Hanoi School of Business & Management unifies the student lifecycle with Zoho One
- INDUSTRYEducation / Higher education
- Key AppsZoho CRM, Zoho Forms, Zoho Survey, Zoho WorkDrive, Zoho Creator
The company
Hanoi School of Business & Management (HSB) – Vietnam National University, Hanoi, is one of the leading educational institutions in Vietnam in the fields of Management, Business, Security, and Technology. With over 31 years of experience, HSB has built a reputation around a distinctive value proposition: combining rigorous academic learning with real-world practice, ensuring that graduates leave not only with strong foundational knowledge but with genuine employment-ready experience and connections to the business community. HSB is the first school in Vietnam to receive accreditation from ACQUIN (Germany) for all of its undergraduate and postgraduate training programs.
HSB serves a diverse student body that includes post-graduate learners, working professionals seeking to upskill, and organizations looking for tailored corporate training programs. This breadth of audience — spanning individual learners and institutional clients — makes operational coordination both critically important and inherently complex.
The challenge
Before adopting Zoho One, HSB's operations were fragmented across a patchwork of disconnected tools — emails, spreadsheets, and manual paperwork — with no unified system tying them together. Data lived in silos, processes were slow, and staff spent significant time managing administrative tasks that added little educational value.
The institution faced four core operational pain points:
- Difficult learner journey tracking — With students moving through multiple admission rounds, coursework, exams, and eventual graduation, there was no reliable way to monitor each learner's progress end-to-end. Staff had to chase information across different departments and files.
- Reporting bottlenecks — Pulling together reports from scattered data sources was laborious and error-prone, making it difficult for leadership to get timely insights.
- An overwhelming volume of paperwork — From admission paperwork and feedback forms to transcripts and course materials, HSB was drowning in paper. Transcript processing alone could take three to five days per batch.
- Poor inter-departmental connectivity — With admissions, academic staff, HR, and operations all working in isolation, coordination was slow and prone to miscommunication.
"We needed to have one centralized system that could handle everything more efficiently — from admissions all the way to student graduation."
Thao Dang Secretary, Undergraduate Program Management Office, HSB
The solution
HSB was introduced to Zoho through i3 Network Systems, a Zoho Authorized Partner in Vietnam, and it was the concept of integrated workflow management that convinced the school's leadership to commit. With a strong appetite for digital transformation at the executive level, HSB moved forward with implementing Zoho One.
The implementation took several months, largely due to the work required to standardize data and define consistent workflows. Today, HSB uses Zoho CRM, Zoho Forms, Zoho Survey, Zoho WorkDrive, and Zoho Creator to manage operations across the entire student lifecycle.
Admissions
Zoho Forms and Zoho Survey power the online application and testing stages, collecting structured data that flows automatically into Zoho CRM — eliminating manual data entry and giving the admissions team a real-time view of each applicant's journey.
Academic & personnel management
Lecturers upload teaching materials and manage student records through the platform, while staff handle scheduling, room allocation, and feedback collection via forms linked to Zoho Creator.
Transcript & grade management — a standout transformation
Transcript processing — once a three-to-five day manual exercise involving printing and obtaining signatures — now takes a single step: importing student grades into Zoho Creator. Students and lecturers access transcripts, timetables, and course information through a dedicated portal.
Third-party integration
HSB has also integrated Zoho with an Internet-based similarity detection service, namely Turnitin, embedding Zoho One into the core of its academic integrity processes.
Reflecting on the impact of Zoho One
The shift to Zoho One has fundamentally changed how HSB operates — and how its students experience the institution.
- Significant time savings — Tasks that previously took days now take hours or minutes. Across 40 courses, multiple classes, and hundreds of students each semester, these savings accumulate significantly.
- Seamless cross-departmental collaboration — Zoho provides a shared workspace where files can be accessed, forms routed, and processes tracked across admissions, HR, academics, and operations — without the friction of chasing information across inboxes and spreadsheets.
- A unified, structured data environment — From the first point of contact at admissions through to graduation, every touchpoint is logged, tracked, and accessible in one place.
- A better student experience — Online admissions, digital exams, accessible course portals, and instant transcript access represent a step-change from the paper-heavy processes of before.
"We now manage our data in a much more structured and efficient way. Reporting is faster, coordination between departments is smoother, and admissions tracking is much more organized than before. Most importantly, everyone is now working from one platform and one source of information, instead of different files and communication channels."