What is work management software? 

At a high level, promising results reflect effective work management. However, at a day-to-day-operations level, effective work management entails: 
 

• Streamlined and automated processes
• Contextual collaboration
• Structured and organized work data 

 
A tool that enables you to achieve this is called work management software. 

What is our approach to work management?

In today's digital world, data is at the core of work. From our experience in the software ecosystem for over two decades, we've realized that organizations that achieve efficient data management have an advantage over ones who don't. 

That's why data management is at the core of our approach to work management, so much so that we even considered positioning Zoho Tables as a simple yet powerful online database—because it gives you complete control over how you manage your data. 

Here's how we look at work management: 

Structure and organize work data 
For example, suppose you're a creative director at your organization. You must be able to easily store and organize all the data you manage.

Streamline and automate workflows
The next step involves initiating actions, such as design and budget approvals, triggered by changes in your data. With simple trigger-and-action logic, you should be able to define and automate your workflows and streamline your processes. 

Contextually collaborate
We saved the most obvious, yet important, aspect of work for last. No tool in the world can save a broken team; but an intuitive tool must enable seamless collaboration with the right features.

Aren't all software tools work management tools in a way? How is Zoho Tables different? 

Yes, all software tools address the above three aspects to a certain extent. If you replace the persona in the above example, their requirements will look distinctly different. While today's software ecosystem offers many tools to address the problems of each function, we still encounter many users who fall between the gaps in existing tools.

Zoho Tables, with its simple spreadsheet-styled interface, empowers any user, irrespective of their technical expertise, to build their own solution. It lets you efficiently collect, organize, and structure data, establish relationships between data, and automate workflows. 

This simplicity, combined with how Tables empowers you with complete control over your data and workflows, is what makes it different. 

Who is the ideal user of Zoho Tables?

Zoho Tables is made for you, if you fall into one of these three categories: 

Level 1: No centralized application
You don't have a central app to manage work. Data is scattered in multiple places, making it challenging to scale as your operations grow.
 
Level 2: Use a spreadsheet 
Perhaps you rely on spreadsheets. While a spreadsheet is a fantastic tool, it's not specifically designed to manage work. It can be challenging if you're looking for more structured data and to build workflows. 
 
Level 3: Under-utilize sophisticated software
You find yourself using only a fraction of the capabilities of sophisticated software tools but are still paying exorbitant prices.
 
Whether you're in the first two categories, seeking centralized work management, or the third category, looking to optimize your software usage, Zoho Tables is designed to perfectly meet your needs.
 
And while you can build your own solutions in Zoho Tables without writing a single line of code, we also have extensive templates to help you quickly get started!

Zoho Tables feature highlights

Break work into tasks and assign them to your team

Contextually collaborate in real-time



Store any kind of work data, structure, and organize them

Note: In addition to 20+ basic field types, we also support ML fields such as sentiment analysis and keyword extraction.


See your work in a whole new light



Create smart relationships between tables



Automate your workflows in a snap



Import data from multiple sources



Stay productive—even when you're on the go!


 

Sample Use Cases 

Marketing: You use Zoho Tables to manage your marketing operations for several campaigns. The leads that you get from these campaigns sit in a CRM. When you import your lead data into Tables, you get new insights such as 'Leads vs. Deal value vs. Conversion' and evaluate the performance of the individual campaigns.

Operations:  You manage your orders and inventory of your business on Zoho Tables. Linking these two tables will help you automatically update your inventory as orders are placed. You can also automate reordering items whenever an item falls below a certain threshold.

Product management: You manage your support tickets using a dedicated application. By importing your support data into Tables, you can link requests, feedback, and suggestions to the respective module and the feature owner. This analysis provides insights into your most utilized features, modules needing optimization, and helps in better roadmap planning.

While these are a few basic examples, Zoho Tables can fit effortlessly into numerous other use cases, irrespective of your function or industry.