Magnetar IT uses Zoho Analytics to bring real-time operational visibility to its entire business

The company

Magnetar IT is a UK-based, IT-managed service provider that delivers IT support and project delivery for businesses. Founded in 2018 by two directors who spent 15 years working in the banking sector, the company was built on a clear mission: to bring the knowledge, processes, and discipline of enterprise IT to smaller businesses that otherwise wouldn't have access to it.

With a team of seven, Magnetar IT operates a service desk, runs IT projects, and supports clients through cloud transitions and technology modernization programs. The company's core values center on truth and transparency, continuous improvement, and sustainability, which is reflected in a deliberate preference for cloud-based, efficient technology over on-premises infrastructure.

Underpinning the continuous improvement value is a firm belief that progress can only be driven by measurement—and that led Magnetar IT to Zoho Analytics.

Magnetar IT uses Zoho Analytics to bring real-time operational visibility to its entire business

"Zoho Analytics has given us the ability to sit down on a Monday morning and have a full snapshot of the last seven days across the entire business without anyone spending an hour pulling it together."

— Lewis Jenkins, Director, Magnetar IT

The challenge

As an MSP running a service desk alongside project delivery, Magnetar IT depends on operational data to manage performance, track service levels, and make decisions about where to focus effort. The business was using data from multiple systems: a help desk platform, a CRM, financial software, and more. They had no way to see all of it together in a single view.

Each system offered its own reporting, but combining those outputs into a coherent picture was a slow, manual process that was prone to error. Because of the friction involved, reviews were infrequent (typically only a few times a year) and always looked backwards rather than at the current state of the business. The directors couldn't sit down at the start of the week with a clear snapshot of the previous week without someone spending an hour or two assembling it first.

The impact was obvious: without a joined-up view, it was difficult to see the correlations between different parts of the business, like if a marketing spend increase was actually generating leads, whether service response times were drifting, or whether sales deals were progressing as expected. Decisions about the next six to twelve months were being made without the data needed to make them well.

Before switching to Zoho Analytics, Magnetar IT tried Databox. While it offered a wide range of prebuilt integrations, it lacked the flexibility to create custom data views, handle bespoke data inputs via API, or scale to more complex reporting requirements without moving to an expensive enterprise tier. As the team's needs grew, the platform couldn't keep up.

The solution

Magnetar IT selected Zoho Analytics primarily for two capabilities: its breadth of native integrations and the ability to ingest custom data via API. Because the team includes developers, the ability to build webhooks that push event-driven data directly into Zoho Analytics via Zapier, Make, or direct API calls was critical. Custom tables in Zoho Analytics serve as the staging layer for data from systems that don't have native connectors, keeping everything in one place regardless of its source.

The drag-and-drop report builder and the ability to write custom SQL queries were also significant factors. For a team that knows exactly what it wants to see and how, the freedom to query data directly rather than being constrained by pre-defined UI filters made Zoho Analytics stand out from the alternatives evaluated.

Magnetar IT built out its Zoho Analytics deployment in three layers. At the top, a directors' dashboard provides a weekly health check on the business which covers service desk performance, sales pipelines, financials, and customer satisfaction in a single view. Below that, wall board dashboards displayed on screens in the office show live KPIs for the wider team: ticket volumes, first response rates, service-level agreement attainment, and satisfaction ratings. At the individual level, each team member has their own personal dashboard tracking the metrics relevant to their role, giving them visibility into their own performance between formal reviews.

The platform also powers a client-facing use case. When running larger projects, Magnetar IT creates client-specific dashboards that give the customer a controlled view of project status and activity without granting access to core internal systems. Role-based access controls determine exactly what each client can see with the ability to turn access on or off at any time.

Data joining across systems is a key part of how the platform delivers value. By connecting HubSpot contacts with Xero financial records, for example, the team can see how sales pipeline performance aligns with actual invoiced revenue, closing a gap that frequently misleads businesses where the sales and finance views of reality diverge.

Magnetar IT uses Zoho Analytics to bring real-time operational visibility to its entire business

"The ability to write your own SQL to display data however you want (not being constrained by drop-down filters in a UI builder) was the thing that really stood out. Once the data is in, I can query it exactly the way I need to see it."

— Lewis, Director, Magnetar IT

Benefits and ROI

The most immediate benefit has been the shift from periodic, backward-looking reviews to continuous, always-available visibility. The directors' Monday meeting is now anchored to a live dashboard rather than a manually assembled report, allowing tactical decisions to be made in near-real time rather than weeks after the fact.

Service-level attainment is one area where the impact has been directly measurable. When the first response rates dipped to around 85 percent of their target, the visibility that Zoho Analytics provided allowed the team to identify the decline quickly, have a direct conversation about it, and course-correct. Response rates recovered to the high nineties and have remained on track since.

In sales, the ability to monitor deals with no next steps or inactive pipeline activity has made the team more consistently present with prospects. While the precise revenue impact is difficult to isolate, the team attributes improved sales conversion to a more disciplined approach to pipeline management that Zoho Analytics makes possible.

Customer satisfaction has also improved. Because satisfaction scores are tracked over time and visible to the whole team via wall boards, dips are surfaced immediately rather than discovered retrospectively. The combination of visibility and the ability to have a data-backed conversation tends to resolve issues quickly.

Magnetar IT considers Zoho Analytics to offer exceptional value relative to the alternatives on cost. No comparable platform that offers native integrations, custom API ingestion, unlimited dashboards, role-based sharing, and custom SQL querying comes close to the price point Zoho Analytics delivers at.

The introduction of individual dashboards has also changed how personal development conversations are structured. Rather than relying on a manager's recollection or a bi-annual review, team members can arrive at one-to-ones with their own data in hand. Discussions become more targeted, more honest, and more productive.

Zoho Analytics has become part of how Magnetar IT operates. New dashboard tabs are added regularly as the business evolves, and the platform is referenced at weekly director meetings, monthly board reviews, and quarterly and annual planning sessions.

Looking forward

Magnetar IT's near-term focus is on deepening data integration across its systems. The team is expanding the data fed from its custom client management system into Zoho Analytics to enable full client-facing quarterly business review dashboards. These dashboards will show each client exactly what they've paid for, what's been delivered, and what value has been generated, along with full transparency on hours and activity.

For Magnetar IT, this is an extension of its core transparency value. Giving clients a clear, data-backed picture of the service they receive strengthens trust, supports retention, and generates better referrals. The groundwork is largely in place; it's just a matter of pulling in the remaining data fields to complete the picture.

Magnetar IT uses Zoho Analytics to bring real-time operational visibility to its entire business

"We understand that a small change we can help with can have a large impact on people, on the business, and on their lives. Zoho Analytics is part of how we make sure we're always making those changes in the right direction."

— Lewis, Director, Magnetar IT