Overview

pPurolite Corporation is a global manufacturer of resins for ion exchange, catalyst, absorbents, and specialty applications; it focuses resources on the development and production of advanced resin technology. Purolite is a privately owned company with offices in 40 countries and more than 1,000 employees. It was established in 1981 and its international headquarters are in Bala Cynwyd, Pennsylvania. Purolite is committed to sustainable business operations, using resources efficiently with minimal environmental impact as it continues to provide solutions that are innovative and reliable. /p

Supernova Award Category

Tech Optimization and Modernization

The Problem

pAs a manufacturer that needs to modernize, optimize, and cut costs where possible, Purolite in 2016 had planned a self-built Intranet solution that would have cost the company $250,000 and required additional IT staff for support. Once Purolite realized the time and expense related to a self-built project, it began looking at other options (including Salesforce). Like many fast-growing enterprise operations, Purolite had disparate legacy applications and systems that were not scalable and could not support its audit and reporting needs. Additionally, some were incompatible with modern integration capabilities and most lacked a cohesive workflow process./p

The Solution

pPurolite started off as Zoho Customer Relationship Management (CRM) customer in 2013 and its success with that application has led the company to investigate additional Zoho business solutions to continuous modernize Purolite. /p pAs Purolite learned more about Zoho One’s suite of services, it determined that Zoho One could meet its business, research, and reporting needs. Zoho One would eliminate the expense of the self-build option, retire legacy systems, and increase productivity with the elimination of inefficient work-arounds to achieve results.  /p

The results

pThe results include a 271 percent ROI as well as: /p ul liCost savings: Purolite has saved $100,000 annually by eliminating inefficient and redundant legacy software and hardware. /li liEnhanced accounting and auditing: Purolite is able to upload data for analysis and produce reports more quickly and easily with an automatic audit trail. Previously, two administrators spent 20 percent of their time producing weekly reports./li liAvoided expenses: Purolite was able to circumvent the extra time and big expense of creating its own IT solution. /li liImproved productivity: Purolite administrators were able to save more than 800 hours annually by way of improvements to workflow with automated reporting systems. /li /ul

Metrics

pThe company saved over 800 administrative hours per year by reducing manual reporting, and the sales team experienced an average 5 to 10 percent increase in productivity with a shortened sales cycle. Purolite was able to eliminate redundant subscriptions—Zoho Meeting replaced Go-To Meeting at a cost of $25,000/year. Zoho Expense replaced Concur, saving an additional $6000/year. Zoho Assist is replacing Teamviewer, saving $3,000/year. Communication and collaboration via Zoho Connect is reducing internal emails by close to 3,000/year, with the added benefit of creating a searchable library of knowledge for Purolite users. /p

The Technology

pZoho One is an 'operating system' for businesses of all sizes with over 40 applications under one platform, one login, and one customizable dashboard. The suite cover sales, AI, analytics and additional business applications. /p pFor Purolite, there were a few standout applications within Zoho One that helped them adapt to the digital age: /p ul liCliq and Connect/li liCRM/li liAnalytics/li liZia/li /ul

Disruptive Factor

pZoho One has many disruptive factors, a few of them are:/p ul liNatively built; Zoho is built in-house and instead of acquiring companies, Zoho builds all applications at Zoho and all applications share the same data model, allowing information to flow and shared across apps. /li liCompetitive pricing; pricing is always a flat fee per employee and that doesn't change when new applications that are added to the platform in the future. /li liImpressive support; Zoho support is free and 24-7 to all 45+ applications, including Zoho Concierge, a free service for everyone, customer or not, that helps advice customer/potential customers how to best optimize Zoho One for their particular needs. /li liEmbedded analytics; Zoho One analytics sit across the suite of applications and enable customers to track trends and anomalies to make more informed business decisions. /li /ul pAll of these factors help set up a company for cost savings and efficiency. Customers such as Purolite, are able to customize each application to work perfectly with what they need and Purolite is just scratching the surface of what they can do with all the tools in Zoho One while they disrupt the manufacturing industry through digital transformation. /p

Shining Moment

pCollaboration with Purolite's finance team and introducing them to Zoho Analytics has been by far the biggest leap forward for the company. Senior management can now access accurate financial data anywhere, anytime. Making this data accessible to the management and the sales team is invaluable. All of the reports were manually run and distributed by admins in their head office. Now, management, sales, and finance departments can all access the information they need at any time. /p