SysGroup enables its AI-first vision using Zoho One's integrated, streamlined data sets
- INDUSTRYIT services and consulting
- Key AppsCRM, Desk, Projects, Analytics
The company
SysGroup is an IT MSP (Managed Service Provider), specialising in cybersecurity, connectivity, hosting, protection, monitoring, hardware, and consultancy. 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 a 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 coined his plans "Project Genesis".
"I came in with the idea of transforming this business from a traditional IT MSP to an integrated IT solution, leveraging analytics, machine learning and AI... the best way to convince our customers to come along the journey is to lead by example. So we adopted the tools ourselves first."
At the core of Project Genesis sits the need for clean, unified data to generate accurate AI outputs and insights. That's where Zoho One comes in!
The challenge
Owing to its history of acquisition, by 2019, SysGroup had inherited a fractured mix of software platforms, including multiple CRMs and multiple ticketing systems. Mark Spear, Head of Business Transformation, was tasked with replacing this disparate collection of software with a unified solution that could reflect every aspect of the business in one space. This solution also needed to integrate with its RMM (Remote Monitoring and Management) software, N-Central, SharePoint, and its finance package, SAP.
"When we found Zoho, SysGroup was actually three businesses that we were trying to integrate, all of which had different systems. Management needed a way of getting visibility across the whole business and transparency of the data."
After briefly trialling an alternative platform, Mark turned to Zoho One, an integrated suite of 45+ business applications, and saw its huge potential. He soon found a fellow Zoho advocate in Heejae, when, in 2023, Mark booked two tickets to the Zoholics UK conference in London. "I remember sitting there listening to all the speakers, becoming aware of all the different applications, and I kept poking Mark, saying, 'How come we're not using that?'" recalls Heejae.
Heading back to SysGroup HQ, Mark and Heejae set about a deep digital transformation with Zoho One at its heart.
The solution
Mark's first move was to roll out Zoho CRM to manage the group's entire customer data, including the existing data from its acquired companies. From here, Mark was able to segment SysGroup's customer base into recurring customers - called "Contracts" - and one-off customers. Now, its team of account managers can personalise the support they offer, make tailored recommendations, and prioritise new enquiries from key clients. What's more, a series of custom modules lets SysGroup log detailed information about each client's IT environment and their purchase history, plus easily spot cross-sell opportunities. Plus, automated notifications let its procurement team and project managers know when licences and SSL certificates need renewing, and an integration with Zoho Books seamlessly creates monthly invoices for contracted clients.
"All the information that we need is in one place - the CRM - and that enables us to manage our clients and sell to them effectively."
To enhance SysGroup's customer service delivery, Mark implemented Zoho Desk, a slick ticketing platform. Desk routes customer queries sent to its support email address into a collaborative portal where its agents can respond. It also allows agents to triage more complex issues to second and third line agents if necessary, and an assignment rule automatically pushes tickets from specific larger clients to their dedicated account managers.
SysGroup's agents are now using Zoho's embedded AI agent, Zia, to draft initial acknowledgement responses to Desk tickets, saving the team significant time whilst presenting a fast, consistent, professional experience to its clients. Zia is also being used to analyse tickets for sentiment, revealing sad or happy faces against the customer records. This allows SysGroup's agents to prioritise and nurture those customers who are unhappy, preventing churn.
Zoho Desk is plugged into SysGroup's remote monitoring and management software, N-Central. "We have a monitoring system for kit that is in our data centres and also kit on customer sites. If that flags any issues, like maybe a server's running out of memory, that will raise a ticket within Desk," shares Mark. Pushing these alerts into Zoho Desk helps its engineering team deliver timely fixes and ensure the continuity of SysGroup's technical services.
Elsewhere, SysGroup has adopted Zoho Projects to orchestrate the delivery of client work. Whenever an opportunity is marked as "professional services related" in Zoho CRM's order fulfilment type, Zoho Flow automates the creation of a new project in Zoho Projects. The type of job - whether it's a connectivity project, a Wi-Fi enhancement project or anything else - determines the project template selected by the Flow blueprint, which maps out relevant timescales, tasks and milestones. By utilising Projects, the team ensures client work is completed exactly to plan, on time, and with full traceability and accountability.
SysGroup's engineers enter timesheets against each project for the work they carry out. Then, an automation calculates how many hours have been spent on the project, and how many are left against the agreed scope. "We use that for our 'work in progress' report, which tells finance what they can bill," Mark explains.
"One of the main reasons for moving onto the Zoho platform was achieving this concept of a single pane of glass. Within each Zoho application, you can obviously create reports and dashboards, but then you've got Analytics running over the top...which allows us in business systems to create more complex ones."
The final core app in SysGroup's tech stack is Zoho Analytics. Mark, Heejae, and the wider senior leadership team use Analytics to join data from all of its Zoho applications, as well as some third-party platforms. This empowers the team to make data-led decisions and understand the health of the business at any point in time. This intelligence can be digested in a multitude of ways, making it easy to interpret and draw conclusions from. "You can use widgets, you can use charts, diagrams, and tables of data. We've even used its maps function to track where all our engineers are around the country, so if we're trying to allocate an engineer, we can use that to find out where they are," shares Mark.
Benefits SysGroup enjoys:
- Intuitive customisation and advanced adaptability.
- Native reporting and dashboards within each application, plus a combined view inside Zoho Analytics.
- Simple administration tools, including automatic app allocation, user permission toggling, and easy setup for new joiners.
- Mobile apps for each Zoho product, providing access on the fly.
- Seamless Zoho to Zoho integrations.
- Third-party integrations with N-Central, SAP, Microsoft SharePoint and Microsoft Teams.
- Zia, Zoho's embedded AI assistant.
- An additional paid subscription to Zoho Enterprise support, providing a dedicated technical account manager and personalised recommendations.
Looking forward with Zoho One
Turning his thoughts to the future, Mark declares: "Zoho is inherently part of our transformation plans, and we'll soon be integrating it with our Microsoft suite. There's also Zoho modules we're not using, and we should be - Zoho Expense, for example, and Zoho Contracts. We have big plans to scale with Zoho."
Heejae firmly agrees. "When we evaluate whether to buy or build solutions, it makes sense to look at the applications and innovations that Zoho is introducing and use those. It's quicker to the market, and we're leveraging the existing platform we have," he says. "What we also find really compelling about Zoho is that it doesn't stand still. It's continually introducing new applications and features. Now we're getting really excited about Zia, the embedded AI tool, and how it will dovetail with our project Genesis."