Software-as-a-service company Zoho Corp. Pvt. Ltd. is trying to innovate in a crowded productivity market that’s dominated by larger rivals such as Microsoft Corp. and Google LLC.

The company on Thursday revamped its office suite with new artificial intelligence capabilities powered by its Zia intelligent assistant.

For instance, Zia has been integrated with Zoho Writer in order to help users improve the quality of their writing by correcting grammar mistakes, boosting readability and suggesting style corrections. In Zoho Sheet, Zia now performs analytical work by automatically providing insights in the form of charts and pivot tables so users can dig into their data.

Zia enables natural language queries of that data as well, so users can ask questions about it. Zia has also been integrated with Zoho Notebook, which as the name suggests is a note-taking application.

Zia Voice, Zoho’s conversational AI, helps users create a customized recipe “smart card” by voice command, with visuals, instructions and shopping lists from websites, which are then organized into the application, the company said.

Zoho is still a minor player in the productivity market, but its apps are a viable alternative to more popular tools such as Google’ G Suite and Microsoft Office 365.

Zoho is also competitive when it comes to pricing. Its office suite is free for single users, while small and medium-sized enterprises are charged just $3 per user per month. Large enterprises pay $6 per user per month. In comparison, Google’s G Suite costs $6 for its basic version and $12 for G Suite Business.

Zoho’s real advantage, however, is that the office suite is just one part of a much larger bundle of business applications, which are available for $30 per user per month.

The company said the AI updates will improve collaboration and productivity for office workers, enabling them to share and sign documents more easily, post notes, and drag and drop data across the entirety of its apps.

Other new features in the platform are intended to exploit some of the gaps in G Suite and Office 365, the company said. They include one-click automation to merge documents and create forms, plus integration with Apple TV and Android devices to display presentations using Zoho Show.

“There has been little to no innovation in the office worker productivity suite over the last decade, with even Microsoft only recently finding its legs,” said Holger Mueller, principal analyst and vice president at Constellation Research Inc. “So it is good to see some new competition in the space coming from Zoho. AI, cloud and social can redefine this space, creating new productivity that is badly needed for office and deskbound workers.”

Image: Zoho