We successfully integrated all of WFA’s systems together in order to gain the benefits that range from time management, automated work and improved productivity of tasks

Background

Water Filters Australia (WFA), founded in 1999, is a filter services organisation that caters to the Australian market with high-quality, long-lasting, and fully-certified water filter products that have the ability to change the water you drink. The use of older and early water filters have now been updated with the discovery of new technology that has revolutionised the inline water filters in every home of Australia.

The Australian founders of WFA work with high-level multinational drink companies and end customers due to their passion for health benefits. The customer-oriented organisation has employees functioning with the core values of honesty, integrity, health and loyalty with relationships. Their need for a centralised system, with high-ranking efficiency, roots from the quality, service and taste levels that they would like to maintain.

Industry

Wholesale

Company Size

21 – 50

Challenges

WFA initially depended on a combination of various software to operate, including a custom legacy Microsoft Access (application) Database, MYOB, as well as MailChimp. They are also using PBX systems with approximately 30 handsets around the office.

The lack of a centralised system in both the B2B and B2C aspects of the business proves that their processes were outdated. The details of all customers were stored in Microsoft Access database, while the business details were stored in MYOB. MailChimp also contained a further subset of outdated customer data.

Furthermore, their systems didn’t communicate with each other and were not integrated to form a single location inclusive of all information for easy access.  Each system had a separate silo.

The Microsoft Access and MYOB databases could only be accessed by the team at their worksite. They didn’t allow the flexibility of working from home or while travelling. Basically, they lacked a presence on the cloud.

The routine tasks had several inefficient processes being implemented on the Microsoft Access database. Unnecessary manual actions and printing caused significant delays in daily tasks, resulting in loss of sales. For example, customers would be contacted once a year on a specific callback date with offers and promotions for new filters. The maintenance of the records and individual call back actions were of bulk MYOB manual tasks.

Due to these inefficiencies, the current system was deemed to be infeasible at a higher scale. The inability to integrate with the PBX system resulted in the isolation of important activities. activities.

Solution

We provided an end-to-end solution using various applications and platforms. The end-to-end solutions that WFA successfully integrated with range from:

Zoho End 2 End solution

We provided a simplified and effective business process, which were efficient solutions for everyday tasks that achieved a positive overall return on investment and results desired by WFA.

  • Zoho CRM was chosen for its low cost but great feature set, its intuitive interface, the availability of local partners for implementation, training and support and the native mobile applications for Zoho CRM on iOS and Android. This solution provides a backbone for most tools, to form a unified system.

  • Zoho Inventory is a well-structured tool for inventory and warehouse management due to its seamless integration with Zoho CRM, ease of implementation and easy to use interface.

  • Zoho Books was chosen as the new accounting system going forward. The tool is easily and effortlessly integrated with Zoho Inventory and Zoho CRM.
  • Zoho Campaigns is used for mass emailing EDMs to subscribers. The improved connectivity of marketing and sales through the integration with Zoho CRM proves to be beneficial for communication with prospective leads and existing clients.
  • Custom functions were used in Zoho CRM and Zoho Books to improve automation and reduce manual work.

  • Zoho & WooCommerce – Since the integration provided by the third party vendors had insufficient support, Amigo Informatics customised and built a Zoho & WooCommerce plugin which easily integrated with Zoho Inventory. This instantly synced the new orders from WooCommerce to the new and existing customers on Zoho Books as sales orders by creating a package for shipment.

  • Burst SMS – Amigo Informatics’s Burst SMS plugin was easily installed via Zoho’s Marketplace, elevating to the next level of marketing. The solution features easy communication with stakeholders, tracking conversation history with predefined and custom SMS and automation of many functions.

  • Zoho Reports was used to create custom reports for management, by extracting data from Zoho Inventory, Zoho Books, and Zoho CRM.
  • A custom payment gateway was built into the system of Zoho Books, which allowed the team at WFA to take customer credit card details and process payments over the phone, without the need to share invoices via email.

Results

The team at Water Filters Australia were excited and pleased with the new unified and interconnected system post the implementation and training that we provided.

  • The team at WFA could now access their customer information while at home or at work.
  • In comparison to Microsoft Access, Zoho CRM provides ease in executing everyday tasks. The simple and straightforward features of the solutions by Zoho makes it easier and quicker for the new employees to be trained, saving WFA time and costs.
  • The team responsible for calling the leads and existing customers work with a highly dynamic list. Custom functions have improved and automated processes in the back-end system.
  • The solutions provided by Amigo Informatics, especially WooCommerce, have reduced the need for manual tasks and increased overall available time and efficiency.

The management at WFA was delighted and grateful for the results the organisation has started showing post-integration and utilisation of the solutions by Zoho. This includes:

  • A new automated emailing system was put in place to email customers a few weeks before they were due for a filter system. This resulted in an increased number of online orders, which meant fewer calls needed to be made by the team.
  • The reports built in Zoho Reports were powerful and provided a lot of information at a glance.
  • The team showed great signs of an increase in efficiency. The focus of the team moved from the time taken to process the task, to the improvement in strategies and objectives of the task.