A2Z Cloud develops a customised Zoho Solution for TMG

Why TMG chose A2Z & Zoho

TMG had gotten their teeth into one of Zoho’s Free Trials and were happy with what the software could do for them – but when it came to getting the most out of the system, they weren’t sure how best to approach the task.

“We gave it a go on the free trial, but on the other side of it, you need to have a clear view of what you want to achieve.” remarked Jane Mahoney, the operations director. “A2Z Cloud sat down with us and said ‘that’s achievable’ or ‘that’s not achievable'”

A2Z Cloud is a Zoho Premium Partner with the largest development team in the UK which means that there is a wealth of knowledge for them to tap into to determine what digitisation of their system might look like.  

Analyzing The Problem

All of the different pricing structures were previously dealt with via email, which meant that a great deal of different mailboxes were receiving the orders. As you can imagine, this was chaos, as nobody could easily tell whether somebody else had already processed the order.

With only one main client, TMG may be unique in the fact that they don’t use their CRM to nurture leads and new contacts. Instead they have a need to invoice one client for a myriad of products for each of their 845 eventual customers. When A2Z Cloud met them, they were using a spreadsheet which involved assigning each individual customer with a particular ID manually.

Operations Manager, Jane Mahoney says “18 months ago we would have put any enquiries on our spreadsheets, thinking I’ll reply to that email in a week, but then 120 more on top of that email and you forget about it.”

TMG use an EDI (Electronic Data Interchange) solution, for the electronic transfer of data. All of the individual invoices are batched together, formatted as XML and sent over an FTP server to their client on a daily basis. With the spreadsheet in place, this was understandably an unpleasant process and fraught with issues.

Creating A Custom Solution

TMG came to A2Z Cloud with a very strange looking diagram that they’d drawn of their processes. Given the complexity of the business model, A2Z Cloud went in with a view to implement Zoho CRM and Zoho Inventory, but the final build actually used Zoho Creator as a middleman. This was necessary at the time to allow staff interactions to create sales orders.

A2Z Cloud had to build something that handled all the different quantities as well as the variations in pricing. The Creator link has since been turned off, as Zoho Inventory has improved sufficiently to handle this requirement better.

With zero visibility over what the rest of the TMG team were doing, A2Z Cloud added Zoho Desk to monitor the orders coming in and forward them on to one of their four designers or direct to an outside supplier via CRM. While SalesIQ takes care of additional queries coming via the website.

TMG also have Zoho Sign and A2Z Cloud implemented a loyalty scheme into their system, where customers get points for every pound they spend. Additionally, there’s a club that customers can join to receive discounts, so when a record is saved under the club, the price of the relevant products is automatically adjusted.

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