SysGroup uses Zoho CRM as a single source of truth to power growth and AI-led transformation

The company

SysGroup is an award-winning UK-based technology services leader that partners with organizations to drive AI-led digital transformation and sustainable growth. The company combines managed services, cloud and connectivity solutions, cybersecurity, and digital strategies to empower mid-market businesses to innovate faster, operate smarter, and build resilience in an ever-evolving technology landscape. With deep industry expertise, a future-focused mindset, and a broad network of leading technology partners, SysGroup delivers measurable, long-term value across the entire IT lifecycle.

Its expertise has been strengthened over the years through a strategy of acquisition, whereby the firm has bought and absorbed multiple IT companies to broaden its offerings. When the new Executive Chairman, Heejae Chae, joined the business in 2023, he brought with him an exciting vision. Heejae wanted SysGroup to embrace AI technology and adopt it internally as well as externally for clients. He named his plans "Project Genesis".

At the core of Project Genesis sits the need for clean, unified data to generate accurate AI outputs and insights. That's where Zoho comes in.

The challenge

When Mark Spear, SysGroup's Head of Business Transformation, joined in late 2019, the organization was effectively three separate businesses operating under one group structure. Each entity used different systems and processes, which created significant challenges:

• No single view of customers or performance across the group

• Inconsistent operational processes

• Disconnected data and reporting

• Difficulty comparing results between business units

• High administrative overhead for IT and operations teams

Mark was tasked with standardizing internal systems and delivering a unified operational view for leadership. An initial attempt to scale an existing platform from one of the acquired businesses failed to meet requirements, and after six months it became clear the solution could not support SysGroup's long-term ambitions.

SysGroup needed a platform that could consolidate operations, improve visibility, scale with growth, and support future innovation—particularly around data and AI.

The solution

SysGroup selected Zoho One—with Zoho CRM at its core—as the foundation for a group-wide transformation. CRM became the central hub for customer, sales, asset, and operational data, and was tightly integrated with Zoho Desk, Projects, Analytics, Books, Marketing Automation, Flow, and other Zoho applications.

Today, Zoho CRM supports both sides of SysGroup's customer base:

• Around 300 contracted accounts that generate recurring monthly revenue

• Approximately 700 additional customers who purchase one-off services like hardware or professional services

Account managers use CRM to manage relationships, raise new opportunities for existing customers, and oversee contracts. New business leads flow directly from Zoho Marketing Automation into CRM, while opportunities from existing customers are logged immediately without unnecessary lead qualification steps.

SysGroup has heavily customized Zoho CRM to reflect the complexity of its services. Custom modules include:

• Customer Assets, which provides granular visibility into customer infrastructure, licensing, and expiry dates

• Supplier Management, which tracks supplier contracts linked to customer services

• Purchasing, which enables staff to raise and approve purchase requisitions directly within CRM, and which is integrated with SAP

• Whitespace, which is an intelligent cross-sell and upsell module that highlights gaps in customer service coverage

Zoho CRM acts as the central hub for sales, service, and delivery. Through its tight integration with Zoho Desk, account managers have complete visibility into customer support history and can instantly engage the pre-sales team via a custom CRM button that generates a Desk ticket. Once a deal is closed, Zoho CRM seamlessly triggers Zoho Projects, which automatically creates and tracks all professional services work associated with the sale.

Why Zoho

SysGroup chose Zoho for its ability to deliver a "single pane of glass" across the entire business. Rather than stitching together multiple point solutions, Zoho One provided a best-of-breed bundle that could be centrally administered and deeply customized.

From a leadership and IT perspective, Zoho's centralized administration has been critical. User provisioning, permissions, profiles, and security are all managed easily from one place. From a strategic perspective, Zoho's integrated data model has laid the foundation for SysGroup's AI-led transformation program—Project Genesis.

Mark describes Zoho as a platform that scales with ambition and supports today's operational needs while enabling tomorrow's innovation.

Benefits and ROI

Zoho CRM has delivered measurable benefits across SysGroup:

• Complete visibility across customers, assets, contracts, and opportunities

• Standardized processes across acquired businesses

• Improved cross-sell and upsell operations through the Whitespace module

• Reduced operational risk, with automated alerts for renewals and expiring services

• Faster decision-making, supported by extensive dashboards and Zoho Analytics reporting

• Higher productivity, with CRM, Desk, and Projects tightly connected

• Voice of the Customer, which provides sentiment analyses of customer communications and helps prevent churn

Zoho Desk alone handles between 2,000 and 3,000 customer tickets per month, with CRM providing account-level visibility into every interaction. The introduction of Zia, Zoho's AI assistant, has significantly reduced first response times by generating personalized, sentiment-aware ticket responses during triage, which improves both efficiency and customer satisfaction.

From a financial perspective, CRM and Projects work together to track works in progress and remaining billable days, giving finance teams accurate, real-time insight into revenue yet to be invoiced.