StudyIn embarks on a Zoho One project to streamline its global student placement operations
- INDUSTRYEducation & eLearning
- Key AppsZoho One: CRM, Sign, Contracts, Cliq, Desk, Books, Analytics, Meeting, Creator
The company
StudyIn is a global study abroad consultancy founded in 2006 that specialises in helping students with university applications, visas, and related services worldwide. It organises university fairs (in-person, hybrid, and virtual) and offers digital tools such as course search platforms and application resource libraries. StudyIn has so far assisted over 1.3 million students and partners with more than 250 universities in the UK, USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and beyond.
The challenge
With 100 offices worldwide, 1,800 employees and 6,000+ partner companies, a lot of data flows in to StudyIn from various sources. To streamline and amalgamate these data points into a single source of truth, StudyIn needed to implement a unified solution rather than run multiple disjointed applications.
Since the scale of its operations is large and complex, StudyIn required a solution which was capable of supporting and future-proofing its entire business with scalability and security at the core.
StudyIn also boasts a wide range of services ranging from in-demand webinars, in-person and virtual fairs, a course search platform and application resource libraries for its users. To facilitate all these services, StudyIn also needed to integrate its own secure portals which would offer a premium experience for its users.
For many years, StudyIn had used an in-house-built custom CRM, but its CTO Shaun Gabriel felt that it had not evolved in-step with the business as it had grown and student demand had increased.
"It became really quickly that there wasn't an ROI on investing in what we had. That would cause continual debt, continual maintenance, and continual change."
The solution
In 2025, StudyIn went to the market and discovered the Zoho One bundle, quickly seeing its potential. Initially, the firm spent eight weeks running a proof of concept to ensure it could deliver on its complex and unique needs. Satisfied with the results, and buoyed by Zoho One's diverse offering, budget-friendly price point, and deep security provisions, Shaun and his team gave the green light.
"One of the key drivers for Zoho... is there's a suite of apps to build your business. With Zoho we can get all the apps together to solve our needs across different countries."
With its extensive global requirements, StudyIn is still busy building and refining its Zoho environment, aided by A2Z Cloud, a premium Zoho partner based in the UK. It's currently rolling out tranches of apps in a phased approach to steadily cement its value and ease adoption. Having now spent 3,500 hours with A2Z Cloud making sure its "to be" process is nailed down, Shaun is excited to get started. He's deeply confident that the operational transformation will be significant for StudyIn.
"We're going to be heavily using CRM. We'll be using Sign, Contracts, Cliq, Desk, Books, Analytics. We're also going to be using Meeting and Creator. Phase one alone covers 32 of the 55 apps!"
Looking forward with Zoho One
Looking ahead, Shaun and the team at StudyIn are looking forward to completing phase one of the roll out, and have their sights set on adding an additional eight or nine apps in the next phase, with marketing apps following in phase three.
"The next year is obviously going to be a very busy year. I can already see a lot of the benefits we're going to gain as a business in terms of information, accuracy, process, and enforcement in some ways. I'd love to come back in a year's time and tell you all about it!"
Watch this space!