Inventya builds better customer and employee experiences using Zoho One

The company

Inventya, headquartered in Warrington, UK, is a business consultancy with a difference. Founded in 2010, it specialises in growth and scale-up assistance, especially for start-ups, and is on a mission to "help ambitious organisations achieve exceptional outcomes".

Inventya offers a wealth of expert services, including funding applications, advice on winning tenders, competitor analysis and commercialisation strategy. It also provides expertise on intellectual property, R&D tax credits, international growth plans, and more. It's a key partner in Innovate UK's business growth programme, and is trusted by government agencies, universities, local councils, and other public sector organisations, as well as private enterprises.

Inventya's team have first-hand experience of the scaling journey. The business has thrice been named one of Europe's '1000 Fastest Growing Companies' by the Financial Times and Statista, and its CEO and Founder, Aldo De Leonibus, shares that it's "currently growing at 35% year-on-year." Its rocketing success has been fuelled by many factors, but a key driver was its adoption of Zoho software back in 2019.

The challenge

During its first decade in business, Inventya's team amassed a patchwork of software subscriptions, each adopted in response to different needs at the time. Although these applications solved short-term requirements, this disjointed tech stack was not conducive to further growth, nor to supporting a larger portfolio of clients. The platforms did not integrate well, leading to duplication of data, inefficient processes, and a lack of visibility across the business.

"None of those systems were speaking with each other. We were downloading data in Excel from all the platforms and then trying to combine it."

Viney Chauhan, Managing Director.

Inventya's pre-Zoho environment:

  • Vtiger CRM - for customer relationship management.
  • People HR - for people management.
  • SurveyMonkey - for capturing client survey responses.
  • Dovico - for project management.
  • Excel Spreadsheets - for everything else!

The solution

In 2019, Aldo and Viney began searching for a new CRM system to tighten up its customer service operations. That search soon opened up huge possibilities - the possibility of a harmonised tech stack that streamlined multiple processes and eradicated inefficiencies.

"When we started looking for a new CRM, we realised there was much more that we could do. Lots of different systems could be integrated under the same umbrella... that's where we came across Zoho One."

Aldo De Leonibus, Founder and CEO.

Adopting the Zoho One suite was a no-brainer, with Viney and Aldo lauding its value-driven price-proposition, impressive extensibility, and endless customisability. With the key to continued growth now in their hands, Inventya's leadership embarked on two major projects. The first was to boost its customer service offering using Zoho One's customer-facing applications, and the second was to implement an exceptional employee experience by leveraging Zoho One's HR tools.

The Customer Experience Project

Inventya now utilises a number of Zoho applications to build, in Aldo's words, "a seamless interface with our clients that takes them through the end-to-end journey". At its core is Zoho CRM, which is used to manage client relationships, but Bookings, SalesIQ, and Forms offer seamless communication channels for existing clients and leads. Zoho Sign enables a friction-free touchpoint for client contract signing, while Projects accurately tracks the hours spent on client projects, and Zoho Books provides clear invoices for clients to pay.

  • Zoho CRM: Lead scoring workflows route incoming enquiries to the correct expert for follow-up. Furthermore, a Red Flag Alert extension syncs client data to Companies House, ensuring that Inventya can accurately assess each organisation's readiness for growth and provide appropriate support.
  • Zoho Bookings: Preventing the to-ing and fro-ing of emails, Inventya hosts a Zoho Bookings page on its website, allowing prospects and clients to easily book meetings with Inventya's team at their own convenience.
  • Zoho SalesIQ: Inventya uses SalesIQ to provide intelligent chatbot assistance on its website. Integrated with ChatGPT, the app provides fast, contextual advice about specialist subjects to website visitors, and pushes resulting enquiries into CRM for follow-up.
  • Zoho Forms: Enquiries from Inventya's website are captured in a Zoho Form. Responses are synced with the Leads module in CRM to pre-populate all the relevant fields with the prospect's data.
  • Zoho Sign: Once a growth project has been agreed with a client, a tailored contract is seamlessly generated by Zoho Sign to capture the client's e-signature. A custom "Send with Zoho Sign" button is embedded inside Zoho CRM to make the process smooth and simple for Inventya's agents.
  • Zoho Projects: Once a contract has been signed by a client, a new project is automatically created inside Zoho Projects, and a relevant project manager is auto-assigned. Using Projects' tasks, milestones, and reminders, Inventya ensure that the project stays on track and meets the clients' goals.
  • Zoho Books: Contract completions also trigger the creation of a record in Zoho Books. Data from agent's timesheets flow into Books to ensure accurate invoices are generated for clients.

"It's a whole seamless project that is completely automated by workflows."

Aldo De Leonibus, Founder and CEO.

The Employee Experience Project

Shifting focus to its internal processes, Inventya recognised that its pre-Zoho tech stack had caused a very fragmented working environment for its team. Empowered by Zoho One's suite of tools, Viney resolved to implement a "Golden Circle" of employee experience, overhauling every step of the journey from hire to retire. "We wanted to give our employees an amazing experience, and the Zoho One suite of apps that focus on human resources have played a massive role in this," he explains.

  • Zoho Recruit: Inventya's open positions are posted in Zoho Recruit, which distributes them to more than 30+ recruitment websites and online job boards. Once applications are received, Recruit allows its hiring managers to score candidates, shortlist them, and send out interview invites. Thanks to Recruit, Inventya no longer relies on external recruitment agencies to source candidates, saving significant costs and increasing its control.
  • Zoho Forms: Once a candidate is selcted, Inventya's line managers complete a "new starter" form built with Zoho Forms, ensuring all the details that its HR department requires are collected and processed.
  • Zoho Sign: Employment contracts are issued and secured for new starters using Zoho Sign.
  • Zoho People: Once an employment contract is signed, the new starter's details are pushed from Recruit into Zoho People, where the onboarding process is activated. Even before their first day on the job, People gives the individual access to company information and policies. Inventya also uses People's skills matrix, which allows team members to quickly identify the expertise of every individual within the business whenever they need topical guidance. What's more, Zoho People stores employee timesheets, which are pushed into its payroll platform.
  • Zoho Learn: Inventya's team uses Zoho Learn to complete mandatory training courses, access how-to guides, and brush up on skills.
  • Zoho Connect: Announcements, events, and information are all posted to Zoho Connect's intranet platform, keeping its team engaged and informed about the company's activities.
  • Zoho Expense: For its colleagues who travel regularly, Expense has become indispensable for Inventya. Users simply take a photo of each receipt before it's auto-scanned and recorded against a client and project. It also flags duplicate receipts, allows for compliance checks, and provides detailed monthly reports on spend across different parts of the business.

"Since we started using Zoho One's apps focused on managing the employee lifecycle, we have experienced significant improvements in efficiency, time savings, and cost savings. And we were able to map our processes end-to-end."

Viney Chauhan, Managing Director

Outside of its customer and employee journeys, Inventya also uses Zoho Creator and Zoho Analytics. Zoho Creator provides a comprehensive, white-labelled partner portal. "Through the Creator portal, our partners can send leads to us and, more importantly, see a dashboard of all their referrals and the status of the discussion, whether it's someone we progressed with, whether any contracts have been signed... they can also track their commission if applicable, just in one very simple dashboard," explains Aldo. Meanwhile, Zoho Analytics is used to combine and analyse data from every platform, providing an overall view of the health of the business and its impact on clients. "We can see the client's financials when we start working with them, and how the financials evolve post our support," Aldo adds.

Growth by numbers - charting Inventya's Zoho One successes:

  • Its headcount has grown from 15 employees to 90.
  • It has delivered over £720 million in client fundraising.
  • Client research time has been slashed from half a day to mere seconds.
  • Job adverts are now distributed to 30+ platforms in 1 click.
  • It has achieved a 30% reduction in time setting up new joiners with HR.
  • Email chains between its HR department and line managers have dropped from 30 to 5 when setting up new starters.
  • It's recorded a 30-minute reduction in expenses submission per employee, per month.
  • Inventya scooped first place winner in the "HR Heroes" award category at Zoholics UK 2025!

Looking forward with Zoho One

Like the ambitious businesses it helps to thrive, Inventya does not stand still. It plans to roll out Zoho One in other territories (it has offices in India and Ireland), explore Zia - Zoho's embedded AI assistant - to complete some future modelling, and is eager to adopt Zoho Payroll once it's released in the UK. "We will continue our growth, and we're confident that Zoho is fully aligned and will allow us to continue growing and expanding," smiles Aldo.

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