Green Endeavour Case Study

Green Endeavour Case Study

“We have smoothly merged our Zoho systems and their subsequent integrations with Fresh Computer Systems with the help of the A1CRM team. As a result, we have managed to speed up our customer onboarding process, reduce manual data entry and user errors and most importantly, go completely paperless.”

– Sarah Strathern, Projects & Innovation Manager

Green Endeavour Achieves Seamless Zoho CRM Integration & Digital Transformation

Their Business / Background

Suncoast Fresh is an owner-operated business that has become iconic market leaders supplying some of the best restaurants, cafes and bars the South East Coast has to offer. They have three HACCP approved warehouses located in the Rocklea Markets in Brisbane, Coolum and Byron Bay. Suncoast Fresh supply high-quality fruit and vegetables to restaurants, cafes, hotels, businesses, and retail customers in Brisbane, Sunshine Coast, Gold Coast, Byron Bay, Toowoomba and beyond.

At the end of 2021, Suncoast Fresh merged with Fruitlink to form Green Endeavour. Together, they are highly respected gourmet food specialists within their market sectors, with expertise in Fruit and veg supply. As part of their merger, their systems and processes needed to be reviewed, consolidated and merged.

Although, Suncoast Fresh and Fruitlink will continue to operate as separate brands, by combining resources and forming Green Endeavour, they have:

  • Fast-tracked their ability to become a greener and more sustainable business
  • Doubled their industry experience
  • Increased their capability and gained operational efficiencies which has strengthened their overall product and service offering

The Challenge

  • US Data Centre move to Australia
    • The Suncoast Fresh team’s system was setup in the Australian data centre, however the Fruitlink instance was in the US DC. This meant that their data was not in the same centre and would be tricky to combine. As a first step, A1CRM moved the Fruitlink instance to Australia to the two systems were compatible. As the Fruitlink team was using numerous Zoho Apps and integrated 3rd party apps, the migration was a complex project, requiring considerable planning to avoid massive disruption.
  • Combining 2 different onboarding processes (Retail & Wholesale) and Fresh Integration into 1 
    • The Suncoast Fresh and Fruitlink teams had their own processes set up which worked for the respective teams but not together. The challenge was consolidating these processes into one system with minimal business disruptions.
    • Fresh Computer systems is their stock control and accounting system in use by both companies
  • Paper Forms and manual handling
    • There were numerous forms required to be completed by their prospective customers, Sales reps and Management before a customer could be onboarded. These were physical paper forms where the parties needed to fill out, sign, scan and email back to Admin, where Admin then manually entered the data into their system. This was double handling data and was prone to errors and typos.
  • No disruptions of existing processes and integrations
    • Both Suncoast and Fruitlink teams had well-established processes used in their daily operations which A1CRM needed to make sure were not disrupted while we merged their systems. For example, the Fruitlink team had their Weekly Call Schedules and Visits which needed to be functional while we combined their systems.
  • Time constrain 
    • We had a strict cutover date of 30 June 2022 to deliver the project in alignment with Green Endeavour’s Business Schedule and other systems merge (eg. the new Fresh instance go live was 1 July, which meant our integrations needed to be fully live and tested by this date).

The Solution

  • Move to the Australian Data Centre
    • A1CRM managed and migrated the move to the Australian DC. A1CRM’s team co-ordinated with the Zoho Migration team, Fresh Computer Systems, Suncoast Fresh, Fruitlink, 3CX (phone integration) and BurstSMS, among others.
    • To ensure minimal/no down time to both Suncoast and Fruitlink team, a project plan with clear dates and times of expected tasks was created and agreed upon.
  • Review existing processes – As part of discovery, we reviewed Suncoast Fresh’s and Fruitlink’s Customer onboarding processes to come up with a common solution which didn’t disrupt their existing processes during implementation. This was also the perfect chance to improve the current processes where we:
    • Setup Credit Applications, Trade Reference and Direct Debit Forms – so their customers could fill in the forms directly and sign digitally for quicker and more efficient onboarding. The automation utilises Zoho CRM, Forms, Writer, Sign and Zoho Flow.
      Zoho CRM

      • i. 1 -The Credit Application is triggered and sent from CRM on the qualification of a lead
      • ii. 2 – Forms. The customer completes the Form online
      • iii. 3 – Writer. Getting its data from the completed form, a merged document is generated automatically for use in the next step
      • iv. 4 – Sign. The final document is sent from Zoho Sign to the prospective client’s directors and signatories for digital signing
      • v. 5 – Flow. On final signing of the document, the copies are automatically saved back in the CRM using Zoho Flow to connect
      • vi. 6 – CRM. Once Lead Status is updated, a workflow in CRM triggers a notification to GE Admin to continue to the next stage
    • Reminders and Data Validation – When onboarding a customer, there are certain checks required like Credit checks and management Approvals. A1CRM set up data validation to make it easier to audit and for management to make a decision to proceed.
    • Merge Fruitlink and Suncoast Fresh Zoho and Fresh data – A1CRM performed a thorough review and preparation of data to merge the systems. There were common fields and modules between the 2 businesses. A1CRM merged and tested all data combinations in a Sandbox environment to simulate the data merge so we could check that existing processes were not disrupted heavily and that data was where it was meant to be.
    • Integration with Fresh Systems
      • There are a number of variable picklist fields that needed to Sync/integrate with the Fresh Computer Systems. We created a Variable Picklist Widget to reflect live Fresh data for accurate data entry.

The Outcome

  • Reduced the manual data handling and user error rate
  • Sped up the onboarding process and streamlined the process for our customers
  • 100% visibility of prospective and current clients
  • Complete paperless onboarding process

Thoughts about A1CRM?

A1CRM have been instrumental in the successful transition across to our merged Zoho platform. A detailed project plan was presented with a step by step break down of how we were going to attack the complexities of the merge against such tight timelines. Cyrill & her team were wonderful to work alongside and ensured every aspect of the project was thoroughly tested and approved before go live.”

Industry: Fruit and veg supply
Zoho Product Implemented: CRM, Forms, Flow, Sign, Writer
Non Zoho Tech Skills Used: C# 
Total No of Users in Scope: 32 users
Duration of Implementation in Months: 12 Months
Project Year: 2022

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