Netfarmer was founded in 2010 out of Shanghai, China with a vision for innovating cloud service. They have implemented over 100 digital transformation projects in China across sectors including manufacturing, education, technology, professional services, and more in the last couple of years; mostly based on the Zoho platform. Zoho and Netfarmer have been working together for over a decade and Netfarmer is the highest revenue-generating partnership in the region.

How the seeds were sown

"We were confident that we could offer trustworthy consulting services to our clients using award-winning software, like the Zoho platform, to help our clients succeed and reach their business goals," said Andy Chen, CEO at Netfarmer. "We realized that Zoho People has a lot more to offer than most actually realize; the advantages and benefits were substantially ideal for a market like China, knowing its widespread mobility, online presence, and digital ecosystem."

10 years after their founding, small, medium, and large businesses now trust Netfarmer to provide consulting and implementation for Zoho People to manage their HR functions. "We turned it into a lucrative opportunity while being the best Zoho ambassadors we could be. With support from the Zoho People team, we customized the system to suit all kinds of clients' needs in China and to offer a more localized solution," Chen said.

While the road may have been bumpy during earlier days because they did not fully understand Zoho People from a consulting angle, over time they became pros in providing better service using Zoho People while supporting their clients every step of the way.

Reaping benefits

Chen claims that the workforce in China is known to be hardworking, so business heads want to ensure that they have very smooth and reliable management systems. This means features including attendance and leave management, as well as payroll and workflows in Zoho People, are highly sought after.

"We get a lot of support from the Zoho People team during implementation projects. Be it through Zoho Connect, Cliq, email, or live chat, the team always has our back and responds promptly to help us solve technical issues or offer simple expert advice," Chen said.

Chen also observed that Zoho People has had a tremendously positive impact on their business. Their relationship with Zoho allows both parties to work better together and helps them provide superior value to clients by combining global products like Zoho to match locally-serviced offers while delivering custom solutions. "Obviously, we intend to improve our service capabilities through case studies and diversified offerings to meet the greater demand in the market," Chen said.

According to Netfarmer, the Chinese market has very unique and specific needs relating to human resource, resource planning, human performance, and connectivity. "These are, with no doubt, the keys to the HR market and Zoho People has helped us unlock these markets," Chen said. This is substantiated by the fact that Netfarmer's revenue from Zoho now is more than threefold of their overall revenue before partnering with Zoho.