Case study
Case study: a professional-services firm consolidated five tools onto Zoho One
An illustrative example of the kind of engagement we run — not a named client.
- Client
- Professional-services firm
- Industry
- Professional services
- Size
- ~60 employees, single office
The problem
What they were dealing with
The firm ran five tools that did not talk to each other: a CRM for the pipeline, a separate project tracker, a standalone accounting package, a spreadsheet for staff and leave, and a sixth dashboard someone maintained by hand. A new client was entered into three of them.
There was no shared view of a client — sales saw the deal, delivery saw the project, finance saw the invoices, and reconciling the three at month-end took days. The subscriptions also overlapped, so the firm paid for the same capability twice.
What we built
The system we delivered
We mapped each of the five tools to a single Zoho One app: CRM for the pipeline, Projects for delivery, Books for accounting, People for staff and leave, and Analytics for the dashboard that had been maintained by hand. One client record now carries the deal, the project, and the invoices.
Migration was the careful part. We mapped every legacy field, de-duplicated contacts, and reconciled opening balances against the old accounting package so no history was lost in the move.
One deliberate decision: we ran a phased cutover, app by app, rather than a single switch-over weekend. Each system was verified live before the next was retired, so the firm never worked a day without a working tool.
Zoho apps used
- Zoho CRM
- Zoho Projects
- Zoho Books
- Zoho People
- Zoho Analytics
Key integrations
- Email and calendar sync for the whole team
- Historical data migrated from all five legacy tools, with records mapped and de-duplicated
Timeline
10 weeks
Outcomes
What changed, measured
- Five tools consolidated to one (Zoho One).
- Software spend down roughly $28,000 a year after the overlapping subscriptions were dropped.
- About 9 hours a month saved on month-end reconciliation across tools.
“Everyone finally looks at the same client record. Month-end used to mean two days of reconciling three systems — now the numbers already agree.”
The team
Who led the work
Lead consultant: Senior consultant, US office
Consolidation is mostly migration discipline — the apps were the easy part; mapping and reconciling five tools' worth of history was the work that earned the firm's trust.
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