Thai Sock simplifies enterprise collaboration with Zoho Workplace

Bangkok animation studio discovers benefits of Zoho Workplace

The Company

Thai Sock is a leading textile manufacturer specializing in the production of socks. In addition to socks manufacturing, the company also produces high-quality yarn. Based in Bangkok, Thailand, Thai Sock has over 50 years of manufacturing experience and has established themselves as a trusted manufacturer for both local and international brands. To cater to customers in different regions better, Thai Sock has expanded operations and established subsidiary factories in China and England.

Thai Sock counts major global sporting brands among their customers; additionally, the company has a diverse range of customers from various brands in Europe, America, Australia, and New Zealand. In Thailand, Thai Sock serves customers in the socks retail business as well as companies seeking a manufacturer for functional, high-quality, and high-end sporting goods. These customers often turn to Thai Sock for their manufacturing needs.

The challenges

As a contract manufacturer, Thai Sock's production process is complex and detailed. The account management team shares files internally and receives files from customers as part of daily operations. The company has a diverse range of customers, more than 80% of whom are based overseas. Email was previously the main communication channel, and as the business grew, the team struggled to keep up with the conversation tracks. Files had to be downloaded on personal devices to be reattached to emails to customers for approval and to the production floor for manufacturing. It was inevitable that the lack of proper workflow hindered productivity. The team needed a better file management and collaboration tool to help streamline communications for both the sales and production teams.

The Solution

Thai Sock explored popular productivity suites available on the market. However, as these solutions did not offer fully integrated solutions and were catered towards consumers rather than business users, management struggled to achieve successful adoption of the trial tools across their multi-generational workforce.

Zoho Workplace's suite of fully integrated solutions provided the Thai Sock team with a user-friendly interface, giving them a streamlined process without too much effort.

Since adopting Zoho Workplace, Thai Sock has managed to streamline their operation processes.

Improving internal communications

Alisara Vichaiwatanapanich, deputy managing director of Thai Sock, recognized the need for better internal communication and collaboration.

"Zoho Workplace facilitates smooth collaboration and ensures that file sharing becomes hassle-free", Alisara said. "This setup significantly enhances our overall work experience."

Without an integrated file management system, the internal sales team used to communicate by sending emails back and forth, resulting in redundant exchanges and mailboxes reaching storage capacity. With Zoho Workplace, Thai Sock is now able to engage in real-time chats, share files, and exchange emails or attached files from WorkDrive as links, without the need to attach the entire file. This functionality has been immensely valuable to the Thai Sock team, offering a leaner and more effective approach to their communication and work processes.

"When it comes to communication, our go-to platform is Zoho Mail. Additionally, we heavily rely on essential tools like WorkDrive for file management. We also use Zoho Cliq for team communication through the Zoho Mail module, because Zoho Mail offers a chat function and allows us to share files seamlessly within the platform." — Alisara Vichaiwatanapanich, Deputy Managing Director, Thai Sock

Enabling enterprise collaboration

Beyond improved internal communications, functionalities within Zoho Workplace have also enabled the Thai Sock team to improve collaboration processes with their clients.

"To illustrate our use case, when we receive design files from our customers via email, we can easily add them to WorkDrive directly through the user-friendly Zoho Mail interface. This streamlined process does not require much effort on our part. Previously, our internal sales team used to communicate by sending emails back and forth, resulting in redundant exchanges and quickly filling up our inboxes. While we acknowledge the importance of email as an official communication channel, particularly when dealing with numerous overseas customers, we recognized the need for a more efficient method of communication that would eliminate the need for excessive forwarding." — Alisara Vichaiwatanapanich, Deputy Managing Director, Thai Sock

With Zoho WorkDrive, Thai Sock now has a central storage location for ongoing projects, ensuring accurate version control and efficient workflow. With the ability to share files to external parties with a WorkDrive link, the team is also able to ensure their customers are on the same page for approvals and deliverables. The ability to share files with WorkDrive links significantly minimizes the requirement for large capacity email boxes, too.

Privacy and security

Thai Sock counts many major global brands in their customer roster, so maintaining confidentiality is crucial to their business. In selecting a communication solution, a key consideration was that it should be a platform built especially for businesses, minimizing the possibility of employees logging in with their personal accounts.

For file sharing, the enterprise grade security features in Workdrive appealed to Thai Sock. It was important for management to be able to manage access for different roles in the organization and also control which teammates could create links for external sharing.

"With WorkDrive we are able to share large and even confidential files with our customers with both ease and confidence," Alisara said. "It is especially important that we can easily keep track of who is currently logged in and accessing the shared files."

Benefits and ROI

Workplace has significantly streamlined internal and external communication processes for Thai Sock, providing a central source of truth for files and conversations.

"When it comes to productivity, let us take a look at the sales team," Alisara, began. "Initially, they faced numerous challenges, but after adopting Zoho Workplace, their productivity increased by 80%."

In the past, conversations would be scattered across different platforms, making it difficult and time consuming to keep track of discussions. With Zoho Workplace, the team now leverages Cliq, Zoho's chat application, to have email-related discussions from the same page without forwarding email chains. This can be done easily by sharing the email with relevant team members and having a conversation within the same chat. The team now enjoys seamless collaboration without the need to navigate between different platforms to communicate and share files.

Suggestions for other businesses considering Zoho

"In my opinion, the choice of platform depends on the specific needs of the business. In our industry, which is focused on digital transformation, we prioritize the user interface of the platform. It's crucial that we select a platform that has a familiar UI for our team that is easy to use. We have tried different systems in the past and noticed that the younger generation is more comfortable with technology, while the older generation prefers traditional systems. To ensure everyone's buy-in, we need a solution that works well for both generations. That's why we chose Zoho; it provides a user-friendly tool that effectively addresses our requirements." — Alisara Vichaiwatanapanich, Deputy Managing Director, Thai Sock
  • IndustryTextile and Clothing
  • Company-size400-500 employees
  • Industry typeManufacturing and Wholesale
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Challenges Faced

  • Lack of proper workflow for the company's detailed production process
  • Absence of a better file management and collaboration tool to streamline communications for the sales and production teams

What the company loves about Zoho Workplace

  • Fully integrated apps that optimise their production process
  • User-friendly UI and smooth collaboration that works for both their older and young generation employees

Favourite features

  • Seamless transfer of files between applications with drag-and-drop functionality, eliminating the need for downloading and uploading
  • Ability to share large and confidential files to external parties with Zoho WorkDrive links