From Buckingham Palace to 10 Downing Street; Madhu's prestigious events are powered by Zoho One
- INDUSTRY Hospitality & Travel
- Key AppsCRM, Sign, Creator, Writer, Workdrive, People
The Company
For more than four decades, family firm Madhu's has been delighting diners with award-winning Punjabi dishes and impeccable service. With six Central London locations in its portfolio, including at The Savoy, The Peninsula, and The Landmark, as well as a new restaurant in Istanbul, the Madhu's name has become synonymous with exceptional eating experiences.
Madhu's also offers event management services and outside catering, even counting royalty amongst its wealth of satisfied clients. It was the first Asian caterer to provide food at Buckingham Palace and Windsor Castle, and is the primary Asian caterer supplying 10 Downing Street.
The challenge
"We needed software to take the company to the next level."
When Arjun Anand took the reins of his family's business, he recognised an urgent need to digitise its operations with a CRM system. The team was using Excel spreadsheets and paperwork to manage everything from event bookings to quotes, contracts, and payment schedules. Productivity, efficiency, and reporting capabilities were suffering, data was being duplicated, and the potential for errors was high.
Arjun scoured the software market for a decade, looking for a solution that could handle the complex nature of the business and its activities. "All the hotels that we work with used MICROS, so I thought it would fit us well. Unfortunately, it wasn't dynamic enough," Arjun explains. Then a promising bespoke build stalled when the developer parted ways with the vendor, and a third project with a well-known CRM provider never got off the ground. "It took the company forever to understand our requirements. Our business has so many different elements, and our quotes are so bespoke, so nothing off the shelf could work for us," he adds.
The solution
Luckily, Arjun discovered Zoho in 2024 and was immediately impressed by the possibilities offered by Zoho One, a bundle of 45+ integrated business applications. "What I found with Zoho was unique; I could access so many different software suites that all talked to each other... I don't think anyone else offers anything like it!", he enthuses.
Acknowledging the complexity of Madhu's operations, particularly its events, Zoho's representative recommended that Arjun work with ThoughtLogik, an approved Zoho partner. ThoughtLogik's Principle Consultant, Yuvaraj Ramamoorthy, worked closely with Arjun throughout Madhu's digital transformation project, ultimately implementing:
- A comprehensive quote-builder to incorporate thousands of event choices.
- A digital catalogue of venues, collating bookings, contracts, pricing, amenities, images, and logos.
- E-signature capabilities for quotes and contracts.
- Automated workflows to send payment schedules and reminder emails.
- A single calendar to view confirmed and provisional events, site visits, food-tasting days, and more.
- A mobile app for real-time availability of dates and venues during external site visits.
- HR software to track leave allowance for hundreds of full-time and casual staff.
The event pipeline with Zoho CRM
Today, Zoho CRM is a comprehensive event management tool for Madhu's sales team. It's used to record new enquiries, manage opportunities, and log its full pipeline of events up to the contract acceptance stage. Thoughtlogik integrated Zoho Sign to share event contracts with clients and collect digital signatures, with PDF copies posted to the CRM opportunity as attachments. Once confirmed, event details are pushed from Zoho CRM into Madhu's Sage accounting package for invoicing.
The CRM also sends automated emails about the status of events to Madhu's customers and venues, as well as payment schedules and reminders. "We have automated emails throughout the whole journey, from the enquiry stage to making the bookings. Automating these makes our life a lot easier because nothing is missed and no errors are made," Arjun explains. And if a change is made to a booking, automations in CRM ensure the data is automatically updated across every related field for consistency.
Event quotations with Zoho CRM & Creator
For the most complex aspects of Madhu's events process, ThoughtLogik introduced Zoho Creator, a low-code application development platform also included in the Zoho One bundle. Quote generation is one such process, whereby the sales team interacts with the CRM on the front end, but in fact are using Creator's powerful workflows to compile detailed costings behind the scenes.
"The quotations are built inside Zoho Creator in the background, which could better handle their complexity. To create one quotation, there are over 200 workflows in Zoho Creator!"
Creator's endless possibilities were critical for Madhu's, which can offer its clients thousands of bespoke event options. As well as food, its team can arrange hotel suites, entertainment, furniture hire, photography, security, flowers, cars, cakes, and more. "We don't operate like any other outside caterer in the world; we act more like wedding planners. There are so many available add-ons, some with prices per person or piece," explains Arjun. To accommodate this, ThoughtLogik reflected each event choice in Creator's forms and subforms, including some specific stipulations unique to certain venues. Seasonal pricing variations and dynamic rate adjustments based on capacity and peak and off-peak days were also factored into the quote calculations.
Next, Zoho Writer's APIs output each Creator quote to a document and a PDF file at the click of a button. In true Madhu's style, each quote is a masterpiece, incorporating branding, images, and rich details about the event. "Our quotations are almost like a brochure with images and venue logos. They are dynamic with certain bullet-pointed notes that change according to the selections," adds Arjun.
Booking calendar with Zoho Creator
A single Madhu's event may require multiple bookings, from an initial site visit, to a food-tasting appointment, second and third date options, and finally a confirmed date. Madhu's team also has to be aware of each venue's newly-released dates and any cancellations. As such, Zoho's software needed to provide complete visibility of bookings in a single calendar.
ThoughtLogik built a shared calendar in Zoho Creator that could be consulted from the CRM. Each type of booking is represented with a separate colour, offering a real-time, at-a-glance view of venue activity. Before Zoho, Madhu's team used multiple Excel calendars to track event dates. "Now we have one live calendar, which really helps our sales team speed up the process of knowing if a date or venue is available," beams Arjun.
Venue pages with Zoho Creator
Creator is also used to house an extensive venue catalogue. Built as a custom HTML page, it allows Madhu's team to upload swathes of information about each venue, including key contacts, web links, amenities, photographs, rates, contracts, and booking history. This venue directory has become a one-stop shop for its sales team, who need to liaise with scores of contacts each day.
A simple tick box on the venue homepage allows the agent to create and auto-populate a dedicated Zoho Workdrive folder for each venue, which holds high resolution images of each venue and any related files for reference.
Employee management with Zoho People
Madhu's events operation requires input from hundreds of staff, both behind the scenes and front of house. Currently, the business employs 180 full-time colleagues with a further 400 agency workers on the books.
"Employee data was on a spreadsheet before, so we were having to manually track and calculate holidays," Arjun recalls. As part of the Zoho One package, Madhu's were instantly granted access to Zoho People, a cloud-based HR platform. Adding each employee to the People database enabled leadership to view each employee's shifts, configure leave allowances and approve requests, store employee records, and onboard new starters with ease.
"Zoho People just makes our lives so much easier!"
Looking forward with Zoho One
In the next phase of digital transformation. Arjun wants to implement more applications from the One bundle and digitise more processes:
- Set up Zoho Inventory to track catering equipment and food and beverages.
- Utilise Zoho Analytics for management reporting.
- Explore Zoho Marketing Automation to target diners and venues with promotional messaging.
- Connect Zoho People to Sage Payroll.
- Add a food safety module to Zoho CRM.
- Add additional modules in Creator to track audits and mystery diners.
The plan eventually is to use Zoho as a one-stop shop for every process," Arjun explains."It's a massive bonus to have one vendor for all our software... We'll save a lot of money over its lifetime."
It sounds like Zoho One is truly the secret sauce to Madhu's success!
