" Sales have grown by more than 30% per year after using Zoho Commerce. Order processing has become easy, leaving us with time to meet our deadlines for courier collections. "
- Jerry Cook, Managing Director, MMC
The company
Measure Monitor Control (MMC) was started in 1997 in the UK as an importer and distributor of industrial valves and associated products. Those were the early days of digital transformation for many businesses.
"Back then, computers were just starting but out of our price range, so we invested in a typewriter that has some digital capabilities," says Jerry Cook, Managing Director of MMC. "Market research was done through pages and pages of company listings and lots of phone calls to prospective clients. I attended exhibitions where competing manufacturers would have similar uses for my products." Today, MMC functions as a family-owned business and has been providing technical solutions for industrial problems as a credible supply partner.
The challenge
MMC worked only with approved manufacturers and represented them on an exclusive basis. The advent of the internet was a massive boost for the business. "We could reach customers in many countries like never before," Cook says, looking back at MMC's attempts to transform their business digitally. "In the early days, we checked our emails only once a day. We added a computer system and bought the accounting software, Sage, which had inventory as a bolt-on. This worked separately from a CRM and quotation system. It proved to be quite frustrating and expensive, as every time Microsoft updated their server, nothing worked. The aim was to have an integrated suite."
MMC had a stand-alone provider that was Sage-integrated, but it still required that orders be entered twice. It was difficult to run both of the systems, as it took away precious time and also led to data errors, with price updates and product specifications always out of sync. "Once we identified the need to move away from an expensive in-house server to cloud," Cook says, "we began looking for cloud suites that would allow single data entry."
Cook saw the success of eBay, and later Amazon, and felt ecommerce was the space to be in. And then they found Zoho.
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The solution
"The Zoho One suite was originally a stand-alone product with Zoho Sites as an effective bolt-on," Cook recalls. "I stayed with the Sage system until Zoho Commerce became available, with the live inventory link being the most appealing part of it." Zoho changed the business operations and streamlined a lot of MMC's work.
The benefits
Since MMC switched to Zoho, they've seen steady growth. "Sales have grown by more than 30% per year after using Zoho Commerce," Cook says, vouching for the Zoho One suite and its seamless integrations across the board. "Order processing has become easy, leaving us with time to meet our deadlines for courier collections. It saves time and almost eliminates human error. We can process customer credit card payments through the ecommerce site or by sending an invoice from within Zoho Books directly to the customer."
With a small business and limited resources, MMC's digital transformation wasn't easy, as there was difficulty in deciding the way forward. "I researched several providers on YouTube and went through user experiences on forums," Cook says. "But the biggest advantage is the 24/7 support from Zoho."
The road ahead
MMC takes its own own product shots for its website and also keeps its users up to date with various posts and articles. In the coming years, Cook wants to keep the Zoho Commerce site optimized as much as possible and attract new customers. "We would like to keep challenging ourselves and pushing Zoho for enhancements to their system, so we can keep selling."