Vihan Engineering uses Zoho Analytics to unlock actionable intelligence from SAP Business One
- Founded 1994
- Country India
- Industry Industrial Machinery & Automation
- Size 150+ employees
- Data sources SAP Business One
The company
Vihan Engineering Pvt. Ltd. is an Ahmedabad-based engineering company specializing in downstream machinery and automation solutions for the plastic pipe industry. Founded with the objective of developing reliable, high-quality machinery in India capable of competing with international equipment, the company has grown from a family-led engineering business into an organization of more than 150 people.
Vihan Engineering serves leading pipe manufacturers across India as well as customers in international markets including the United States, Canada, and the Middle East. Its capabilities span machine design, manufacturing, automation, CNC and VMC machining, five-axis machining, laser cutting, sheet-metal fabrication, assembly, programming, and after-sales service.
The company's vision is to become a globally respected engineering company known for innovation, reliability, and customer-focused automation. Its mission is to continuously improve the productivity, consistency, and efficiency of plastic pipe manufacturing through well-engineered machinery and data-driven decision-making.
"It empowered us to build analytics around the way our company actually operates rather than forcing us to adapt every requirement to a predefined reporting format."
— Hersh Joshipara, Executive Director, Vihan Engineering Pvt. Ltd.
The challenge
Vihan Engineering had already invested in SAP Business One as its core ERP system, accumulating a significant volume of valuable transactional data. However, translating that data into management-level insights proved consistently difficult. The standard SAP reporting environment did not offer the flexibility or depth required to answer the varied and evolving questions posed by leadership and departmental teams.
Creating a new report or modifying an existing one often required technical assistance, additional development effort, or repeated data exports into Excel. Combining information from multiple SAP tables was cumbersome, and there was no single visual view consolidating sales, purchasing, inventory, receivables, and operational performance. The organization lacked the ability to drill down from a high-level summary to the underlying transactions without significant manual effort.
The consequences were tangible. Management time was consumed by data collection and spreadsheet reconciliation rather than analysis and decision-making. By the time a manually prepared report was complete, the information it contained could already be outdated. Teams working from separate Excel files risked operating on different versions of the same numbers, slowing response times on issues such as overdue receivables, slow-moving inventory, purchasing requirements, and shifts in sales performance.
The need for better analytics was felt across the organization, but it was particularly acute for senior management, finance and accounts, sales and marketing, purchasing, inventory and stores, production and operations, and service and customer support. The company was not seeking to replace SAP Business One; it needed an analytics layer that could make existing ERP data more accessible, visual, and useful.
The solution
Vihan Engineering selected Zoho Analytics as the business intelligence layer to complement SAP Business One. The Executive Director, Hersh Joshipara, led the implementation personally, connecting the two platforms and building the initial dashboards without establishing a dedicated BI development team. This hands-on approach allowed the organization to validate the platform's value quickly and expand its use organically.
SAP Business One serves as the primary data source. Zoho Analytics brings the relevant SAP tables into a structured analytics environment, where table relationships, lookup columns, formulas, aggregate formulas, and SQL query tables are used to model the data and create business-specific views. This enables the team to combine information held in different parts of the ERP and convert transactional records into management-level indicators.
"Zoho Analytics provided the required flexibility without making the process unnecessarily complicated. The combination of SAP data integration, visual dashboards, SQL-based customisation, scheduled synchronisation, drill-down reporting, and accessible pricing made it a practical solution for us."
- Hersh Joshipara
Executive Director, Vihan Engineering Pvt. Ltd.
The platform is used to analyze sales enquiries, orders, invoicing, revenue, customer and product performance, outstanding receivables, payment ageing, purchase orders, supplier activity, inventory levels, stock movement, open transactions, and salesperson and regional performance. Scheduled data synchronization ensures that dashboards reflect current information, with automated report delivery sent directly to relevant users by email.
Zoho Analytics is used across senior management, finance, accounts, sales, purchasing, and operations. Management relies on consolidated dashboards to monitor overall performance and identify exceptions, while departmental users consult specific reports for follow-ups, reviews, and planning. The ability to start with a high-level indicator and drill down to the underlying customer, item, document, or transaction has proven particularly valuable.
Benefits and ROI
The most significant improvement since adopting Zoho Analytics has been the reduction in time required to move from a business question to a usable answer. Reports that previously demanded manual data exports, consolidation work, and spreadsheet preparation can now be refreshed automatically and accessed through a live dashboard. This has materially reduced repetitive reporting effort and improved consistency in the numbers used across different teams.
The accounts team in particular has benefited from access to live data in a clear, easily navigable format, enabling on-the-go decision-making that was not previously possible. Management and finance teams can now view customer-wise sales, outstanding invoices, aging, and payment history in a single consolidated view, allowing them to identify overdue accounts, prioritize follow-ups, and factor a customer's outstanding position into commercial decisions on new orders or credit terms.
Inventory visibility has improved in a comparable way. Rather than examining only closing stock quantities, teams can now review movement history, identify slow-moving or non-moving items, and take proactive action. The organization has reduced its dependence on manually maintained spreadsheets and on external technical resources for report creation, and it has improved its ability to investigate the cause behind a result rather than simply recording it.
Zoho Analytics has also contributed to a shift in how data is used across the organization. Teams now refer to a common set of dashboards rather than maintaining different versions of the same spreadsheet, and management reviews have become more focused on understanding the reasons behind a result and determining the next action. Employees across departments have become more inquisitive, identifying new measurements and metrics that could support their work. The company views the platform's return on investment over more than three years of use as significantly exceeding its direct subscription cost.
Looking forward
Vihan Engineering plans to deepen the integration between analytics and its operational systems and extend dashboard access to additional teams. Planned initiatives include adding production and machine-performance data; integrating CRM, service, and project-management information; and combining sales forecasts with material and production planning.
The organization also intends to introduce automated exception alerts, expand mobile access for management, develop supplier performance monitoring and purchase lead-time analysis, and build department-specific performance indicators. As AI-assisted querying matures, the company sees an opportunity to make analytics accessible to a broader range of employees who may not currently engage with the platform directly.
The longer-term objective is to make analytics a part of everyday decision-making rather than a tool consulted only during monthly reporting cycles. SAP Business One will continue to serve as the transactional backbone of the business, while Zoho Analytics will translate operational data into the actionable business intelligence needed to support the company's continued growth in domestic and international markets.
"Our long-term objective is to make analytics part of everyday decision-making rather than something used only for monthly reporting."
Hersh Joshipara
Executive Director, Vihan Engineering Pvt. Ltd.