Bringing programme delivery, investor matching and impact measurement into one connected platform
We've recently worked with a client within the impact finance sector, supporting them to bring a complex operational lifecycle into one connected Zoho environment.
Their work involves supporting impact-driven businesses as they become investment-ready, connecting them with appropriate investors, and measuring the impact created over time. Behind that sits a significant amount of information that needs to move between teams while remaining connected to the businesses, investors and activities it relates to.
We worked with the client to understand that journey end-to-end and designed a platform around the way their organisation operates. The resulting solution connects origination, onboarding, technical assistance, investor matching, deal activity and impact measurement, while reducing much of the manual effort involved in moving information between different stages of the process.
Understanding the Challenge
The client's operating model involves several interconnected journeys.
Businesses move from initial enquiry through qualification and onboarding into technical assistance and investment readiness. Investors have their own onboarding and engagement journey. Businesses and investors are then matched, investment opportunities are tracked, and impact is measured through an ongoing reporting cycle.
Bringing all of this together meant understanding how information needed to move across the organisation, where relationships between records were important, and which processes could be simplified or automated.
There were also some technically complex requirements to work through.
The client's impact survey captures a significant volume of data and requires extensive calculation logic before that information can be used for reporting. Their matching process needed to ensure that an investor would never be presented with the same business twice. Investor-facing documents needed to be generated from current system data, and the application process needed to identify ineligible applicants before they progressed further.
Individual departments also needed access to reporting that reflected their own priorities without relying on a central team to produce every report.
Designing Around the Business
We started by mapping how information moves through the organisation and understanding what each team needs at different points in the lifecycle.
That work informed the architecture of the solution.
Zoho CRM became the central system of record, connecting business and investor accounts with technical assistance, matching, deals and impact data. Zoho Forms, Marketing Automation, Backstage, Analytics, Writer and WorkDrive were then integrated around CRM to support data capture, events, reporting, document generation and file management.
Three custom CRM modules were developed specifically around the client's processes, covering technical assistance and investment readiness, impact reporting, and the relationship between businesses and investors throughout the matching process.
Where standard Zoho functionality supported the process well, we used it. Where the requirements called for something more specific, we developed the functionality needed around the client's operating model.
Building the Solution
The platform was developed progressively across origination, onboarding, technical assistance, matching, impact reporting, events and departmental reporting.
Throughout the implementation, we worked closely with the client's user groups through regular demonstrations, testing and Q&A sessions. This gave teams an opportunity to work with the platform while it was being developed and gave us useful feedback about how the processes worked under real conditions.
Some of the most valuable functionality came from the custom development within the platform.
Completing technical assistance for a business now automatically creates the relevant impact record and carries the baseline information across with it. The team can move from programme delivery into impact measurement without manually recreating information that already exists elsewhere in the system.
The investor matching process uses dedicated deduplication logic to prevent the same business and investor combination from being presented more than once. Once a profile share is approved, the associated deal is created and named automatically using the underlying account information.
Investor documentation is generated directly from confirmed match data using Zoho Writer, including summary documents and individual investor memorandums. This gives the investment team current information directly from the system while reducing the administration involved in preparing documents manually.
We also introduced eligibility rules into the application journey through a custom integration so that applicants who do not meet the relevant criteria are identified before progressing to the full application.
Impact reporting required a particularly data-intensive solution. Survey information is processed through Zoho Analytics, where query tables handle the required calculations and feed the resulting information into departmental and individual dashboards.
Working Through the Detail
As the project progressed, user testing surfaced areas where the original design could be improved.
In some cases, a simpler approach proved more practical than the process originally specified. In others, feedback from the people using the system highlighted opportunities to improve the experience or automate additional steps.
Those changes were incorporated as the implementation developed rather than holding rigidly to decisions made at the beginning of the project.
That process was particularly important for a platform spanning several teams and stages of the organisation's lifecycle. Seeing how the system behaved with real users and real scenarios gave both teams a better understanding of where the solution needed to adapt.
Building Capability Within the Team
Training and adoption ran alongside the implementation rather than being left until the end.
User-group testing gave teams practical experience with the platform as it developed, supported by guided click-through sessions and opportunities to ask questions about their own processes.
Our Success Facilitation programme complemented this with self-directed learning through Zuccess and additional sessions covering CRM, Zoho Analytics, Backstage, dashboards and WorkDrive.
Reporting enablement was provided across the organisation so that individual departments can build and maintain their own reporting in Zoho Analytics as their needs change.
Where They Are Now
- The client now has a connected view of the journey from initial origination through to impact measurement.
- Information moves between programme delivery, investor matching and impact reporting while maintaining the relationships between businesses, investors, deals and the support provided along the way.
- The transition from technical assistance into impact reporting is automated, investor matching is supported by dedicated deduplication logic, and approved matches flow into deal creation and investor documentation with considerably less manual intervention.
- Impact information captured through structured forms is connected back to the relevant business records and available through dashboards covering areas such as geography, employment and reporting timelines.
- Teams across the organisation are working from the same underlying information while retaining the ability to report on the areas relevant to their own work.
- The implementation has also given the client a foundation they can continue developing as their programmes, reporting requirements and impact finance activities evolve.
The Technology
- Zoho CRM
The central system of record connecting leads, accounts, contacts, technical assistance, impact data, matching and deals. - Zoho Forms
Captures lead, application and impact-survey information directly into the wider platform. - Zoho Analytics
Processes impact data and supports departmental reporting and dashboards. - Zoho Marketing Automation
Connects marketing activity with CRM. - Zoho Backstage
Supports event management within the wider client and investor environment. - Zoho WorkDrive
Provides centralised document and file storage.
