May 15, 2008

Learning From Zoho: Leveraging The Competition (Use Your Google Login on Zoho)

Zoho is a hosted service that offers a range of applications for businesses. Word processor, spread sheet, database, online presentation tool and in all about 17 applications are included. Google is Zoho's arch rival offering about 3 or 4 online applications as well.

Computer World writes that although Zoho has only about 600,000 users and 10,000 paying customers, a pittance compared to Google, it's still competing head on with Google and differentiating itself by offering more applications.

Recently Zoho launched another neat service - enabling Google (and other online services) users to use their Google logins on Zoho. This might not be earth shattering but it's spunky and I think a bit innovative. Cleary Zoho is not alone in this and is simply leveraging the power of technology that leverages single-sign on features. However, it reminds me of what Intuit did when it was first starting out. It offered a $30 coupon for Intuit Quicken for Windows to those users buying Windows 3.1. Guess what Microsoft's own Microsoft Money team didn't even offer such a deal. Scrappy startups sometimes have the best ideas.

What about your small business. Are you able to look at your competition - maybe much larger and more funded than you and offer a compelling feature. Maybe you have small inn, near a big hotel. Why not see if your card reader can read the guest club cards of the competition and see if you can snag a few more customers.

tags: google , hosted applications , zoho | 0 comments