How Analysis Prime reduced weekly reporting from 3 hours to 20 minutes with Zoho Desk

Overview

Analysis Prime transitioned from HubSpot to Zoho Desk to streamline their support processes and consolidate all their operations within the Zoho ecosystem. As a result of this transition, they gained improved visibility into their support operations.

The company

Analysis Prime, a CENIT company, is a leading SAP planning and analytics consultancy headquartered in Marlton, New Jersey. With over 300 projects delivered to enterprises worldwide, they specialize in helping organizations eliminate data silos and harness the full power of SAP EPM / Planning and Analytics. Their comprehensive offering spans implementation, training through Analysis Prime University, and proactive, tailored and high-touch expertise via their Experts-as-a-Service model—all underpinned by a deeply customer-centric culture.

Serving a diverse portfolio of global clients, including Google, Simpson Strong-Tie and Valley National Bank, Analysis Prime brings together technical depth and a genuine commitment to helping organizations achieve measurable, lasting value from their data-based outcomes.

The challenges

Before moving to Zoho Desk, Analysis Prime relied on HubSpot for ticket management. Over time, the limitations of a disconnected toolset became impossible to ignore.

In their previous system, tickets would come in and simply accumulate. There was no mechanism to enforce response times or alert the team before SLAs were breached. Tickets would sit in "new" status indefinitely, and there was no visibility into who was working on what.

The team handled both support tickets and delivery projects simultaneously, but there was no single system where agents could log time against both. Pulling reports from multiple disconnected systems every week to track hours was a manual process that consumed two and a half to three hours every Monday.

The sales and management team had no way to see what support tickets were open for their accounts. They could not walk into a customer conversation with visibility into what issues were being handled, what was going well, and what was not.

The solution

Migration from HubSpot to Zoho Desk

The migration from HubSpot to Zoho Desk was successfully completed over a weekend by the CEO, Graylin Johnson, and his team. Historical ticket data was exported from HubSpot and imported into Zoho Desk using CSV files. The process also provided an opportunity to address legacy data issues, including duplicate records in the source system. Once the data was migrated, Zoho Desk’s capabilities made it significantly easier to manage, clean, and maintain high-quality ticket data moving forward.

Connecting sales, support, and projects

A key component of the solution was the integration of Zoho Desk, Zoho CRM, and Zoho Projects to create a seamless workflow across sales, support, and project delivery.

When a deal is successfully closed in Zoho CRM, an automatic notification is sent to create the project. As support tickets are raised in Zoho Desk, they are routed to the corresponding project and automatically converted into tasks. This enables consultants to log their time directly against the work being performed for a specific customer, ensuring accurate tracking of effort and resources.

For ongoing support engagements, these projects are managed by the expert support team. A custom field in Zoho Desk links each ticket to the appropriate project, ensuring that tickets and project tasks remain connected and properly aligned throughout the service process.

This integration establishes a continuous flow of information from sales to support and ultimately to project delivery, improving coordination between teams, enhancing visibility into customer work, and ensuring that all activities related to a customer engagement are tracked within a unified system.

Account-based ticket management and customizations

Zoho Desk helps Analysis Prime streamline ticket management through intelligent automation and seamless email integration. Their tickets are automatically assigned based on predefined criteria using direct assignment rules. For instance, when a request is received for an SAP component, the system identifies the client and routes the ticket directly to the appropriate individual. Additional criteria then determine the specific SAP component, such as SAP Analytics Cloud, Business Planning and Consolidation (BPC), S/4, or Datasphere, to ensure the ticket is assigned to the correct resource.

This assignment logic is already in active use and is planned to expand across additional teams in the future. Complementing this, configured email aliases automatically generate tickets upon receipt, while the Desk portal serves as the central hub for day-to-day ticket tracking and for clients, giving them visibility to each ticket, including who is working on it, its current status, and the conversations associated with each task.

Bridging CRM and support workflows, a dedicated button within Zoho CRM enables users to create Zoho Desk tickets directly for the Customer Success team whenever a referral is requested. Additionally, they have also customized their ticket statuses to suit their business needs. For instance, adding new statuses such as "Waiting for SAP" and "Awaiting customer's response."

Automating the actions through workflows and custom functions

Several automated workflows help maintain ticket accuracy and organization.

Automatic ticket reopening: If a customer responds to a closed ticket, the system automatically reopens it to ensure the issue is addressed. Similarly, tickets that are saved or closed without being assigned to a client account, or that are missing details required by the client, are automatically reopened so the team can correct the record.

Field updates: Field updates capture additional information as required. For example, field update rules apply geographic tags to tickets when specific accounts are identified, enabling country-level tracking for international clients.

Task creation in Projects: A checkbox field ensures that tickets intended for Zoho Projectss are verified before being pushed through as project tasks.

Ticket flagging: Tickets that remain in "new" status too long are flagged and highlighted on a live master report, preventing tickets from going unnoticed.

CRM project number sync: A custom function adds the project number from Zoho CRM to the ticket, linking the ticket to the correct deal and enabling the downstream integration with Zoho Projects.

Automatic task creation: A second custom function creates the corresponding task in Zoho Projects once a ticket is flipped to open status from 'new'.

Duplicate ticket merging: The team also uses an auto-merge function for duplicate tickets, though some manual merging remains necessary.

Duplicate ticket prevention: Duplicate tickets can arise when recipients reply via Outlook instead of Zoho Desk, or when additional participants are added to an email thread. The team has addressed this by filtering emails containing "FW" or "RE" in the subject line to prevent unnecessary ticket creation.

Alerts for poor rating and ticket closure: Workflow alerts, based on notification rules, are configured to inform customers when their ticket is closed and to request feedback on how the team handled their request. Additionally, another alert notifies the team whenever a concern on the resolution of the support is received, allowing management to respond promptly.

Internal service management

In addition to managing customer requests, Zoho Desk is also used internally. The company created a dedicated internal customer service department within Zoho Desk to manage internal requests and operational workflows. This allows the organization to use the same system for both external customer support and internal service management.

SLA configuration

SLAs in Zoho Desk are configured based on ticket category and priority level: urgent, high, medium, and low. Urgent tickets are monitored closely and picked up immediately. Lower-priority tickets may be addressed on a less frequent cadence depending on the nature of the request. A separate category called "minor enhancements" uses due dates rather than standard SLA timers. When an SLA is approaching breach, automated alerts are sent to both the assigned agent and management, with a second alert triggered at the point of breach.

Approval workflow for new agents

When a new team member joins, they are not permitted to send responses to customers until those responses have been reviewed and approved. The agent drafts their reply and submits it via private commenting feature for approval before it is sent. This gives senior team members the ability to provide real-time feedback on response quality, ensuring customers always receive the best possible answer while new agents are still building their knowledge.

Sandbox for testing

Zoho Desk mobile app

Benefits and ROI

Weekly reporting: 2.5–3 Hours Down to 20 Minutes: Pulling weekly resource and project hour data—previously a manual process that took two and a half to three hours every Monday—now takes twenty minutes, thanks to the automated flow of time data into the firm's SAP Analytics Cloud forecasting model.

Full ticket visibility replacing the HubSpot backlog: Tickets that previously accumulated and sat open indefinitely are now resolved faster. The team can see at a glance what is open, bolded items indicate new activity, and SLA alerts ensure nothing is left unattended. The volume of open tickets is held steady even as the firm grows its customer base.

Sales team empowered with support context: For the first time, the sales and management team can see open support tickets directly within Zoho CRM. They can walk into customer conversations knowing exactly what issues are in progress, turning support visibility into a relationship management tool.

Accurate hour tracking against contracts: With all time logged in Zoho Projects—whether from support tickets or delivery work—the firm can now track in near real-time how many hours have been consumed against a client's contracted hours. Previously, visibility of time consumed was reported on a weekly basis, which did not allow for immediate corrections or adjustments. Near real-time reporting allows the client and AP team to make decisions on how best to utilize the hours daily.

Quality-controlled onboarding for new agents: The approval workflow for new agents ensures customers always receive high-quality responses, while giving team leads a structured, real-time mechanism to coach new hires. This improves both customer experience and agent development simultaneously.