How Zoho helped Ramakrishna Mission combine tradition with modernity
- NGO
- SPIRITUAL ORGANIZATION
The Organization
Ramakrishna Math and Ramakrishna Mission are non-political, non-sectarian spiritual organizations run by monastics that have been engaged in various forms of humanitarian and social service activities for more than a century across the world. The twin organizations offer philanthropic services in the fields of disaster/pandemic relief, rural welfare, medical and education through 220+ branch centres in India and abroad.
"The Sites team has been very cooperative in helping us get onboard. We regularly engaged with them, communicating our requirements and needs. The team were very courteous and obliged by incorporating these requirements in subsequent product releases. All these things have made working with Sites convenient for us."
- Web Team, Ramakrishna Math and Mission
The Challenge
Traditionally, the service activities have always been rendered by various centres of Ramakrishna Mission across India in a silent manner with minimal online presence. But, especially during disaster relief and pandemic relief with the public and donors expecting online updates, the multifarious service activities by Mission had to be showcased online. Initially, the Mission began by designing websites using tools such as Wordpress by setting up servers, installing/managing site themes and plugins, “As the number of websites increased across our centres,” says Web Admin, a monk of Ramakrishna Mission, “we found that more time (atleast 60%) of our time in non-content areas such as website security, performance, and theme/plugin updates.”
The Solution
Having maintained websites for a considerable period of time, the team was sure that a SaaS-based solution was the way to go for developing and maintaining their sites. "During our evaluation, Zoho Sites easily ticked atleast 70% of our requirements list especially in the UX Design, performance and security. It made us refocus on the content updates, while the server-side complexities were handled by Zoho Sites platform. We know that even 10 years down the line, the platform would be safe,” said the Web Admin.
Benefits & ROI
During the pandemic, with the familiarity of the Zoho Sites, it led them to try other Zoho products such as Zoho Social to publish on multiple social media platforms, Zoho BackStage to conduct online events and Zoho Checkout to collect online donations. Finally, their online book store and digital media store were also shifted to Zoho Commerce and Zoho forms. “The integrations at Zoho have been quite useful,” says WebAdmin. “For Zoho Commerce, we have been using SalesIQ for chat, and Desk for email support. We also want to move our accounting software to Zoho Books in the future.”
"The Sites team has been very cooperative in helping us get onboard. We regularly engaged with them, communicating our requirements, and in a few months' time we got most of what we were looking for. The changes we suggested went into the product, so once they were implemented in the website of one centre, it could easily be replicated in all our centres."
- Web Team, Ramakrishna Math and Mission
Looking Ahead
Ramakrishna Math and Mission have been using various Zoho Apps for almost 3 years now. The integration between the various Zoho apps also has benefited them immensely so that quality work could be completed with minimal resources. We are glad to collaborate with NGOs like Ramakrishna Mission in more areas, contributing through our skills thereby benefiting the society.
To learn more about Ramakrishna Mission, visit their website https://chennaimath.org/