How Studio 31 automated 37+ processes and saved over 3 hours every day with Zoho Creator
December 27, 2022

How Studio 31 automated 37+ processes and saved over 3 hours every day with Zoho Creator

Pranesh Padmanabhan | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with Zoho Creator Platform

It's always perceived that wedding photographers have the best job and it's
all fun. However, in reality, it's the most complex service offering in the whole
wedding industry because it's the only service that has a very long customer
lifecycle—90+ days—and also the riskiest.
For the first few years, Studio 31 was busy building a strong foundation, and
it solely focused on the creative aspect of the business, along with great
customer service.
From inquiry to delivery, there were more than 37 processes that had to be
diligently followed to provide a hassle-free experience for its customers. For
Studio 31, everything was smooth initially, when we captured a limited
number of weddings. However, as we grew, we lost control over what was
happening, and a creative profession turned into an administrative one, with
all the hassles that entails.

  • Data management and accuracy
  • Expensive human error due to business complexity
  • Dependency on spreadsheets that had to be manually updated
  • Updating customers manually resulted in over 46 email threads
    per customer and staff having to invest over four hours every
    day in replying to emails
  • Lack of analytics and reporting
  • And more random issues that would pop up every day
After investing a lot of money and time in over 15 CRM's, we learnt that any ready to use platform will not suit our business model and this is where Zoho Creator came in. We are able to build whatever we've in mind without much restrictions. It's like an open canvas.

There's nothing that you cannot achieve in Zoho Creator. You just need clarity and direction on how to make best use of the product.

Pros

  • Build anything from scratch
  • Saves tons of time when compared to traditional development
  • Can see results instantly if we've the right people working on it
  • Citizen developer friendly
  • Integrations with other Zoho Products + Third Party tools makes life easier
  • Easy reporting and analytics
  • The fastest and best solution for building internal tools that wont cost you a bomb

Cons

  • Technical support through live chat where we can get help on coding etc.
  • Partners and developer resources
  • Eliminated emails by over 98% (average of 45 emails per client)
  • 80% increase in creative and strategic productivity
  • End-service delivery time decreased by 40%
  • Automation helped Studio 31 stop using spreadsheets an documents
  • Saved 3 hours on average per employee, per day
  • Reduced human error by 95%
  • Increased employee and customer happiness by more than 70%
  • Employee self-assessment and performance is now automated and non-biased
  • Increased profit per order by over 24%
Its quite easy if one has the need, interest and passion to build applications and solutions through low-code. One example would be, that my finance head who has absolutely nothing to do with tech and apps, is now able to create apps and manage Zoho Creator all by himself. So its all about the interest and how much time we put to learn the tool. Having said that, its quite easy to learn the tool and create anything that's within our scope of knowledge.

Do you think Zoho Creator delivers good value for the price?

Yes

Are you happy with Zoho Creator's feature set?

Yes

Did Zoho Creator live up to sales and marketing promises?

Yes

Did implementation of Zoho Creator go as expected?

Yes

Would you buy Zoho Creator again?

Yes

I was researching economic alternatives to achieve this
somehow, and that's when I learned about low-code tools. They're
like a canvas; one can build and achieve anything, and save 90% of
the actual development cost. We researched several solutions and
figured out that Zoho Creator worked the best. We started building
the software in 2017 and it took us about 19 months to get the entire
workflow sorted. However, a boon in disguise was the time that we
got during the Covid lockdown. We put all hands on deck, and in
about 200 days, we had built a much-improved software solution.
We'd built something outstanding, and we knew this because we
were able to see the results.

Zoho Creator Feature Ratings

Visual Modeling
8
Drag-and-drop Interfaces
9
Platform Security
10
Platform User Management
8
Reusability
8
Platform Scalability
9

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