THG Ingenuity manages its end-to-end ecommerce operations using Zoho One

The challenge

When Mishje joined THG Ingenuity in 2019, the business was already using Zoho CRM to manage its sales pipeline. However, since its sales team were the only colleagues with access to the platform, this resulted in limited collaboration potential, poor data visibility, and manual reporting processes across the business as a whole. To remedy these issues, Mishje was tasked by THG Ingenuity's C-suite to implement an end-to-end solution using Zoho. She compiled a detailed scope of requirements, reached out to Premium Zoho partner DSL Telecom, and embarked on a far-reaching Zoho One project.

Mishje's non-negotiables:

• A platform that was user-friendly, intuitive and easy to navigate.
• Natively integrated applications that talked to one another.
• Flexible, highly customisable workflows that could mirror THG Ingenuity's processes.
• A single software vendor that was easy to deal with.
• Future-proofed longevity from a platform that offered room to grow.
• A value-driven solution that delivered strong ROI.
• A skilled implementation partner for technical builds and custom functions.

The solution

Mishje, supported by the developers at DSL Telecom, proceeded to roll out applications from the Zoho One bundle in almost every corner of the business. Today, Zoho powers most of its customer touchpoints and its employee workflows. Seeing its transformational potential, Mishje reveals: "Now we use Zoho so extensively across the business; for marketing, sales, project management and more... We currently utilise more than 20 of the applications in the bundle." Mishje oversees a dedicated team of colleagues who constantly streamline and refine Zoho's use across every role and department, managing over 600 Zoho licences.

The Zoho One suite—a collection of interconnected business apps administrated centrally—meets all of Mishje's requirements. New users can be easily onboarded into pre-set roles and departments, and app permissions toggled on and off at the press of a button. It also unburdens the process of introducing new solutions in an enterprise setting, where red tape and approvals typically cause delays.

Mishje also enjoys Zoho One's flexibility and extensibility. Since THG Ingenuity's processes are often complex and non-linear, the fact that Zoho can be deeply customised to suit them—and not the other way around—was critical. "Zoho, with some development and customisation, can mirror our processes."

THG Ingenuity's core tech stack:

Zoho CRM: Used extensively by the sales, account management, and marketing teams, Zoho CRM captures incoming leads, stores client details, holds contracts, tracks deals, and records products and services. "It's a system which can hold all our data, that we can report from, and that provides a single source of truth," explains Natalie Jones, Head of Systems and Processes.

Zoho Desk: The ticketing platform allows THG Ingenuity's support team to efficiently triage and respond to support requests, meet SLAs, and deliver outstanding customer service. "With thousands of tickets submitted per month, having Desk has allowed us to get tickets logged in a structured way so that we can pull insightful data and drive continuous improvement, always with the client at the heart," says Rebecca Sharp, THG Ingenuity's Operational Excellence Manager.

Zoho Projects: Moving away from Excel sheets, Zoho Projects now helps THG Ingenuity keep on track of client projects better than ever before. Whenever a deal is won inside Zoho CRM, a new project creation is automatically triggered. A number of project templates with pre-populated elements help to streamline the delivery process. "They have different tasks, milestones, and criteria," explains Natalie Jones. "This gives the project manager a ready-made structure, with a timeline and embedded links to documents that help colleagues to follow its progress."

Zoho Sign: THG Ingenuity uses Zoho Sign to obtain e-signatures on important internal and external documents, such as contracts and onboarding agreements. "We use Sign for internal approval workflows whilst also using it externally to obtain client signatures on official documents," shares Rebecca Sharp. Crucially, Sign is also integrated with Zoho WorkDrive, meaning that all signed documents are securely stored and easily retrievable.

Zoho Backstage: THG Ingenuity's marketing department runs a busy schedule of in-person and virtual events each year, including networking sessions, warehouse tours, studio tours, and fulfilment events. To organise and promote these events, the team leverages Zoho Backstage. "We use many of Backstage's features, from ticketing to badge scanning, speaker profiles, and its microsite landing pages. We have now hosted more than 30 Backstage events in the UK and overseas, ranging from in-person events to webinars and OnAir," Natalie reveals.

Zoho Marketing Automation: Used as a promotional pre- and post-event tool, engaging email journeys are crafted in Marketing Automation to invite targeted audiences to each upcoming event. After each event, any leads are synced back to Zoho Marketing Automation, where "they enter into targeted email journeys based on criteria, such as the event they attended, or their industry," shares Natalie.

Zoho Creator: Creator's low-code capabilities made it the perfect solution to replace a rigid, cumbersome time-tracker app that THG Ingenuity had been using for many years. A bespoke-built Creator app now allows every employee to easily input their working hours and associate them with specific projects or tasks for the finance team to report on. "Automated email reminders are sent out on a weekly basis, asking people who haven't already done so to log their time, with their line manager copied in. In the past, we had to manually chase these individuals, so the app has been a really big time-saver for finance," Natalie explains.

Zoho Analytics: Zoho Analytics combines data from each Zoho tool, as well as some third-party apps, and creates comprehensive reports that provide a big picture view of the business. Today, THG Ingenuity processes over 50 million rows of data across 17 different workspaces inside Zoho Analytics and has built hundreds of different visualisation dashboards for various purposes. "It's become a critical part of our reporting cadence, and it's used all over the business in weekly meetings and to send to C-Suite," declares Andrea Marks, Head of Revenue Operations.

Zoho Flow: Zoho Flow is used to forge bespoke integrations between applications, as well as automate actions. "We have built over 60 live flows using an average of 42,000 tasks per week," says Natalie. "It's helping us automate our processes, update data, integrate apps, and send notifications. Flow almost connects anything!"

Looking forward with Zoho One

Mishje and her team tirelessly strive for continuous improvement and are always looking to fine-tune and/or expand Zoho's use across the business where possible. For now, her sights are set on adopting AI insights to shape and drive even more significant improvements. "I want to start exploring some of Zoho's AI capabilities and see how Zia, the embedded AI assistant, can help us."

With full C-suite buy-in behind Mishje, it seems that THG Ingenuity, Zoho, and DSL Telecom are a truly steadfast alliance. "Now that Zoho is fully integrated into our processes, driven from the top down, everyone has seen the value of it. I would absolutely recommend Zoho to any business. I sing its praises so highly!"