Ascent Solutions uses Zoho Flow to streamline their ERP management system

The company

Ascent Solutions is an industrial IoT track-and-trace solutions business based in Singapore. They operate in 23 different countries, offering cutting-edge IoT solutions for all tracking and tracing requirements. As a global leader in the supply chain logistics community, they strive to provide excellence and innovation through their IoT solutions.

The challenge: Integrating their ERP system with Zoho CRM

Ascent has their own ERP system called Ascent Resource Information System (ARIS), where they typically store all information about customer accounts, quotes, and other pricing information. Since they use Zoho CRM to manage their lead and customer information, they wanted an integration to transfer their CRM data to ARIS.

This transfer of data involved a lot of back and forth, and manually transferring the data wasn't feasible. Building a native integration between Zoho CRM and ARIS wasn't an ideal solution either, as it would be time-consuming and maintenance would be tedious and costly. There was also the possibility of needing new integrations in the future. This is where Zoho Flow came in to the picture.

"If we didn't have Zoho Flow we would have wasted 12 months of development time in building a native integration. Instead, with Flow, it took us just two months."

Daniel ChanDirector of Professional Services and Data Protection OfficerAscent

The Solution: Seamless ERP management

With Zoho Flow, they built two integrations between Zoho CRM and ARIS, to ensure seamless flow of data. Since ARIS is a third-party application, they needed to use a webhook trigger to connect these applications. So, with these integrations in place, every time a customer is moved from the quote to the closed phase, the information about the customer will be transferred to ARIS. This information includes the customer name, customer ID, details of the quote, sales amount, size of the deal, and line items.

"Zoho Flow is an integral platform within the Zoho ecosystem—it can connect multiple applications together and ensure a seamless transfer of data across platforms."

Daniel ChanDirector of Professional Services and Data Protection OfficerAscent

Similarly, a flow was also built to function the other way. When the customer data reaches ARIS, it triggers a new flow, to push the price books from ARIS to Zoho CRM. Since Ascent prefers using their own ERP system for pricing requirements, the price information, like subscriptions and bundles, are transferred to Zoho CRM only after the customer is closed and the information reaches ARIS.

Benefits and ROI

Zoho Flow solved Ascent's problem of transferring consistent volumes of data across two of their most-used applications by offering them the option to integrate their apps through a webhook trigger. This integration saved them a lot of time that would have been otherwise spent developing this integration natively, which directly contributed to reducing costs.

"Zoho Flow has been a life saver, because, when you compare with their competitors, Flow offers more value for money. We hope to see Flow continue to flourish, with its ability to connect different ecosystems together."

Daniel ChanDirector of Professional Services and Data Protection OfficerAscent