Zoho to Make Zoho Invoice Free of Charge to Empower SMEs

Zoho Corporation has announced that its online invoicing solution, Zoho Invoice, will be completely free of cost to further extend the company’s support for small and medium-sized enterprises. In the last four years, Zoho Invoice’s revenue growth has rapidly increased, demonstrating the need for a comprehensive invoicing solution to aid businesses from any industry to shift from manual to digital.

Due to the pandemic, SMEs have decided to modernize their invoicing processes at an accelerated rate. To continue its support of the SME community, Zoho Invoice offers advanced capabilities such as time tracking, auto-recording of expenses, project billing, and 30+ real-time reports to help freelancers and small businesses easily navigate the billing and payment collection process, without the concerns of cost.

For small and medium-sized enterprises, billing and payment collection has continued to be a challenge due to administrative costs, limited staff, and insufficient time resources. Additionally, businesses need the ability to access data remotely, which has caused a shift from on-premise solutions to cloudbased solutions.

According to an Analysys Mason study, SME spending on on-premise solutions for invoice management will be stagnant between 2019 and 2025, while spending on cloud-based invoicing solutions will increase from USD 0.9 billion to USD 2.1 billion. Fully cloud-based, Zoho Invoice enables businesses to create and send fully customised, professional invoices in less than a minute, follow up for payments automatically, and get paid online to achieve efficiency in their invoice process.

Zoho has supported SMEs for over 20 years, and Zoho Invoice has helped businesses with their invoicing needs for 13 of those years. Zoho Invoice’s free offering will continue to help businesses streamline their billing and payment collection process through streamlined payment collection, simplified billing, tax handling, and more. Invoice integrates with Zoho applications and also integrates with third-party applications so that businesses can use the solution to contextually sync their AR information to relevant systems.

“We launched Zoho Invoice in 2008, with the goal of providing a fully customizable invoicing solution for businesses of all sizes. Since then we’ve grown to millions of users worldwide. Through the migration from paper-based invoicing to digital invoicing we’ve seen the need for simplified billing to fit the customized needs of the SME community,” said Hyther Nizam, President of MEA, Zoho Corp.

“Our roots are centered around helping the SME community which has supported Zoho from the beginning, and we understand the challenges that SMEs have had to undergo that were onset from the global pandemic. We hope to offer Zoho Invoice for free continues to help businesses rebuild and grow amongst challenging times that they face today and for the future,” he added. Confidence that quantum computers will solve major problems that are beyond the reach of traditional computers—a milestone known as quantum advantage—has grown fast in the past twelve months, according to a new report by Boston Consulting Group (BCG), titled, What Happens When “If” Turns to “When” in Quantum Computing? Investors are moving aggressively to increase the amount they allocate to quantum computing, with two-thirds of all equity investments in the field coming since 2018.

Through 2017, those investments totaled ~$600 million, and that amount nearly doubled over the next three years. At the same time, companies are also significantly upping their QC investment, with 20% expected to dedicate resources to quantum technology by 2023, up from just 1% in 2018, according to a recent Gartner prediction. Jean-Francois Bobier, a BCG partner and director, and a co-author of the report, predicts the acceleration will continue.

“Recent advances and roadmaps from major hardware companies such IBM, Google, Honeywell, IonQ, PsiQuantum and others have increased the confidence that we will have machines powerful enough to tackle important business and society problems before the end of this decade. Impacted companies and governments should get prepared for an accelerated timeline,” said Bobier.

This upturn in investment is driven by major advances in quantum computing technology and predictions of massive performance and profit improvements as a result of this new capability. The BCG research estimates that quantum computing will unlock new value across many industries, creating up to $850 billion in annual value by 2040.

Much of the new investment is being directed toward the challenge of developing lower cost and more reliable quantum computing hardware. Researching and engineering the quantum bits (qubits) that power the computers is extremely difficult and expensive.

In 2020, a total of $675 million in equity investments flowed to quantum computing, with $528 million of that going to hardware development. The year before, the total venture capital of just $211 million was split evenly between hardware and software. BCG expects 2021 to break previous records, with more than $800 million in investments.

Quantum Computing to Create Up to $850 Billion in Annual Value by 2040

Huawei to Invest $150 Million in Talent Development Through its Seeds For the Future Program 2.0

Huawei held a “Tech & Sustainability: Everyone’s Included” forum, co-hosted by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). Representatives from Huawei, IUCN, the World Economic Forum, Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP), Global Enabling Sustainability Initiative (GeSI), and Singapore Institute of International Affairs participated to discuss the role of technology in driving sustainability and building a more inclusive, eco-friendly world.

Arabian Reseller had an exclusive opportunity to virtually attend the “Tech & Sustainability: Everyone’s Included” forum, where Huawei also released its 2020 Sustainability Report and announced its Seeds for the Future Program 2.0, through which Huawei plans to invest $150 million in digital talent development over the next five years. This program is expected to benefit more than 3 million additional people. Huawei also released its Innovation: Blood, Sweat and Dreams documentary series, which pays tribute to technological innovators and conservationists.

In the digital economy, digital talent is playing an increasingly important role in driving digital transformation and economic growth, leading to many asking how we can drive equity and quality in education and foster more skilled digital workforces. “Digital skills and literacy are not just the foundation for the digital economy; they are also a basic human right defined by the United Nations,” said Huawei’s Chairman Liang Hua at the forum. “Today we are announcing Huawei’s Seeds for the Future Program 2.0. As part of our commitment to continuously developing talent, we will invest $150 million in this program over the next five years and help college students and young people improve their digital skills. This program is expected to benefit more than 3 million additional people.”

Huawei is committed to helping develop digital talent in the countries where it operates. In 2008, Huawei began to roll out talent development programs, through scholarships, technology competitions, and digital skills training, and has invested more than $150 million in these programs. Huawei has since benefited more than 1.54 million people from over 150 countries.

According to a 2020 report by UNICEF and the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), about 2.2 billion people aged 25 years or younger still lack internet connections at home. This has undoubtedly exacerbated the digital divide plaguing many of the world’s most vulnerable. Speaking at the Forum, Ban Ki Moon Center for Global Citizenship Board Member and former UNESCO Director-General, Irina Bokova highlighted this concern saying “The digital divide impacts women more than men. Women have less access to the internet and this gap is widening. Women are now four times less likely than men to be digitally literate and represent just 6% of software developers. 170 years are needed to close the economic gender gap between men and women.”

Huawei’s Senior Vice President of Global Government Affairs, Afke Schaart, also spoke at the event about how digital technologies will play an integral role in promoting inclusiveness and equality, saying, “From our 2020 Sustainability Report, you can see that Huawei had launched programs like HUAWEI4HER and TECH4HER to help women improve their ICT skills and promote gender equality across the industry.”

ICT technologies are important enablers of energy conservation and emissions reduction in other industries. It is estimated that the reduction in carbon emissions in other industries enabled by ICT technologies will be 10 times the amount of carbon emitted by the ICT industry itself. Tao Jingwen, Huawei’s Board Member and Chairman of its Corporate Sustainable Development Committee said, “Huawei is committed to promoting green integrated ICT solutions to help other industries conserve energy and cut emissions. We are playing an active role in building an energy-efficient, eco-friendly low-carbon society.”

Speaking at the event, and responding to media queries, Tao Jingwen had this to say, when Arabian Reseller asked about sustainable technology implementations Huawei has carried out in the Middle East region and why future tech leaders should make sustainability a top priority. “We have been operating in the Middle East for over 20 years. During this period, we have followed the strategy of “In the Middle East, For the Middle East”, and we are committed to staying customer-centric and creating value for our customers. When it comes to sustainability, we have made great contributions to the Middle East, which have been recognized by many of our customers. For example, in 2018, we took first prize in the King Khalid Responsible Competitiveness Award in Saudi Arabia, making us the first tech company to ever win this prestigious award. This is a testament to our customers’ recognition of Huawei’s contributions to local sustainability efforts in the Middle East.”

Mr. Jingwen further went on to say, “Huawei has four sustainability strategies: Digital Inclusion, Security and Trustworthiness, Environmental Protection, and Healthy and Harmonious Ecosystem. All of these four strategies have been extensively implemented in the Middle East. For example, we have brought wireless services to the unserved, and made technology more accessible to people. This is how we have leveraged our technology for the good of humanity. In addition, we strive to ensure network stability in the event of conflicts and natural disasters in the Middle East. Our efforts in this area have been highly praised by our customers and governments in the region.”