Business does not expand in a linear fashion. When your income grows, so do your employees, systems, and procedures. Collaboration becomes critical, and the need of having a linked system becomes clear. If spreadsheets are your go-to tool in this case, you may want to reconsider their utility in your organization.

Let's face it: as popular as spreadsheets are, they aren't the best tool to utilize in a changing business. They're static, which is fine when the data is constant and the number of users is low, but it's a pain when it's not. Pushing them past their limits can result in disaster. They begin behaving strangely, causing unpleasant errors, grinding to a standstill, and, finally, crashing and erasing your data.

Database software is a decade ahead of spreadsheets. When it comes to processing large amounts of data, traditional databases are significantly more durable and adaptive, but they come with their own complex baggage. They're complex to set up, maintain, and operate on, and they frequently necessitate the services of a database administrator to manage data processing and improvements.

A modern business need dynamic software that is user-friendly and inexpensive, and is neither hampered by structural limits or immersed in technological intricacies.

Introducing Zoho Creator, online database software that molds itself to your needs. To mention a few of its numerous features, it has drag-and-drop builders for everything from forms to processes, native mobile applications with proprietary customization, substantial automation capabilities, real-time reporting, and comprehensive dashboards. You can share and cooperate without jeopardizing the security of your data thanks to our distinctive role-based access restrictions.

And the greatest thing is... It is not necessary to engage a developer to get your system up and operating. You can construct and customize on the go without having to deal with code. You can accomplish anything on Zoho Creator, from connecting with customers to managing inventory, without writing any code. What else is there to say ready to #BreakUpWithSpreadsheets?

You get a Zoho Creator account for free when you migrate your spreadsheets to us! It'll take less than 30 minutes and you even don't have to do anything because we can migrate your spreadsheets from Excel or other services.

Are you willing to leave your spreadsheets for a more functional business data application?

Zoho One, our comprehensive platform of 45+ Zoho products and services, now has one more powerful addition: Orchestly. This addition is a business orchestration platform that helps automate workflows, enforce compliance, provide visibility, and cut out inefficiencies. Orchestly is the one place to view and track information flowing through the various apps of Zoho One, as well as third party applications.

Imagine a grand symphony orchestra comprising myriad instruments. There is much variety, ranging from gigantic tubas and trombones to tiny piccolos and bells, and yet when they follow a well-composed score and are guided by a skilled conductor, we hear harmony and beauty. How fantastic would it be if our business workflows could run this smoothly? With Orchestly, you can achieve harmony like this, no matter how complicated the process.

Let’s look at an everyday example of how a team might use Orchestly:

A marketing agency running on Zoho One, that builds websites for its clients, has the following workflow. The work begins with the team brainstorming ideas and options. This could happen in Connect groups, Cliq channels, or via face-to-face meetings. Once this is done, a content writer creates the content in Writer. This is reviewed and needs approval by an editorial team, who collaborate in the same Writer document. Next, the job moves to a central design team, using Desk to manage requests, and then to a development team which uses BugTracker to log issues and track progress. Finally, the content manager needs to review and okay the website before it can be delivered to the client.

Such workflows involving multiple systems within Zoho are common today. If the communication between the different teams is only done over email or calls, things can become chaotic and information can be lost. It can be challenging for the person responsible for this entire workflow to know where a particular job stands and where the bottlenecks lie. It can also be easy to accidentally bypass crucial steps, like the editorial review or content manager approval, with no one realizing in time. 

With Orchestly, the marketing agency could create a blueprint for the new website workflow with simple drag and drop options and no coding.

You can expose the above blueprint as a website request service in Orchestly. Now each new website request would create a new ‘job’ that would pass through the above predefined steps. 

The appropriate persons can be assigned to the different stages so that they (and they alone) can get alerted at the right time and spring to action. You can mandate actions, such as requiring the link to the Zoho Writer document to be attached when sending it to the editor. It is also possible to pull the relevant information from the various other systems involved (Connect, Cliq, Writer, Desk and BugTracker in this case) and display it in Orchestly. You can set up a service-level agreement (SLA) to have multiple levels of escalation if there are delays. You can configure auto-transitions to occur between the stages based on different conditions and, if needed, schedule them to occur after a set period of time. Out of the box reports give you insights on redundancies and hold-ups, or you can customize your own based on specific needs to help tune your workflows for optimum performance.

Our example here involves only Zoho One apps to illustrate the use case of a typical Zoho One user. However, teams currently use Orchestly to handle workflows involving third-party apps or even those handled via email. Similarly, it is used across various departments, including HR, Finance, IT, and Operations, and for many different processes, such as purchase approval, hiring, employee on-boarding, order processing, IT change management, and more.

 “I have been using this tool for the past 5 months and found it to be easily configurable to our organization’s workflows,” says Sibaprasad Senapati, an IT lead at India’s first corporate hospital and pioneer in the Indian healthcare industry, Apollo Hospitals. “I strongly recommend it to those who are struggling to streamline or ‘orchestrate’ the workflow in their organization.”

 Orchestly is available now to all Zoho One users at no extra cost. Furthermore, our enterprise solution experts can work closely with you to help map out your different business workflows with Orchestly. To find out more, just email us at support@orchestly.com.