Zoho customers Sparex, Luxer One, ITV Studios and Bergen Logistics are deriving returns from using multiple applications, a common data model and embedded insights.
At Zoho Day 2024, Constellation Research analysts caught up with Zoho customers to talk about implementations, business challenges and future plans. Here's a look at the interviews, what we learned and how companies are thinking about leveraging artificial intelligence.
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Kris James, Business Intelligence Manager at Sparex
Sparex, a Zoho Analytics customer, is a tractor and agricultural parts manufacturer and distributor with $100 million in sales. Sparex has been using Zoho Analytics for 6 years to aggregate data from 18 different subsidiaries and ERP systems around the globe.
James explained the setup:
"We have 18 different subsidiaries around the globe, and they all have different ERP systems. We merge them into one through our SQL Server Management Studio and reduce the formatting issues and discrepancies between the systems. Once we've cleaned that up, we ingest it in a half hour with the Zoho data bridge tool. It's about 10 million rows in about half an hour daily. We distribute that amongst 200 users on Zoho."
Zoho usage scaled by department, said James. Sales reps started first as Sparex scaled Zoho by bringing on subsidiaries. Managing directors took to Zoho Analytics next followed by head office departments. Today, product management, purchasing, supply planning and finance are pulling some form of reporting data from Zoho Analytics. Of the 200 Zoho Analytics user, about 140 are sales reps.
James' approach to dashboarding is to tailor to business purpose and sometimes a simple pivot table is fine.
"You can host widgets, dashboards and charts all in one go, but we also send automated emails. We have one report that identifies which products are coming towards the end of life. We flag those in our system and send that out to all the product managers and the purchasing teams."
Zoho Analytics was chosen by Sparex after comparing it to Microsoft PowerBI, Tableau and Qlik, said James. Zoho Analytics was the pick since Sparex wasn't leveraging all of the data in the platform and the embedded analytics approach made sense. Constellation Research analyst Doug Henschen wrote a report noting that in many cases the embedded analytics of your existing applications should be considered before adding another tool.
"The scope of how we could improve still was so much further within Zoho. Zoho pricing was more competitive and much more friendly the features and support. The support is fantastic," said James.
Going forward, James said Sparex is looking at the AI tools built into Zoho, namely Zia Insights and data preparation features, and already using them to some degree. "Ask Zia is so helpful for our users so they don't have to wait to email me and ask a question," said James. "They can type in a question and get an answer."
James added that Sparex wants to use Zoho globally but needs more language support. Zoho Analytics works in English, Spanish and French, but Sparex has more locations around the world.
Matt Kuczka, Lead Application Analyst at Luxer One
Luxer One launched as a locker service for dry cleaning in 2005, developed a software platform to manage lockers in 2012, and steadily built out a network of lockers to accept deliveries--even for perishable goods. En route to more than 200 million packages received, Luxer One has been installed in apartment buildings, retailers, universities, offices and libraries.
In an interview with Constellation Research analyst Liz Miller, Kuczka said Luxer One started in San Francisco and Sacramento with a simple concept: "People would drop off their stuff, pick it up two days later and that's how the company started," he said. "From there, it grew quickly into having lockers in apartment buildings, condos, multifamily and retail. People can pick up their packages anytime."
Luxer One built an internal system to manage deliveries, but has used Zoho for CRM, service desk and capturing data for Zoho Analytics. "We knew initially what we wanted to measure: How many packages, what sizes and time of day," explained Kuczka. "Once we started adding in additional data from our CRM and Desk, we saw a lot of tickets where a certain locker system had the same issues over and over."
"Our use grew naturally over time, and we got more insights and better reports," said Kuczka. "We create a dashboard for the things that a customer may want to see. We cater to each customer."
Luxer One has been able to collect data for Zoho Analytics in part because it is on the same platform as other applications. Going forward, Kuczka said Luxer One sees potential for AI and automating data chores like standardizing and cleansing.
He said:
"We're realizing we need to automate more to do take those jobs that are mundane that people do over and over again and try to automate them and build them. And this sink of data allows us to do that."
Kuczka said his company creates a data flywheel the more it scales its lockers. The data flows into the service desk, tickets, and customer interactions. Luxer One is experimenting with large language models with its chat bot and classifying question categories. "We're at a very early stage and we've tested a little bit. We're able to automate some tasks like reset codes for lockers," said Kuczka.
Rob O'Brien, ITV Studios, Head of International Technology, at ITV
ITV is a British free-to-air public broadcast television network that has a studios division and broadcasting and streaming arm. ITV Studios creates and distributes TV content and operates in 13 countries. O'Brien said ITV Studios need to track data beyond spreadsheets and looked to Zoho Analytics.
ITV has evolved over the years via consolidation of regional networks that are needed to streamline operations and functions. "We needed a system to bring data together, so we weren't pitching the same idea and increase costs. We needed some kind of audit trail," explained O'Brien.
Previously, ITV Studios would track 40 to 100 productions by email, and Google Sheets. This approach became really difficult during the COVID-19 pandemic. "We needed a better place to put all of our data into a single place so our leadership could understand where our shows are being made, budgets, crew and locations," said O'Brien.
"We also wanted to add things like risk values, mitigating facts and markup comments so we can adjust plans."
The business side of ITV saw the argument for analytics quickly and was clear about requirements and what it wanted to achieve. "Given COVID, we had to get a system up running quickly," said O'Brien. "That led to a low-code toolset. We had an MVP product in about six weeks. There was change management afterwards, but we knew the requirements and didn't need to get complex."
O'Brien said it used an agile approach to move quickly. Change management was needed to ensure that employees filled in data fields and forms with production data for the risk and legal teams to make decisions. ITV leveraged Zoho Creator and additional products on the platform. Today, ITV is working through various Zoho features on the platform. "This journey over the last five years we've learned about the power of low code, what you can do with it, and integrations into tools like analytics to create dashboards," said O'Brien.
Keith Cooper, Vice President of Customer Experience at Bergen Logistics
Bergen Logistics is a third-party logistics company primarily serving eye, fashion and lifestyle brands globally.
Cooper said Bergen Logistics was struggling to track leads that were coming in and went to market for a CRM system. Ultimately, Cooper went with Zoho CRM and later used Zoho Desk for client requests and service tracking before adopting Zoho Analytics.
"With the growing number of applications Zoho had available we went with a Zoho One license," said Cooper. "We've been on Zoho One for two years and we have 250 users in our organization."
A deciding factor for Zoho CRM was whether Bergen Logistics would need consultants to implement it. "We knew what the processes should be but weren't sure how we would do the implementation. Once we opened up the hood and dug around, we saw it was fairly straightforward," said Cooper. He said the company used outside help for a few processes, but it was mostly a DIY project to implement Zoho.
Bergen Logistics' stack includes a proprietary warehouse management system that feeds data into the Zoho application stack. "We more than tripled our annual sales production, improved our time to respond and resolve by a hundredfold," said Cooper, who said Zoho is being rolled out globally.
With the implementation, Cooper said Bergen Logistics has honed its KPI game. With Zoho applications, Bergen Logistics has homed in on response time by individual service agent and whether a case was resolved.
Being on one platform also makes it easier to get a dashboard to see where customer issues stand. "One of the biggest benefits of having a cloud-based platform is that anybody in the organization at any time can find what's going on with a particular account or a particular issue," said Cooper. "We have full visibility and can build dashboards for real-time performance in any operational area."
"We've been much better at forecasting. We know what our customer acquisition costs and manage our lifetime value of a customer," said Cooper. "Bergen Logistics is not the lowest cost provider in our space so we have to make sure we're helping customers know the value proposition and manage the sales process."
Going forward, Bergen Logistics is looking to add Zoho applications for account-based marketing as well as embedded artificial intelligence for further insights.