Sugarfina's operational efficiency improved by 50%, with greater insights

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    16Trusted users
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    50%Increase in operational efficiency
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    5Different Datasources

"Zoho Analytics is the only product with the right mix of cost and value—with features like data visualization, integration, data blending, collaboration, user filters, drag and drop, geomaps, and much more at an affordable price".

- Ben Smith, advisor and former COO of Sugarfina

About Sugarfina

Sugarfina, a midsize luxury candy boutique headquartered in California. They own and operate 52 retail stores across North America that produce and sell gourmet chocolates, caramels, gummies, malt balls and licorice candies.

Challenges

Sugarfina had two major platforms where a high amount of data was generated—a complex supply chain with multiple distribution centers across North and Latin America, and an omnichannel customer support. The data churn was huge, and it was all stored in multiple apps and databases, which made analyzing it a challenge.

Sugarfina was looking for a BI solution that provides:

  • Data blending: Easy import, blending, and integration of data from various sources
  • Analysis and visualization: Analyze information from all customer channels and create insightful dashboards.
  • Value: A powerful BI solution that's affordable and provides value

Ben Smith, an advisor for Sugarfina, was its Chief Operating Officer till 2018, managing its operations, budget, and technology. He was in need of a suitable BI solution that seamlessly integrated and blended data from their distribution centers in Los Angeles, Canada, New Jersey, New York, and Mexico.

Additionally, they had a huge amount of data coming in from different customer channels—ecommerce, franchise, wholesale, and retail. They were using Excel and found it too complex to integrate and analyze all the data manually, so Ben explored various BI solutions, and finally decided on Zoho Analytics.

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"Sugarfina has a relatively complex supply chain, with distribution centers in Los Angeles, Canada, New Jersey, and some outsourced in Mexico and New York. We were sitting on a lot of data but weren't able to make use of it. On the other hand, customers come to us from many different channels. A BI tool to analyze information across all these channels was the need of the hour. Though we were good at producing millions of candies and distributing them throughout the year, understanding our numbers was a challenge. That's when we tried Zoho Analytics."

Ben Smith
Advisor & ex COO, Sugarfina

Solution

Sugarfina, already a customer of Zoho Creator, started a trial with Zoho Analytics. They were impressed by the integration between the two. This integration allowed the data in Creator to be seamlessly pulled into Analytics, and insightful dashboards could be created in minutes.

"I learned about Zoho and started using Zoho Creator when I was working at Fame and Partners, and later used it at Sugarfina as well. That was when I got to know about Zoho Analytics and tried it. The integration between Creator and Analytics was amazing, and it was ideal for companies like us, who struggle in capturing data. We had already created a bunch of apps in Creator to capture data, so we just fed it directly into Zoho Analytics for visualization. This integration was very alluring."

With Zoho Analytics, Sugarfina was able to visualize their production efficiency, cost, and seasonal trends of their business, all within minutes.

Earlier, when using Excel, creating sales reports and production metrics was a huge task, but now key KPI dashboards, like production, operational, quality control, and inventory management metrics from various databases could be created with Zoho Analytics in no time. In addition, Sugarfina started integrating and analyzing data from the social media to better analyze customer feedback.

Sugarfina's requirement was a user-friendly BI app, where users didn't need to have knowledge of programming languages to get the best out of it—their non-technical users could now generate perfect dashboards.

"Zoho has come a long way from Zoho Reports (the previous name) to Zoho Analytics, and we can see it from the way they improved their data visualizations. Continous improvement has been done to the product, and their support staff are the best"

Benefits & results

  • Implementing Zoho Analytics, Sugarfina's Operation Teams efficiency increased by 50%
  • Zoho Analytics greatly reduced the manual effort spent on analyzing data
  • Insights made it easy for department leaders to identify and focus on areas that needed attention
  • Overall, there was a reduction in costs across the board