A greener tomorrow: How Zecomy uses low-code to drive sustainability in waste management

Summary

Zecomy has deployed four different applications within Zoho Creator to streamline critical processes. These applications deliver transparent, real-time data to customers, efficiently gather trade-related information, conduct live online bidding, automate email communication, and present these functionalities within a customer portal.

This adoption of Zoho Creator and other Zoho apps marks a transformative shift in the organization's journey toward achieving 100% paperless operations. It has also slashed daily manual effort by 70%.

The company

Zecomy, based in India and a division of Eco eMarket, leads the way in the zero waste economy, dedicating itself to sustainably managing dry waste for corporate clients. Through its B2B digital platform, Zecomy connects waste producers with official buyers approved by the Pollution Control Board (PCB), ensuring transparent, traceable, and compliant waste disposal in line with ESG standards.

The platform efficiently manages waste collection from more than 250 cities spanning 24 states in India, showcasing its capacity to fulfill business requirements and promote sustainability for the future.

The challenge

Before transitioning to Zoho Creator, they relied on traditional spreadsheet software, such as Excel, to manage organizational processes and handle critical data. However, they soon realized that Excel's limitations in scalability, user-friendliness, and real-time accessibility were impeding their operations as their business expanded. Managing large datasets became difficult, efficiency suffered, and the offline nature of Excel disrupted the flow of real-time data.

Data management

One of Zecomy's main pain points was the limited control over their data. Relying on Excel for manual spreadsheet processes not only increased the risk of errors but also lacked centralized governance. Additionally, manual workflows led to inefficiencies and consumed valuable time and resources, hindering productivity and escalating error probabilities with the expanding volume of data and processes.

Real-time data access

Another significant challenge was accessing data. The absence of a dynamic, real-time data environment impeded their ability to make informed decisions, resulting in delays in addressing critical issues and responding to evolving business needs.

Transparency

Ensuring transparency by providing data visibility to their customers was a crucial concern. The limitations of their existing tools made it challenging to offer customers a clear and real-time view of their data. This concern affected both customer satisfaction and posed obstacles to building trust and fostering collaborative relationships.

After exhaustive evaluation of its operations, Zecomy pinpointed numerous manual processes that needed enhancement through streamlining and automation. To address these challenges, they chose to explore a low-code solution, due to the limitations of traditional coding, which would have longer development cycles, increased maintenance complexity, and higher costs.

That was when Zitraar Technologies, a Zoho Partner, identified gaps in their processes and recommended Zoho Creator as a low-code solution. Leveraging the agility and rapid development capabilities of Creator, Zitraar helped Zecomy successfully address these challenges and develop four distinct applications to manage their issues more efficiently.

The solution

Zecomy has been a dedicated user of Zoho One since the outset. Their journey began with Zoho Books and Zoho CRM to automate their invoicing and business processes. As they continued to experience the benefits of the Zoho ecosystem, they expanded to 15 other applications, including Zoho Creator.

Now, with the help of Zitraar, they've rolled out four custom applications to streamline their operations, effectively eliminating their previous challenges:

Master Data

This application stores and synchronizes all the essential information from CRM, Zoho WorkDrive, and various other Zoho Creator apps. Acting as a master data application, it's interconnected with three other Zoho Creator applications to access data through Deluge functions. Additionally, internal users utilize the app to send personalized bulk emails to customers, with each email tailored to individual customer details using Zoho Writer templates.

Price Discovery

This application manages trade auctions and all trade-related information accessible from their master data. Zecomy developed comprehensive modules covering forward and reverse auctions, open bids, sealed bids, online quotations, and more.

Auction Engine

The Zecomy member self-service portal offers a comprehensive view of customer information, incorporating details from Zoho apps like CRM, Books, Analytics, WorkDrive, and Creator, all integrated into a single custom portal. Customers have access to view and track their trades and documents, participate in live online auctions, and view graphical stats, reports, and more.

The customer portal offers a wide range of features, reports, and dashboards catering to various portal roles, with distinct sets of customer portal actions. Additionally, there are numerous functionalities tailored for internal users, significantly reducing the manual effort required to complete tasks.

Trade Process Responses

This application acts as a central platform for collecting customer responses on their participation in auctions. They send invitations to customers through email, seamlessly syncing the resulting data from Creator to CRM. This streamlined process improves efficiency in tracking and managing important auction-related information.

With the assistance of their Zoho Partner, Zecomy successfully rolled out the Trade Process Response application in just three weeks. Following this, the creation of the customer portal, Auction Engine, and Master Data began, with the initial version taking around six months to complete. Their agile development approach facilitated rapid feature development, with new features generally releasing in just one or two weeks.

Benefits and ROI

Zoho Creator has provided Zecomy with an advanced and integrated solution. Features like real-time BI and analytics, immediate data access for customers, document and email automation, and centralized file storage helped simplify their processes.

Since their move to Creator, the company has seen widespread adoption, with nearly 1,000 B2B customers utilizing their applications.

Looking forward

Zecomy plans to expand their utilization of Zoho Creator, starting with a mobile app to enhance customer engagement by offering an even more seamless and personalized experience.

They're also enthusiastic about harnessing the power of the AI and ML tools provided by Zoho and Creator. By integrating these advanced technologies, they aim to elevate the intelligence and efficiency of their systems, enabling data-driven insights and predictive analytics.