Multinational technology company, printIQ, sees huge improvements in productivity, communication, and growth with Zoho One.

printIQ began their journey with Zoho in 2014 by implementing Zoho CRM after their business pivoted into the print ERP space and they experienced a strong growth in customer numbers. Initially, they continued to use Harvest for timekeeping, Basecamp for project management, and several other standalone applications. Even with a solid CRM system in place, several disconnected applications left the printIQ team feeling disconnected and frustrated.

With an expanding global team and increasing customer demand, "our work was becoming really complicated moving back and forward between different applications that couldn't speak to each other. We also didn't have transparency of the whole business," said Adrian Fleming, printIQ's global director of sales.

Since 2014, the printIQ team had been using Zoho CRM alongside multiple third-party applications to manage their operations. The problem with this was not that the individual applications didn't work, but that they failed to work together effectively in important situations. Mainly, the flow of customer data was siloed in several apps and required manual work. "As our customer base was growing quickly, we really needed a connected system and holistic view of our operations," Fleming said, "the goal was one portal view, so that when we searched a customer, we could see their ticket history, project status, sales records, and so on." printIQ needed a complete business solution that could achieve these goals, while keeping in mind the required integration with their home-built ERP system.

In early 2018, Fleming along with fellow directors, Anthony Lew and Mick Rowan, decided it was time to seek alternative solutions that could provide a more holistic approach to their entire business process. Their decision came down to Salesforce, SAP, and Zoho One. "While Salesforce tells a good story, we trusted the opinion of our business consultant, Kylie Harker from Squirrel CRM Hub, who had helped us implement Zoho CRM. She recommended Zoho One," said Fleming, "An added bonus was that the price difference between Salesforce and Zoho was astronomical, so in choosing Zoho, we've been able to save money on licenses and put the savings back into the business."

As printIQ had already implemented Zoho CRM in 2014, their transition to Zoho One was relatively smooth. Their consultant, Kylie Harker, helped them with the initial set up and integration of their existing applications including Zoho CRM, Xero, a third-party accounting application, and their own printIQ management workflow system (MWS) with the rest of the apps they wanted to use in Zoho One.

Because their systems are connected, they can now easily nurture and convert leads, have contracts digitally signed, handle project deployment, track KPIs, communicate globally, and visualise and analyse their company at a holistic level.

The most notable app printIQ uses is Zoho Creator, a low-code app development platform. "Zoho Creator is one of your better kept secrets. The ability to develop our own applications is very powerful and something quite unique to Zoho," said Fleming. With Creator, the printIQ team has built four custom applications, with more in the works. Predominantly, the sales team uses a printIQ proposal builder that they've integrated into Zoho CRM to easily create custom proposals. With Zoho Sign, an e-signature tool, the sales team sends a proposal to the customer for an instant, paperless signature. Once the proposal is signed and a deal is created, a deployment project is automatically created in Zoho Projects and the customer information from Zoho CRM becomes visible in Zoho Projects and vice versa. Within Zoho Projects, the team has an internal project for each deployment that they use to track employee tasks.

In Zoho CRM, leads are automatically assigned to the sales manager depending on the relevant business characteristics such as location and size. Sales managers are guided through the lead nurturing flow with a series of prompts at each stage. The leads also receive a series of automated emails along the way. On top of this, printIQ relies heavily on Zoho Cliq, a team communication tool. "We use Cliq every minute of every hour of every day. Without Cliq, our communication would have been a lot more difficult," Fleming said.

The printIQ team also uses Zoho Desk, a help desk tool, as an online knowledge base and to handle customer support tickets. Simultaneously, the team uses Zoho SalesIQ on their website to track website visitors from their IP address and location to their browser and movements on the site. With these two tools connected, when a known customer enters the site, this journey and any information entered on the site is added to their CRM record. Similarly, if a non-customer visits the website and enters any information through a webform, this is added as a new record in the CRM, and the lead to deal process begins.

In the background, important internal and customer data is sent to Zoho Analytics to provide printIQ with the information and tools to analyse cross-departmental information. This helps them reflect on operations holistically to make future predictions and better business decisions.

Additionally, printIQ uses Zoho Forms, a drag-and-drop form builder, internally and externally with contractors and Zoho Campaigns for their email marketing activities. In the future, Fleming would like to transition their finances over to Zoho Books, reaching the goal of the 360-degree customer view.

"One huge benefit is that we definitely communicate better as a six-country organisation than we did before Zoho," said Fleming. With the communication and collaboration tools available in Zoho One, printIQ has drastically improved their ability to communicate globally, with messages, audio and video calls. "I don't want to think about what our process would be like without Zoho One. It would be terrible, we are very reliant on it," said Fleming.

One thing that surprise Fleming was the versatility and breadth of solutions available in Zoho One. When printIQ were first introduced to Zoho in 2014, they decided to use the CRM to manage customer relations. Now the team uses over 10 applications to replace legacy tools and give added functionality, including four purpose-built Creator applications, as core pieces of their business process. "We are definitely using Zoho in more areas of the business than we thought we ever would," Fleming said.

The biggest surprise for Fleming was Zoho Cliq. Through their use of Cliq, the company has been able to decrease internal email traffic and easily maintain communication across the globe. "Cliq has been the biggest surprise. We never even thought about bringing a product like that into printIQ but once we started using it, the email traffic internally dropped significantly and now everyone is chatting all the time across the world over Cliq," said Fleming.

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, "early on we made the decision to send everyone home to work remotely. We are lucky we had the systems in place to manage our operations online and from home as all the data is just sitting at our fingertips. It's been very useful for us and our customers," said Fleming. The easy flow of data between applications and relevant team members has been a huge part of printIQ's success. In the five years since implementing Zoho One printIQ has experienced substantial growth. By replacing legacy tools with a solid foundation of apps, the team has been able to automate multiple tedious processes. Because the data in Zoho One is available all the time, for everyone, there is no stalled communication and the team can work faster and smarter. "We've grown five fold in five years and we couldn't have done it without Zoho. It's definitely playing a big part in our success," Fleming explained, "Also the fact that we have been able to slowly add on and develop more applications while we, as a business, grow has been really valuable."

In 2018, when printIQ first implemented Zoho One, they had 20 staff using the system. Now, three years later, they have 50 users across five countries. What started as a need to find a CRM solution because of growing customer numbers, has evolved into a system that can facilitate printIQ's continued growth and changing needs. With Zoho One, Fleming and the printIQ team have been able to replace multiple disconnected applications, with one system of integrated software for their entire business. "Our process before Zoho was really disconnected. Finally having a way to consolidate everything and have transparency in the business is a huge weight off our shoulders."

Moving forward, the printIQ team plans to continue finding apps to fill gaps or compliment the process they have. "Thanks to Zoho One, as we continue to grow, there are plenty of opportunities to add more apps to fit our sales process," Fleming added. "We already have plans to use Zoho Books for our accounting, and a few more Creator apps are on the way."