Zoho Launches AI-Rich Version of Zoho Analytics, Democratizing Self-Service BI

admin September 12, 2024

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Zoho Corporation has launched an enhanced version of Zoho Analytics, a self-service business intelligence (BI) and analytics platform. This release includes more than 100 enhancements, including new AI and machine learning (ML) features designed to enable diagnostic insights, predictive analytics, and automated report and dashboard generation. These updates add significant power, intelligence, and flexibility, making Zoho Analytics more adaptable to a wider range of businesses and user populations than competitors.

Zoho Analytics now includes a custom ML modeling studio, seamless integration with OpenAI, and third-party BI platform extensions. The company believes that this development positions Zoho Analytics as the leading platform in the BI market.

Philip Edey, Head of Business Analytics at Arctic Spas, a global leader in all-weather pools and spas, praised the role of Zoho Analytics in the company’s strategic planning.

“Zoho Analytics has played an important role in the company, helping us strategize and stay ahead of the competition. The platform’s data preparation tools ensure our strategy is guided by accurate, actionable data, which Ask Zia and other AI capabilities can quickly analyze. Since then, the platform’s predictive analytics allow us to do so
to accurately predict future trends, while the new multi-layer map feature gives us the ability to visualize our geographic data on multiple levels.

“Whether it’s sales regions or customer demographics, we can now process detailed map views to uncover trends and insights that drive strategic decisions. “Creating a new line of spas is a serious undertaking and comes with a lot of risk, but Zoho Analytics enables us to innovate and be the first to market with greater confidence and success,” said Edey.

He added that Zoho Analytics’ predictive analytics and multi-layered mapping features enable detailed visualization of geographic data, helping to uncover trends and make informed strategic decisions.

Raju Vegesna, Chief Evangelist of Zoho, demonstrated the evolution of the platform.

“Zoho Analytics was introduced in 2009 as Zoho Reports, long before technology caught up with Zoho’s vision of business intelligence,” he said. “Since then, Zoho has invested heavily in automation, no-code/low-code development, third-party integration, machine learning, and Zia, Zoho’s internal AI engine. The latest version of Zoho Analytics is one of the first solutions from a company that has benefited from decades of investment. The result is a democratic platform that is powerful, intelligent, flexible, and easy to use.”

The new version of Zoho Analytics includes enhancements in four key areas: Data Management, AI, Data Science & Machine Learning (DSML), and Extensibility.

Data Management Hub

Zoho Analytics has expanded its data management capabilities to support more accurate decision making. The platform now includes Stream Analytics and 25 additional data connectors, adding to its 500+ connector portfolio. These connectors give businesses access to a repository of data from a wide range of analytics sources.

Users can now build and manage complex ETL data pipelines within Zoho Analytics, using the visual builder or the new Python Code Studio for custom transformations and ML models. The platform’s Unified Metrics layer allows users to define, measure, monitor, and catalog business metrics in one central location. Zoho Analytics also offers a new Headless BI mode, which allows real-time access to consistent business metrics across different applications.

BI Equipped with Generative AI

Generative AI capabilities are added to Zoho Analytics to provide more efficient and contextual insights. Zia Insights, Zoho’s AI-powered engine, now offers diagnostic analytics to bring decision intelligence to the platform. Ask Zia, Zoho’s Natural Language Query AI copy, has been updated to support Spanish and French, and can now collaborate on IM channels like Microsoft Teams. The platform also features Auto Analysis, which enables AI-powered, automated generation of metrics, reports, and dashboards.

The integration of Zoho Analytics with OpenAI through Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) supports more accurate and relevant query responses. The platform allows users to use OpenAI APIs via BYOK, providing more flexibility in accessing datasets and building SQL queries.

Data Science and Machine Learning (DSML) Studio

The new DSML Studio in Zoho Analytics enables users to create custom ML models for tasks such as predicting customer churn. The AutoML feature provides code-free tools for creating ML models with feature engineering, multi-parameter tuning, and model analysis. Code Studio provides an integrated Python environment for users to create custom ML models or import external libraries.

Platform Extensibility

Zoho Analytics now supports a new BI fabric that integrates data from other BI platforms, including Power BI and Tableau. This allows businesses to manage and analyze data from multiple BI platforms within a single portal. The platform also supports dynamic workflows, URL and Webhook actions, and integrates with Zoho Flow to trigger workflows across 500+ apps. Additionally, the platform now includes a data connector builder that requires no custom data integration code.

The latest Zoho Analytics update includes more than 100 new features, such as improved visualizations, improved dashboard design, test controls, improved mobile apps, and Right-to-Left (RTL) language support.