Small business owners often find themselves surrounded by a digital clutter of emails, documents, call transcripts, and video recordings—all potentially valuable, yet difficult to make sense of. Now, Zoho aims to change that. The company has introduced Zia Hubs, a new feature within its WorkDrive platform, designed to extract actionable insights from unstructured business data using artificial intelligence.
Zoho claims Zia Hubs can give small businesses a competitive edge by enabling smarter decisions based on the vast troves of content that often go underutilized. According to IDC, 80% of business data is unstructured—think documents, PDFs, meeting recordings, emails, and social media posts. Zia Hubs promises to make that information more accessible and usable.
“Most unstructured data is text-based, meaning pertinent information lives within email conversations, social media posts, word processor documents, or audio and video transcripts,” said Raju Vegesna, Zoho’s Chief Evangelist. “With Zia Hubs built into the full product suite, Zoho is able to provide customers with a deeper integration than any comparable software platform and nearly limitless potential uses for their data.”
At its core, Zia Hubs gives users the ability to create dedicated “hubs” around specific projects or tasks within WorkDrive. These hubs allow Zoho’s AI engine, Zia, to analyze the content in context—grouping together relevant documents, organizing visual and textual data, and generating transcripts for multimedia files. For small business teams handling a mix of customer emails, contracts, video meetings, and marketing assets, this could represent a significant leap in productivity.
One of Zia Hubs’ standout features is its contextual Q&A capability. Users can ask Zia questions, and the AI will draw from the content in various formats—whether it’s a spreadsheet, PDF, or audio clip—to deliver answers complete with citations that link back to the original file or timestamp. This function could be a time-saver for business owners who need to pull specific details quickly for a proposal, compliance report, or team decision.
Practical integrations also stand out. With Zoho Flow, users can automate content uploads into hubs from third-party platforms like DocuSign, RingCentral, and Zoom. This creates a more seamless bridge between external tools and Zoho’s AI features. For small businesses that rely on several SaaS tools to manage operations, the automation could reduce manual data entry and help ensure their content is always up to date.
Still, the benefits come with some considerations. For small business owners unfamiliar with content management systems or those who haven’t yet centralized their data, implementing Zia Hubs may require an initial time investment to organize and tag content effectively. There’s also the learning curve of setting up automated workflows via Zoho Flow, though Zoho’s no-code design mitigates much of the complexity.
Another factor is access. Zia Hubs is currently in early access for selected users of Zoho WorkDrive in the United States. A broader rollout is planned for later in 2025, which means smaller firms interested in testing the technology may need to wait or request early access through Zoho’s channels.
Long term, Zia Hubs is positioned as a foundational layer for more advanced AI-driven features. Zoho plans to develop intelligent agents that will trigger automated tasks based on content insights. For small business owners, this could eventually mean having Zia not just highlight key contract terms, for example, but also initiate next steps like assigning follow-up tasks or alerting the legal team.
With more than 55 products in its suite, Zoho is leveraging its full-stack advantage to deepen AI integration across its platform—something that may benefit small businesses already invested in Zoho’s ecosystem. For those considering new software, Zia Hubs may be a compelling reason to explore Zoho WorkDrive and its related offerings.
For more information or to follow ongoing updates, visit the original release from Zoho.
Image via Zoho
