committed to expand up a print among this, Johnny.
[00:20:36.860] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, I’m glad to hear that because I really do honestly think that what you outlined at the beginning of this interview is true. The company’s ethos is obviously it’s a private company, it’s slightly different, but it has shown that it’s fundamental ethos of offering free products that are not totally crippled. S ome of your products, the free products are extremely generous in their functionality, which isn’t that common. A lot of the free products are extremely crippled, so they’re practically not worth installing. But you’ve never done that. So I think the ethos of Zolo with WordPress are on the same prayer sheet, if that makes sense.
[00:21:28.840] – Sharath Sriram
It does. It definitely does.
[00:21:30.900] – Jonathan Denwood
Right. We’re going to go for a break. It’s been a fantastic conversation. I think we’ve achieved, hopefully, opening some of the eyes of our listener base to maybe looking at Zolo with fresh eyes. We will be back with some more fabulous questions. We’re going to delve a bit deeper. We will be back in a few moments, folks.
[00:21:54.460] – Kurt von Ahnen
Hey, it’s Benz from launchflows. Com. If you’ve been looking for a fast and easy way to create powerful sales funnels on WordPress, then look no further than Launch Flows. In just minutes, you can easily create instant registration, upsells, downsells, order bumps, one click checkouts, one time offers.
[00:22:13.110] – Jonathan Denwood
Custom.
[00:22:13.500] – Kurt von Ahnen
Thank you pages, and best of all.
[00:22:15.490] – Jonathan Denwood
No coding is required.
[00:22:17.380] – Kurt von Ahnen
For as little as $50 per.
[00:22:18.760] – Jonathan Denwood
Year, you can.
[00:22:19.820] – Kurt von Ahnen
Own and.
[00:22:20.240] – Jonathan Denwood
Control.
[00:22:20.660] – Kurt von Ahnen
Your entire sales funnel machine with Launch Flows. Get your.
[00:22:24.150] – Jonathan Denwood
Copy today.
[00:22:26.280] – Sharath Sriram
This podcast episode.
[00:22:28.850] – Jonathan Denwood
Is brought.
[00:22:29.470] – Sharath Sriram
To you by Lifter LMS, the leading learning management.
[00:22:34.080] – Jonathan Denwood
System solution for WordPress.
[00:22:36.180] – Sharath Sriram
If you or your client are creating any online course, training based membership website, or any type of eLearning project, Lifter LMS is the most.
[00:22:48.020] – Jonathan Denwood
Secure, stable, well supported solution on the market.
[00:22:52.490] – Sharath Sriram
Go to lifterlms. Com and save 20 % at checkout with coupon code podcast 20. That’s podcast 20. Enjoy the rest of your show.
[00:23:05.220] – Jonathan Denwood
We’re coming back. Just want to point out, if you’re looking for a great hosting provider that really works with learning management membership, community websites like Buddy Boss, and you’ve got a big project and you’re looking for a great hosting partner, but much more than that, why don’t you look at WP Tonic? We’ve got some great partnership packages for if you’re a developer looking for a great WordPress hosting partner. You can have a look at what we are offering by going over to WP Tonic. Com partners, WP Tonic partners. And we’d love you to sign up as a partner with WP Tonic. So let’s go further into this great interview. So have you discussed internally and do you think you’ve got any roadmap about how you can build your presence? I know you’ve been very generous and you’ve sponsored the WP Tonic Show for the last few months. And we’ve had a couple of discussions and I’ve given you honest feedback. But do you feel that you might have a plan of action for the next year, 18 months, about how you get the message out to the WordPress community that you’re looking to really build more partnerships in the community?
[00:24:40.800] – Sharath Sriram
Absolutely, John. And so it’s a no brainer for us, especially in the wake of the pandemic. So we are seeing huge swaths of customers switch to a cloud first approach with remote work becoming widely prevalent. And along with the WordPress developer community, therein lies our biggest growth opportunity. So unlike many other SaaS vendors that specialize in specific areas, Zoho offers an integrated suite that allows businesses to have a unified platform for their diverse software needs. We will continue to invest in our product suite to make it as broad and diversified as possible so that we can offer maximum value. Also with the growing privacy concerns and the security concerns, customers are looking for vendors who take their privacy seriously. We at Zoho have a highly principled stance on data privacy and security, and it’s important that we stay committed to our convictions if customers were to trust us with their business. Like I said earlier, we are really in it for the long run.
[00:25:40.890] – Jonathan Denwood
Just a quick follow through question before I throw it over to Kurt. But it’s a slightly different scenario when you’re talking to an open source CRM environment like WordPress. There’s other ones, Drupble. There’s a whole host of open source based communities. WordPress is the largest, but it’s a bit slightly different because you’re dealing with a dominance of developers, implementers and designers, rather than IT departments or dealing direct with people that own the company. So it’s a slightly different audience that will be influenced slightly differently. Is that understood to you feel in the Zulu culture? And have you got any insight about how you’re going to deal with that slight different community emphasis? Yeah.
[00:26:39.280] – Sharath Sriram
So there is a lot for the developers as well. So we have a marketplace in place where they can build extensions to Zulu and then they can list it there. And like I said earlier, they can build over and above Zulu’s suite in terms of the application layer and also in in adding some of the tech chops to our existing products. So we are fairly open to work with any WordPress developer with any requirement that they may have. They can just add value to any layer within that whole tech stack, Jonathan. I understand that it’s very different from our actual customer base, but we do have a lot of developers who are also working with us in different capacity. So we’re in it for this working with developers as well within the purchase community.
[00:27:34.890] – Jonathan Denwood
That’s fantastic. Over to you, Kurt.
[00:27:37.740] – Kurt von Ahnen
Great. Thanks, Jonathan. Charath, from a more general perspective, what does Zoho see as the largest growth opportunity or the biggest grab over those 90 million users you talked about? What do they see for that growth pattern going into 2023 and 2024?
[00:28:03.910] – Sharath Sriram
Yeah. With all the giant strides that AI is making, we are actually doing a lot in that space, in the AI and ML space. In fact, with respect to Catalyst that I earlier mentioned itself, we are actually coming up with Quick ML. That allows developers to train AI models and then make it work across multiple platforms. Also with respect to some of our apps, like I said earlier, we are investing a lot in R&D with respect to broadening the capabilities and then widening the product suite as well to add more and more products to our roster of apps. In general, like I said, we are fully private and we are not listed at all. We have the full freedom to take the choices, the engineering decisions that we take here at Zoho. We are in it for the long run. Then we mean a lot to our customers as well. Customers are interested, they hold business with us, so we are liable to them with respect to the data, privacy, and security that we offer. And also, we owe that as well for the trust that our customers show on us. Like I said, we’ve always taken a very principled approach to whatever we do.
[00:29:19.390] – Sharath Sriram
And then in this space as well, with respect to some of these growth opportunities, this is where we think the big picture lies in for us.
[00:29:28.500] – Kurt von Ahnen
Nice. Just when I thought we were going to do a show that didn’t mention AI, Sharath
had to mention AI. As a follow up to that, when you mention AI and you think about the scope of products that you have, what’s a common sense approach? Where do you think AI would be injected in one or two of your tools?
[00:29:48.860] – Sharath Sriram
Sure. We already have something called XEA, which is called the Zoho Intelligence Assistant. Since there are multiple apps, there will be data that would be contextually used across apps. Then it’s really a hassle for a customer to keep switching between tabs from different apps to see how the data plays in some of the other apps within Zoho. So that really makes that job easier for the customer in ensuring the customer is able to use seamlessly the data from one app to the other. And also with respect to chat GPT as well. So most of our apps now integrate with chat GPT, and so they can use it very seamlessly with some of our apps. Just to back the trend, we also have integrate with chat GPT across most of our apps, and even the apps that have not integrated will be integrating in the near future. All those capabilities that we offer, with respect to AI, it’s only going to set improving because we also have a lot of, like I said, R&D that we do internally, and we are doubling down on the efforts to ensure we’re not lost in the race. Then a lot of AI will be coming out in our future releases as well on most of our products.
[00:31:05.710] – Kurt von Ahnen
Cool. Thanks, man. Back to you, Jonathan.
[00:31:08.620] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, I’ve got a linked question. I got some good news and I got some bad news here. The good news is that I do think you got some fabulous key products like I’ve mentioned, Zolo CRM. I just love it. Books and you got subscriptions, Zolo meeting. I really got to look at that. I do another show which is really focused at people building membership and community. Zoom recently have changed their API and it’s become a lot harder to set up Zoom with WordPress, it would be a fabulous solution. So I truly think you got some fabulous products, but we got to be real here. One of the things I’ve noticed with Zoho is that you have got an extensive suite of services, over 50. And yes, you’re a very large company, but I’ve also noticed some of the products become what I call orphans. You don’t do what Google is notorious for. You just kill off a service out of the blue. But there does seem to be some of your services that are missing a bit of love. But I’m trying to be thankful here, but do you think This must be a discussion in Zoho.
[00:32:49.050] – Jonathan Denwood
Do you need to pair down the amount of services you’re offering? Because there’s only so much focus that any company, you’re a very large company, you have a lot of resources, but there’s only so much focus a company can spread. Can you give a quick insight about maybe how some of these subjects are dealt with? It’s a very large question, but hopefully you can see why I’m asking it.
[00:33:15.610] – Sharath Sriram
Yeah, it’s very understandable, Jonathan, because for a company to manage so many business apps together would be a nightmare. But we just not build that way. So we operate in a very federated way. Also, Zoho is one large company. But within that, there are several different product teams, each with their own product that work. There are separate engineering teams for each of these products that work and ship new releases, new features for each of these products. And that’s one of the reasons why, like I said, since we are completely private and so we don’t have that shareholder l ooking on us or Wall Street looking on us. So we are in full discretion with the investments that we want to make in our products. Maybe if not now, at a later stage, it might regroup rewards. For example, we all saw how just during the pandemic, the demand for a meeting based app just skyrocketed because everyone was just working remote and then people had to connect from one corner of the world to other. So till then, our Zoho meeting product was not in the consideration set for a very long time. But just after the pandemic, we saw the demand for that product skyrocket.
[00:34:26.930] – Sharath Sriram
And for that reason alone, we had to deploy a lot of resources for that particular app. So we really take that horses for horses approach with respect to the investments we make in apps. And that’s one of the reasons why we don’t kill any of the apps or anything like that, even if it does not intend to make the returns that it gives eventually. Like I said before, it’s an integrated suite. All of that in unison that gives that magic to the end customer and then not any of these standalone applications at its own merit. That’s why we believe that integrate to differentiate. The real differentiator as a product suite is that it’s fully integrated. That’s why it’s fairly important that the comparison has to be made with some a player like Microsoft, where even Microsoft sees itself as an integrated suite of apps and not these siloed individual apps together. So that’s where it really makes a difference is what we feel.
[00:35:29.320] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, I thought that was a great answer because I think one of the strengths is your Lego. I call it Lego block philosophy of Hefner and Cepheid because that really fits really well with the WordPress Egos, which is plug in based, but it’s also Lego based philosophy. And so I’m not totally committed to utilizing a WordPress solution just because it’s a WordPress solution. I think there’s some great WordPress solutions, but there’s also some great SaaS based solutions. It’s more about the philosophy and view of the SaaS partner. And that’s what I love about Zoho because of what we’ve discussed earlier on during this interview. I’m going to throw it back over to Kurt, again, back over to you, Kurt.
[00:36:36.740] – Kurt von Ahnen
Well, we usually ask a question about if you could go back in a time machine and go back to the beginning of your career and change something, what is it that you think that you would change or what advice would you give yourself?
[00:36:49.700] – Jonathan Denwood
Become a WordPress developer.
[00:36:59.100] – Sharath Sriram
That’s a good question, Kurt. Early on in my career, I used to suffer from what you call the imposter syndrome, where I used to doubt my abilities constantly and ask myself, what if I’m found out? So what if people think I’m a fraud? What if people think I’m not good enough or I don’t cut it? I later realized everyone around me was just winking it in whatever role they are and figuring things along the way. I’m not alone in that journey. I would have advised myself that it’s okay to stumble and make mistakes as long as you learn from them is what I would give my previous self.
[00:37:35.030] – Kurt von Ahnen
That is fantastic advice. I didn’t realize that until much later in life. I was in a room with a bunch of vice presidents of a corporation once, and I had planned my presentation, and I knew exactly what was going to happen. A ll of a sudden, the vice presidents were like, Okay, let’s talk about what we’re going to teach today. I was like, We already know. What are you talking about? And they changed everything on the fly.
[00:37:56.400] – Sharath Sriram
I can.
[00:37:56.810] – Kurt von Ahnen
Understand that. To your point, people that you don’t think are winging it are completely winging it.
[00:38:01.940] – Sharath Sriram
Yeah, they are. Awesome. Jonathan?
[00:38:05.030] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah. So in the business world, obviously, you’re involved in building the business up, helping Zolo meet its business objectives. So are there any books, online resources, personalities that have influenced your own view around business, online business? Are there any personalities you follow, anything that’s on your radar that comes to your mind that has influenced you that you’d like to share with the audience?
[00:38:40.320] – Sharath Sriram
Sure. So since I work in the channel, so J. M. Mcbain has been a huge influence on the thinking that I’ve done with respect to the channel. So if you just look at the resources or books. So for tech executives, I would highly recommend a subscription to the information or strategy by Ben Thompson, if you are a person that values depth over click rate. These have really expanded my perspectives on tech and how they brought… And looking at the big picture and how it’s the galaxy of tech companies and how it’s all intertwined and how it works together. When it comes to books, there’s this book called The Hard Thing About Hard Things by Ben Horovitz that taught me what it takes to be a successful entrepreneur in Silicon Valley. I particularly admired his whole peacetime CEO and what time CEO comparison and what he did in each of these situations and circumstances. And also Deep Work by Cal Newport. It also talks about the importance of deep, focused work in a world filled with distractions. And also there’s this book called Sapiens by Yubal Noah Harari. So that’s a really good book that.
[00:39:54.150] – Jonathan Denwood
Helped me understand. Oh, yeah, I tried to listen to that. I got about halfway through it. It’s a bit deep, isn’t it?
[00:40:01.950] – Sharath Sriram
It is. So it’s one of the books that’s really famous in my part of the world. So it’s a really thought provoking and quite deep book, I would say, Jonathan.
[00:40:13.780] – Jonathan Denwood
Right. Thank you for that. What’s the best way for people to find out more about you, about Zoho? I think that’s one of the things. Is there one place that you could recommend that a WordPress developer could go to to find ind out or could speak to somebody in Zoho if they’re really interested in finding out more about Zoho and integrating some of their projects with Zoho? Is there any place in the Zoho universe that such an individual could go to?
[00:40:49.970] – Sharath Sriram
Yes, Jonathan. So if they were to build, like I said, any hosting or deploying application that works along with WordPress, they can always go to Zoho Catalyst. And if they want to build plug ins for our user base, then they could go to Zoho Marketplace and then get a thing as a Zoho Marketplace partner. Or even if they want to just develop plug ins or just API based integrations with their apps or with the Zoho. Then if they want to refer Zoho to any of their customers or friends or any of their networks or audience, they can always come to the Zoho affiliate program and then become an affiliate of Zoho. Or if they want to just use any of our products, they always will come directly to Zoho. Com and then sign up to any of our products and start using it. So over and above that, we usually do community meetups. So we have something called the Zoho community where we frequently do user group meetings in various cities within the US. And also we also have a user conference called Zoho licks where we do…
[00:41:56.470] – Jonathan Denwood
I love to dive.
[00:41:58.740] – Sharath Sriram
Yes, that’s the term that we use for the annual user conference. There we also do the latest releases of our new products. If they want to get introduced to the world of Zoho, they can come over to the user conference. There are a variety of different avenues that are open for people to understand and to get acclimatized to what Zoho has to offer. And so, over and above that, they can always reach out to me on LinkedIn. I’m available on LinkedIn or even in your show notes; if you can share my email, I think they can directly get in touch with me by email.
[00:42:31.280] – Jonathan Denwood
That’s fantastic. So, Kurt, what’s the best way for people to learn more about you and what you are up to?
[00:42:38.530] – Kurt von Ahnen
Just like Sharath
said I am on LinkedIn. Not only that, I’m the only Kurt von Annen on LinkedIn. So when you find me, you know you got me.
[00:42:47.030] – Jonathan Denwood
That’s fantastic. Thank you so much, Sharath
, for coming on the show and for supporting the WP-Tonic podcast. It’s much to be appreciated and hopefully, that might continue or at some time, you might consider supporting the show. Really love Z oho products. I really think they’re great partners with WordPress. We’re going to wrap it up now. If you really want to support the show, can you share the show on social media? Tell more people about the show. That really does promote it fantastically, and it would show your support. We will be back next week with another fantastic interview. We’ll see you soon, folks. Bye. Hey, thanks for listening. We really do appreciate it. Why not visit the Mastermind Facebook group? And also to keep up with the latest news.
[00:43:37.330] – Sharath Sriram
Click WP. Tonic.com newsletter
[00:43:39.210] – Jonathan Denwood
. We’ll see you next time.
Sign-up For The WP-Tonic’s Weekly Newsletter
Sign up For WP-Tonic’s Weekly Newsletter, Where You Read The Latest WordPress News & The Best Deals! Join The Tribe?
NEWSLETTER
