Artico streamlines order processing with Zoho Flow

The company

Artico is a family business that specializes in designing gifts, homewares, and greeting cards, working directly with manufacturers to ensure their products meet precise standards. Recently, Artico has expanded to Europe and the USA by building up a network of distributors and multi-site retailers.

Receiving sales orders in different formats

Before using Zoho Flow, the team at Artico was already using a few Zoho apps including Zoho Sheets, Zoho SalesIQ, Zoho CRM, Zoho Inventory. But they ran into a unique problem in trying to bring their sales orders into Zoho. "We receive sales orders in lots of different formats. We needed to have all orders automatically uploaded into our system. So, we started looking at how we get our data into Zoho. We looked at using an API connection directly into Zoho Inventory. However, the way the data was formulated made this very complicated," said Owain Ap Rees, director of sales at Artico.

Custom functions to the rescue

Since the sales order data couldn't be obtained automatically, everything had to be entered manually which meant there's an increased risk of error. That's when Rees reached out to Zoho Flow. "I contacted Zoho Flow and together we built a custom function for each of the formats we receive orders in.

"Once we put Flow into place, we saw zero errors through manual entry and significantly faster, simpler order processing."

Owain ap ReesDirector of SalesArtico

Using Flow meant that we could have the data manipulated and then entered into our system automatically. After the process was proven a success, we outsourced our sales support to the Philippines, allowing us to focus our resources on growing the business. We've reduced manual entry to almost zero. Now it's only orders over the phone that need to be done manually."

Impact of automation

"It's amazing what processes can be automated [with Zoho Flow]—it can be difficult to visualize what can be done. Ask the experts at Zoho Flow; they can tell you straight away. And if it needs customization, they'll help you build it! The support is amazing. The custom functions that do all the magic were created by Zoho Flow for free. Amazing service. It is one of the main reasons we chose the Zoho platform," Rees said.

Apart from automating processes, moving to Zoho has made Artico's entire business process much more streamlined. "It’s hard to say exactly what impact is from just Zoho Flow and what is the rest of our Zoho package.

"We started using both from the beginning, but since swapping [to Zoho], we have automated two full-time jobs and outsourced all sales and support roles. It has been huge and we couldn’t imagine going back,"

Owain ap ReesDirector of SalesArtico