Headquartered in Essen, Germany, this logistics firm specializes in business mail service and serves more than 1,500 customers with tenders, advertising mail, pickups and deliveries, as well as tracking of shipments. Solid structures and perfectly integrated processes have made xendis a strong partner for their customers – not least thanks to the continuous optimization process that the company pursues. “We examine every area of work in order to tailor our services to the needs of our customers and to increase our effectiveness,” explains Sarah Rother, Sales Manager at xendis GmbH, as she describes the company’s philosophy. “But in order to strengthen our structure internally as well, we first needed to do one thing: solve the problem of our customer relationship management”.

Venture out into new structures and let a breath of fresh air blow into the company. This was the goal of xendis GmbH a year ago. But this meant saying goodbye to the existing CRM and confronting an immense challenge: “Restructuring meant that new systems had to be implemented – all without the ability to transfer data from the old system,” says Sarah Rother, summarizing the initial situation that laid the foundation stone of what would be a comprehensive project. The first major research step could already be taken swiftly thanks to the team’s recommendation, and one thing became clear: all eyes on Zoho!

Simply take the divisions of a company and merge all the processes and information into one fully structured system: Zoho One. With its multitude of modules, this software digitizes every branch of the company, creating a holistic cloud application. However, something that sounds too good to be true cannot truly be achieved without active support. And this was support was found with a Google search.

Cleaning up unsuitable implementations, establishing order and structure, as well as staff training – the list of xendis’ requests and goals seemed short when we first discussed them, but the underlying to dos entailed a huge amount of work. A clear case for codafish’s project management to draw up one of its roadmap. An intensive Zoho workshop was held to identify the company’s needs and define a plan for integrating Zoho CRM – an important step towards digitization, but one that also presented challenges. “The balance between completing project tasks and day-to-day operations was difficult to maintain. I’d have liked to focus more on the integration, but with codafish I had a partner at my side who supported me in the best possible way”, Sarah Rother describes the work phases, “When you set up a new system, there is a lot to consider. From day one, codafish looked at everything in its entirety, gave a lot of important input and addressed points that I hadn’t even thought of. They were extremely helpful and understanding in dealing with any questions I had, always had advice and guidance, and were incredibly flexible and always available.”

Sometimes the wait is worth it. Or rather: something that’s been a long time coming can have an almost unimaginable transformative effect in day-to-day working. This is the way Sarah Rother evaluates the newly integrated Zoho CRM at xendis. “It’s not just the collaboration with codafish that has exceeded all expectations, but the new technology has as well.” Above all, they said, it was the tremendous relief the software brought to their day-to-day work with regard to workflow and handling that prompted them not only to recommend the software to others, but also to take on further projects. “Across departments, Zoho has sparked a huge amount of interest, as the redesigned workflow in the sales department has yielded strikingly effective results,” says Sarah, describing the new way of working and expressing her appreciation for the application’s capabilities above all else: “I had no experience with systems up to that point, let alone setting them up. I’m even more enthusiastic about our new CRM. The self-explanatory interface means that I can now make small adjustments and move around much more freely on this new terrain.”