AdventNet adds HR modules to hosted Zoho suite

March 10, 2008 (Computerworld) AdventNet Inc.'s today unveiled Zoho People, a new human resource management application that adds recruitment, benefits and skills management features to the company's hosted office-productivity suite.

The new offering was disclosed in a post by Zoho evangelist Raju Vegesna on Zoho's blog site. According to the post, the customizable Zoho People HR modules are targeted at growing companies with more than 50 employees.

"Very small businesses can keep track of people in ad-hoc ways, but once a company reaches a certain size (even 25-30) keeping track of things like recruitment, IT resource allocation, benefits, vacations, skill management etc. becomes time consuming," Vegesna wrote. "That is the level at which a business typically gets a dedicated HR person. That is where Zoho People steps in."

Zoho People includes an organization module that maps out departmental structure and titles; a recruitment module that automates job posting and hiring processes; a forms module with templates for expense report filing, time-off reporting and other activities; and a checklist module that assigns users or groups to tasks based on workflow. A self-service module in the HR suite enables managers to define job openings and set up team structure, and lets employees send forms and information to HR managers.

Vegesna said Zoho People should boost the productivity of HR workers by providing Web-based access to the full Zoho suite of hosted business applications, including Zoho CRM, Zoho Meeting, Zoho Projects and Zoho DB.

Analysts have criticized other nascent hosted enterprise application offerings, such as Zoho competitor Google Inc.'s Google Apps, for being unable to satisfy corporate customers without additional infrastructure investment.

The blog post did not address security and redundancy concerns of corporate users.