Picture this: a marketing team scattered across continents, juggling documents, emails, and voice notes while a project deadline looms. The chatbot pings with updates, half the team’s asleep in another time zone, and nobody can locate the “final” version of a crucial proposal. Here comes the necessity of Zoho WorkDrive.
Now imagine that same team working through a single shared hub — every file version tracked, approvals automated, and context flowing seamlessly between departments. That’s not a far-off dream; it’s the kind of intelligent collaboration Aarthi Elizabeth and her team at Zoho are making possible through WorkDrive — an AI-driven content management platform rethinking how teams work together.
As Senior Evangelist & Strategy Lead at Zoho, Aarthi has spent over a decade shaping the company’s productivity and collaboration strategy. With a background spanning manufacturing, finance, and technology, she brings cross-industry insight into how data, automation, and human collaboration intersect. Beyond her professional journey, Aarthi’s appreciation for travel and the quiet corners of deserted shopping malls reflects her ability to find clarity amid complexity — a value she carries into every CX and EX conversation.
This executive-level discussion explores how Zoho evolved WorkDrive from a “file-sharing app” to an “intelligent content management ecosystem,” tackling bottlenecks, balancing AI’s role in teamwork, and defining the frameworks that link collaboration to measurable business outcomes.
Q1: How has modern collaboration evolved?
Aarthi, you’ve led collaboration products at Zoho for over a decade. The nature of work itself has fundamentally changed since you started. How does modern collaboration look different from five or ten years ago, and what prompted Zoho to rethink its approach to building collaborative tools?
Response:
Over the last decade at Zoho Corporation, my experience with marketing multiple platforms have provided unique insights into the aspect of workplace collaboration. This was exemplified by Zoho WorkDrive—our intelligent content management platform that has consistently evolved over the years.
In the past, collaboration in a business meant email threads, on-premise servers, and documents passed sequentially for review. This led to version control challenges and manual hand-offs. Today, technology has transformed this landscape drastically. And collaboration has shifted from “individuals working on files” to “teams working on intelligent platforms”. The pandemic has also accelerated a permanent shift toward flexible and asynchronous work cultures.
Organizations are facing exponential data growth—with 80% of data from unstructured sources like PDFs, videos, contracts, and social media. Traditional file collaboration systems can’t handle the modern business complexity, and mainly focuses on storing and sharing data. Teams need the right tools that can extract insights from the unstructured data they hold. All this while enabling synchronous and asynchronous collaboration across geographies.
Aligning with the shift, Zoho reimagined its approach with WorkDrive. The platform now features AI-powered smart hubs with Zia, workflow automation, enterprise-grade security, and strong connections across business processes. We’ve moved from a file management to an intelligent content management platform that understands context, automates processes, and supports industry-specific needs.
This evolution reflects our commitment to ensuring minimal context switching and enabling seamless information flow across all business functions.
Q2: Workflow automation in action?
We’re seeing workflow automation embedded into collaboration platforms as standard now. Can you share a real-world scenario where intelligent workflow automation within collaboration tools has meaningfully transformed how teams operate—perhaps reducing bottlenecks or accelerating decision-making?
Response:
People rarely slow things down. It’s the endless reviews and approvals between multiple stakeholders that create friction. Across industries, teams are realising that the movement of work determines how fast outcomes are achieved. In collaboration tools like WorkDrive, teams can automate the process of approvals within their organization using workflows.
For instance, in finance organizations, reviews and approvals are standard procedure. Earlier, this meant juggling between emails, chats, and in-person follow-ups But with workflows, teams can define how a file moves through the organization for reviews and approvals.
Let’s say a quarterly performance report created by an analyst has to go through a three-tier approval chain—the portfolio manager, compliance officer, and the finance head. Once the workflow is triggered (by being marked ready or moved to a folder), the file is automatically routed to the right reviewer in the approval chain. Comments are captured directly on the document, revisions flow back to the analyst, who addresses them and the file progresses through approvals without manual follow-ups or duplicate versions.
This means quicker approvals, reduced follow-ups, all while maintaining clear audit trails throughout the process. The same pattern is applicable across industries where reviews and approvals are essential.
Q3: Balancing AI and human teamwork?
With AI meeting assistants, automatic summaries, and better search capabilities now integrated into collaboration apps, how do you think about maintaining the human element of teamwork? What considerations went into designing collaboration features that enhance rather than replace human interaction?
Response:
There has been this question: Is AI helping people work better or working instead of them? While AI is now becoming a big part of modern collaboration tools, the real challenge is knowing where to draw a line.
Collaboration as we see it, brings context, intent, accountability, and security to the spotlight. We believe AI can assist with collaboration but not replace or automate human decisions.
Besides summarization and translation functionalities, this is reflected in Zia Search (our intelligent search assistant) and Zia Hubs (AI-powered content hubs) which helps teams find files and gain insights from unstructured content. Even as AI analyzes content and highlights what matters most, when it comes to approving or reviewing content, people take the final call.
The goal with AI here is to remove friction from collaboration—not remove humans from the loop. In WorkDrive, AI will continue to stay in the background. In fact, we will be enhancing Zia’s capabilities further, enabling teams to collaborate more efficiently with better clarity and insights. After all, collaboration doesn’t scale when people are sidelined. By keeping people at the centre, collaboration will continue to remain human, meaningful and secure.
Q4: Supporting distributed teams?
Distributed teams are the new normal. How are collaboration tools evolving to support hybrid work environments where team members span time zones, cultures, and work styles? What features are proving most effective?
Response:
Yes, I agree. Distributed teams have become the new operating model. Collaboration tools have also evolved beyond real-time collaboration to support asynchronous work.
At WorkDrive, we believe that evolution starts when context sharing is seamless. We have the concept of Team Folders in WorkDrive, a secured shared space for teams to work together and communicate better. With its built in office suite (Writer, Sheet and Show) that has been in the market for over a decade, teams can create, work and collaborate from any place and at any time.
As mentioned earlier, with the pandemic and the explosion of flexible work, collaborating across time zones became inevitable. That was the idea behind the conception of WorkDrive Snap—screen, audio, and video recording for asynchronous communication. This combines the power of video calls with the flexibility of chat.
WorkDrive improves discoverability and governance through data classification and intelligent search, supporting keyword search, OCR, and object detection to help teams locate files instantly. A comprehensive Admin Console that includes device management, data retention, and accessibility permissions makes managing teams and their data quite simple.
All the features discussed are built on a well protected platform with enterprise grade security ensuring collaboration remains controlled and in context irrespective of where teams work from.
Q5: Measuring collaboration impact?
Looking ahead, how do you see the relationship between collaboration tools and productivity? Are there metrics or frameworks that organizations should track to understand whether their collaboration initiatives are truly moving the needle on business outcomes?
Response:
Collaboration tools like WorkDrive are evolving from simple “file-sharing apps” to “intelligent content management platforms” that directly accelerate productivity. Collaboration is predominantly measured by its impact on quality, and cost of outcomes rather than the effective usage or engagement.
This brings us to the importance of having proper performance metrics to monitor the progress. On that note, we can consider four crucial metrics.
i. Efficiency:
The flow efficiency, which entails the cycle time for key document workflows, interactions per file, and approval speeds. WorkDrive takes care of this with workflows, and comprehensive audit reports for quick data gathering.
ii. Depth of collaboration:
This is the data on how much of the team work happens in shared work spaces, usage of co-authoring in office suite, and securely collaborating externally. This metric will allow companies to consistently stay updated in-terms of the app usage and impart necessary product training if necessary.
iii. Content effectiveness:
The content effectiveness metric will provide clarity on the most reused files for successful deal closures. This puts the focus on apps that are tightly integrated with WorkDrive and frequently used. Combined with tools like MCP, it will help businesses to stay productive in every scenario.
iv. Cost and risk:
This important and final metric involves proper monitoring of the tool consolidation, reduced shadow IT and strong data governance through centralized permissions and creation of sharing policies.
Ultimately, Intelligent Content Management platforms like WorkDrive are designed to turn everyday teamwork into a business advantage by transforming the way users share, organize, and act on content, thus enabling smarter business outcomes.
Zoho WorkDrive: Connecting People, Purpose, Data, and Decision-making
As our conversation with Aarthi Elizabeth demonstrates, collaboration isn’t just about connecting people — it’s about connecting purpose, data, and decision-making. With Zoho WorkDrive, the future of teamwork lies in intelligent workflows, human-centered AI, and measurable productivity.
Aarthi leaves us with a compelling truth and Zoho WorkDrive: when teams minimize context-switching and maximize clarity, collaboration becomes a strategic differentiator — not an operational burden.
At CXQuest.com, we continue exploring how AI, automation, and design thinking reshape both customer experience (CX) and employee experience (EX). Dive deeper into the intersection of AI in CX, workflow efficiency, and collaborative intelligence in our content hubs.
Your next step: Ask yourself — Is your organization measuring collaboration as a cost center or as a competitive advantage?
