Dublin-based Allergy Standards uses Zoho CRM to manage sales, document employee progress, and structure marketing assets

The company

Allergy Standards Limited (ASL) is a leading TIC (testing, inspection, and certification) organisation based in Dublin, Ireland. Founded by Dr John McKeon, an A&E physician, it aims to help asthma and allergy sufferers make better-informed choices about the products they buy and come into contact with. "What we do is we test products, we inspect them, and if they meet our performance criteria, we certify them to our various standards," explains John. To date, ASL has certified more than 50 million products from some of the world's biggest brands, including Disney, Procter & Gamble, 3M, Dyson, LG, and Samsung.

The challenge

Established in 2000, Allergy Standards utilised a range of platforms to manage operations and customer data during its first decade in business. "We were the classic start-up," says John. "We used a lot of disparate systems and a lot of basic Excel projects." This disjointed software stack and collection of cluttered spreadsheets were beginning to cause inefficiencies, confusion, and duplication as ASL grew. To keep ASL on the path to global success, John knew that this had to change. "There comes a time when you have to scale, and get a lot of discipline, reproducibility, and consistency in your processes," he advises.

John set about searching for a software provider that could handle his team's diverse needs, from sales automation to a marketing repository. It was that search, alongside ASL's Head of Innovation, Dave Morrisey, that introduced him to Zoho, kick-starting a partnership that's spanned more than 15 years and counting.

Enlisting help from Bill Quinn of 1 Cloud Consultants, (a certified Zoho partner), ASL deployed Zoho solutions across the business, with CRM as the entry-point. Zoho CRM now forms the core of ASL's operations and boasts tight integrations to many other processes and platforms across the business. Through Zoho, the discipline, reproducibility, and consistency that John sought have now been realised.

ASL's full CRM requirements:

• Link client data with related certified products, testing applications, and renewal dates from Zoho Creator.
• Capture website enquiries via Zoho Forms and push them into the CRM.
• Attribute Zoho Survey responses to their respective CRM contacts. 
• House multiple pipelines to track the sales of different services.
• Pull live pricing information from Zoho Books. 
• Provide a mobile app for fast data recall during international travel.
• Dedicated custom modules for marketing assets and activities.
• Log employee development plans and link them to company-wide goals and KPIs.

Let's discover why John calls Zoho "a gift to entrepreneurs"!

The solution

Almost all of ASL's operations have been transformed by Zoho CRM. However, the functions it has benefitted the most are sales, marketing, and learning and development. 

Sales

From first contact through to acquisition and ongoing account management, Zoho CRM enables every stage of ASL's sales cycle to run seamlessly.

It captures inbound enquiries from an embedded Zoho Form on ASL's website which are written straight into the Contacts module, triggering an instant notification to a shared sales inbox. From there, an automated acknowledgement email is sent to the enquirer, linking them to a Zoho Survey which extracts deeper technical details and requirements. These survey answers are auto-populated against the contact's CRM record upon submission. "It's quite detailed in what we ask them, and a lot of the information that they fill in is very useful to the team," explains Dave. This data collection process helps ASL assign the contact to the most appropriate sales colleague based on sector specialisms.

ASL offers a range of different services to its clients. "We've got test and technical services, licensing services, business services, and educational courses. The journey that each one of these prospects goes on is different," says Dave. To reflect this, ASL created multiple pipelines inside the deals module, with each service utilising different cycle stages, layouts, and customised data fields. Colours feature heavily, helping ASL identify stagnant deals during its weekly sales meetings. "When a prospect is at a certain stage, that's a colour. The tags are different colours as well; it's very visual, and it's easy to see what's happening. If there's a lot of green, things are going well. If there's a lot of red, we've got issues!" laughs Dave.

Perhaps the most critical benefit for ASL's sales team is the CRM's integration with its standards database and client portals from Zoho Creator. These can be consulted right from within the CRM for an up-to-date snapshot of the products each client has in testing or that are approved. "What we're able to see now is a product that's eligible to be certified, and legally that it's enabled to use the mark, in one application," enthuses Dave. Certificate renewal dates are also visible, ensuring the sales team can manage the flow of testing applications and ensure the delivery of continuous service to ASL customers with real-time precision.

What's more, pricing data from Zoho Books also cascades into the CRM, alerting the team to offers on testing rates for different products. "It's a story that they can go out to their prospects with," says Dave, highlighting the sales opportunities that this joined-up process creates.  

Zoho CRM is now the only space that ASL's sales team needs to consult. It brings together the details of each client in one place, as well as a timeline of its interactions with the business and any upcoming tasks. "Everything is embedded, and it's very easy to set up workflows to make sure that we're not missing anything," explains Dave. And if colleagues are travelling ("Most of our clients are in the US," Dave reveals), they can see the same information on the fly using the Zoho CRM mobile app. "We just call up the app, and we're able to see the latest notes that somebody here in Dublin has made about that company," he adds. 
 

Marketing

Before implementing Zoho CRM, ASL had no way of categorising its extensive library of marketing collaterals and providing visibility to the sales team. "There's a lot of assets that we have, but they weren't in one place where we could find them before. They weren't grouped by category, or industry, or client," recalls Dave.

By creating custom modules inside Zoho CRM, a process Dave tells us was "really simple," ASL has built a sophisticated marketing repository with assets and activity tracking that can be easily searched, cross-referenced, and linked to. Its DGIs (Demand Generation Initiatives) custom module logs and categorises all of its campaigns, from events to emails. It also records any spend and revenue, as well as the acquired leads against each DGI activity to calculate ROI and measure success.

A sister module, called DGAs (Demand Generation Assets), documents any assets that may arise from a DGI campaign or event, such as a recording of a keynote speech, or PR coverage of an event. The sales team can then easily draw on these resources and share them with prospects to demonstrate ASL's expertise in different industries. 

Employee engagement

Emma Coonan, ASL's Head of Learning and Development, has also leveraged Zoho CRM's custom modules to build a comprehensive employee engagement programme. This centres around the organisation's annual and quarterly planning activities, whereby the company goals are set out and measured alongside each colleague's individual goals.

Before Zoho CRM, this had been a very manual process that demanded a lot of time and preparation, whilst delivering underwhelming levels of attention. "Like a lot of organisations creating our plan, we would have done it on a Word document, circulated it through email, and saved it on the server. Sometimes these were put in a drawer till someone remembered to take them back out. It's very hard to manage version control that way and keep it top of mind for everybody," Emma explains.

Emma created a shared custom CRM module called "ASL Goals" and a series of further custom modules that were private to each colleague called "My Goals". The personal goals of each employee now feed into the master shared goals via look-up fields so that each individual can see how their efforts are moving the needle of corporate plans. "Because everyone's plan is connected to the overall goals of the business, we're always keeping our team connected to our purpose," Emma says. "Everybody needs to feel a sense of achievement, that they're contributing," she adds.

Emma also enjoys Zoho CRM's interactive dashboards, which are comprised of dynamic widgets like barometers and target meters to help keep the team engaged. As a novel way to manage quarterly and annual planning, new starters regularly tell Emma that Zoho CRM is a game-changer for their progress. "It's been a really consistent way to onboard people... it's a great coaching tool," she beams. 

Benefits and ROI

• A single source of truth, including client details, communications, certified products, and live pricing.
• Access to information on the fly using the mobile app. 
• Multiple sales pipelines tailored to each service.
• Highly visual dashboards, pipelines and reporting features. 
• Structured marketing resources and event ROI tracking.
• Increased visibility of company and employee goals.
• Improved onboarding process for new employees.