LifeSherpa increase its value proposition by 40% using embedded Zoho Analytics

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    95Users
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    40% increase in efficiency
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    1Data Source

"What we really love about the Zoho platform is that it strikes a relatively good balance between simplicity, ease of use, and capability."

Michael Renner
Co-founder and CTO, LifeSherpa

About LifeSherpa

LifeSherpa, is a remote support platform that helps employers and vocational job training organizations deliver instruction and on-the-job support for the growing neurodiverse workforce. The company also provides residential support services for people with developmental disabilities.

The LifeSherpa platform was thoughtfully crafted to open up avenues for a more autonomous and independent way of life for people with cognitive challenges.

Background

This platform was initially designed to help children with developmental disabilities. It takes clients’ input to create unique programs that cater to the specific needs of a person’s disability. The result is a daily schedule that is downloaded onto their mobile device, compartmentalized into specific tasks.

Considering the progress of the platform, they decided to expand the platform to train people for job skills. To execute this, reminders are sent to complete each task on the individual’s schedule, whether it’s brushing teeth, driving to work or socializing with co-workers. If the person needs assistance, their support personnel are readily accessible through the platform.

Challenges

LifeSherpa converts all this activity into data that can be analyzed by their customers to customize the program according to the individual’s progress.

Since each customer has unique needs, the data required and the collected information differ based on the configurability of the platform.

With all this data, the team wants to build an operational and customizable dashboard for each of their customers. The ideal solution they were after required an analytics and reporting platform with the capacity to create simple, easy-to-use dashboards, catering to the anticipated variability among their diverse customer segments.

They also wanted to be able to facilitate customers to create reports on their own. So the team preferred a platform that would seamlessly integrate with their applications, has robust APIs and with a single sign on capability.

LifeSherpa wanted a solution that could provide a:

  • User-friendly reporting platform
  • Smooth learning curve
  • Robust API stack
  • SSO capabilities
LifeSherpa uses Zoho Analytics to increase its value proposition by 40%

"I wanted a platform that would allow my customers to build their own reports and do it in a manner that I didn't have to deal with heavy training or end up with heavy support costs. We also wanted to showcase that availability of operational and customizable dashboard as one of the benefits of using LifeSherpa"

Michael Renner,
Co-founder & CTO, LifeSherpa.

Solution

The team was using Business Objects (now referred as SAP BusinessObjects) but was not satisfied with the product. After thorough market research, the team concluded that Zoho Analytics was the best choice, mainly due to its standout features, such as a user-friendly interface, robust API, and flexible and transparent pricing plans.

With Zoho Analytics, they were able to build a perfect integration strategy meeting their specific business needs. They integrated LifeSherpa with Zoho Analytics on API layer so the data moves in and out through API.

Through API they generated few common reporting objects, and embedded them into the LifeSherpa platform via API, making it as part of the experience for the customer.

Apart from these embedded reports, the platform enables customers to compile their own reports. This again is achieved by API.

The backend of the LifeSherpa platform is supported by a NoSQL database. The team has build a datapump that takes the data from NoSQL database, normalize it and stores it into MySQL.

From MySQL data are populated into Zoho Analytics through API. A separate workspace is created for each customer and the data is populated accordingly and customer's are given access to their workspace to build reports on their own.

Michael was impressed by the range of data visualizations and the robust API stack. They were able to prepare visually rich and insightful dashboards, and the strategic use of API was instrumental in their success.

LifeSherpa uses Zoho Analytics for:

  • Embedded reports: The reports are embedded into the product via APIs thereby providing contextual insights to customers.
  • Custom reports: Through API the relevant data is made available to the customers to build their own reports.
  • Comparative analysis: Equips support personnel to conduct comparative analysis among individuals, such as measuring the time taken to complete identical tasks, and more.
  • Task analytics: To analyse the status of task assigned like when was it assigned, when was it completed, how long did it take and more.
  • Status analytics: The product offers a configurable status set incorporating essential elements of an individual's daily routine. For instance, support personnel can analyze an individual's emotional status at different times of the day through reports.
  • Notification analytics: To analyze the support personnel' response time to the alerts and notifications delivered to them.

"Zoho Analytics has had a very robust API that would allow us to achieve the goal and now Zoho Analytics has become integral part of the value proposition that we deliver to our customers and it is one of the selling points to our product now."

The key benefit that LifeSherpa achieved using Zoho Analytics is that it has become an integral part of the value proposition. It has increased the efficiency of the support personnel by 40%.

With the exceptional reporting that includes status analytics, task analytics, comparative analytics and more, the support personnel didn't have to spend much time trying to figure out the problem. The data points to the problem directly, enabling them to spend time on core value add activities.

The dashboards and reports are used by nearly 800 users.

Benefits & results

  • Data import and export was made easy.
  • Delivered operational and customizable reports and dashboards
  • Enabled personalized report creation for each customer
  • Increased the efficiency of the support personnel by 40%.