Although the company’s success overall is extremely positive and something be celebrated, it gradually became somewhat of a double-edged sword for Höhenbalance. Besides the orders, purchase orders and advertising for new customers, the CRM and with it, the maintenance of customer data had become almost impossible to manage with any real consistency. The time to embark on a new project to clean up and to reorganize digitally had well and truly come. You can read here how Höhenbalance managed this with the full range of Zoho modules and its partner codafish!

The company name “Höhenbalance” (“height balance” in English) already reveals quite a bit about the work that Nicole and Harry Mutschler do. As one of Austria’s leading companies in the field of hypoxic training, they are a recognized partner amongst research institutes, doctors, fitness centers and many other institutions and sell hypoxic systems to corporate and private customers as well as universities. They offer both small appliances for the home and larger units for hotel facilities: Höhenbalance has the ideal technology to bring altitude to any space. But how does it work? Generators achieve this by drawing in air and extracting oxygen from it. This simulates an oxygen level similar to ones found in mountain regions. Cells in the human body are renewed by this hypoxia. The mitochondria swell, divide and multiply. “Hypoxic training has become a familiar concept in many areas,” says owner and Managing Director Nicole Mutschler, “in addition to its use in the healthcare sector, where it is used to treat metabolic and cardiovascular diseases, it is also an important aspect of research, especially in the study of long Covid conditions.” Since the company was founded in 2005, Höhenbalance has built up a customer base of 700 corporate and private clients as well as partnerships with 12 universities. The team of eight provides support for athletes and soccer clubs such as VfB Stuttgart and is currently working on its next major project. The new project involves the supply of their hypoxia technology to a hotel on Lake Constance where 110 rooms are to be brought up to altitude.

As you have read: boredom doesn’t even come into the equation for Höhenbalance and its employees. The same goes for their customer database, which has slowly but surely become too unstructured to cope with the flood of data. “It was all over the place,” says Nicole, summing up the problem with the database. “In the CRM, in accounting, in the newsletter system – data was stored in different systems, sometimes as duplicates, and it seemed almost impossible to bundle them all in one database, delete the duplicates and make everything reliably available in order to be able to work efficiently.” The couple realized that they had to tackle a new project and get to work on getting their house in order. An internal recommendation rapidly led to the discovery of a technical solution: the magic word was Zoho! With its more than 40 modules, it offers a standardized, complete digital solution for companies. So far, so good – but which modules provide the maximum output for Höhenbalance and align perfectly with its team’s expectations? One question that Nicole and Harry Mutschler immediately asked themselves was how to approach this. And there was only one answer: they needed to get an experienced partner on board. After some searching around in the pool of Zoho partners, they found what they were looking for and made an appointment with codafish.

It was already clear to Nicole Mutschler during the kick-off meeting that the groundwork for a joint collaboration with codafish had been laid. “The first meeting with Timo and his team was really pleasant. We communicated our objectives and needs and codafish not only explained the options of implementation and the functions of the programs to us, but also incorporated some new ideas themselves,” Nicole says, reflecting on the meeting. “We were very much persuaded.” It was clear that Höhenbalance was looking for a bundled database that would combine customer data from the CRM, accounting and newsletter systems. But what codafish and Höhenbalance implemented together with Zoho went well beyond that.

Compiling, combining and structuring data from different sources? With the Zoho CRM, this has always been a breeze for Zoho One. Primarily because Zoho Books as a tool for bookkeeping and Zoho Marketing Automation for newsletters can be connected effortlessly. The result is a perfectly fed customer database that is free of duplicates. But codafish had a thought: why stop here when the fun is only really just beginning? Nicole Mutschler was thinking the same thing. “We had done everything we originally wanted to do, and in the process, we gradually began to realize how processes could be optimized and automated. We were keen to have the full scope of these features available.” No sooner said than done, and codafish set to work on the extended project plan. First step: the lead process that was set up via Zoho CRM. Any new leads received are therefore fed directly into the CRM and are automatically sent mailings after four weeks as part of the newly created customer journey, which includes pre-sales and after-sales activities. A comprehensive deal process concept rounds off the overall package for new and existing customers. But it wasn’t just CRM that was taken to new heights, accounting was too: CI-compliant mail and PDF templates for mailing to customers were created and imported during the setup of Zoho Books. Simultaneously, all bookkeeping accounts were synchronized and tax automation was configured. The creation of mail accounts via Zoho Mail marked the completion of a large part of the internal digitalization process, but codafish went one step further and created an online store for Höhenbalance based on Zoho Commerce.

“We really have achieved a lot,” says Nicole Mutschler, looking at the long list of to-dos that were completed during the project. A great deal of changes were made to her work structure together with codafish and she and her team are now gradually familiarizing themselves with the new modules. “Mail, CRM, Marketing Automation, Books, the online store – we all had to get to grips with them, but that was no problem with codafish´s help. Timo provided us with expert support with the meetings right from the start, guided us through them and was always immediately on hand to help with any queries. This allowed us all to familiarize ourselves in the best possible way,” says Nicole Mutschler. Although the company is still in the learning phase, they have already come to appreciate and love the new way of working with Zoho One. “Everything is slowly coming together, and we are realizing that the customer journeys and automated processes are making things a lot easier. They have given us such a comprehensive overview! I would most definitely recommend Zoho One, because it’s just great how one module merges into another and you always have a very quick analysis of everything: From customer history in Zoho CRM to sales in Zoho Books.” – Nicole Mutschler, owner and Managing Director of Höhenbalance GmbH –