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CASE STUDYB2B hardware manufacturerZoho Cliq · Zoho CRM · WooCommerceLive since Aug 2026

Proformas in about a minute, straight from the team chat.

Technoton sells fuel flow meters and monitoring hardware to companies worldwide. Its sales team was doing the same paperwork by hand for every order. We moved four of those jobs into the tools the team already uses — Zoho Cliq and Zoho CRM — so the routine runs itself and people only make the decisions.

~1 minto create a numbered, filed proforma
4workflows running in production
351past orders imported on day one
Jul–Oct2026, built by one developer
THE PROBLEM

Every order meant the same four manual jobs.

A proforma was a copied Excel file, filled in field by field and numbered by hand. A shipping quote meant checking DHL, FedEx and UPS one website at a time. And the web shop wasn’t connected to either the team chat or the CRM.

None of this is hard. It is slow, it grows with every order, and it is the kind of work where a duplicated invoice number or a lead without its source slips through.

WHAT WE BUILT

Four workflows, each one rung up the Autonomy Ladder.

Not everything should be fully automatic. Where a judgement call matters — which carrier to book — a person still makes it. Where it doesn’t, the system runs on its own and only flags failures.

Proforma invoices

L2 · person triggers, system does the rest
BEFORE

Copy the Excel template, type in the buyer’s company, VAT ID, legal and delivery addresses, contact, service and price, give it a number by hand, export a PDF, file it.

AFTER

/proforma in Zoho Cliq opens one form. The system assigns a unique number, fills a copy of the template, files it in that month’s Google Drive folder and posts the sheet and PDF links back to the chat. Every proforma is logged with who made it and when.

A PERSONFills in the form — about a minute.

Shipping quotes

L2 · person picks the carrier
BEFORE

Open each carrier’s website and check prices one by one.

AFTER

/getrate takes the parcel dimensions and destination and returns live quotes at the company’s own negotiated rates (via Shippo), with the cheapest highlighted — inside the team chat.

Status: FedEx quotes are live. UPS international and DHL are waiting on carrier-side account setup.

A PERSONChooses which carrier to book.

Web-shop orders to the team

L3 · fully automatic
BEFORE

The web shop wasn’t connected to the team chat — new orders lived only in the shop admin.

AFTER

Every WooCommerce order posts instantly to an “Orders” channel in Zoho Cliq with customer, items, total and status, and is stored in a database. The full history — 351 orders back to 2020 — was imported on day one.

A PERSONNothing — the team just sees new orders as they arrive.

Orders to CRM leads

L3 · people handle exceptions only
BEFORE

The web shop wasn’t connected to the CRM, so orders didn’t become leads on their own.

AFTER

Every shop order becomes a Zoho CRM lead automatically, with its source and UTM data. If the CRM doesn’t respond, the system retries on its own.

A PERSONSteps in only when every retry has failed (the order gets a note and a “Resend” button), and approves repeat buyers that land in CRM’s waiting list.

A DESIGN DECISION

The CRM sync deliberately does not run through the chat. Orders go straight from the shop to the CRM, with retries. If Zoho Cliq has an outage, the team misses a notification — but no lead is ever lost.

TIMELINE

Shipped one workflow at a time.

  1. Live shipping quotes in the team chat
  2. Proforma generator with automatic numbering and Drive filing
  3. Every web-shop order posted to the team, 351 past orders imported
  4. Orders become CRM leads automatically, with retries and source data
Zoho CliqZoho CRMWooCommerceGoogle Drive & SheetsShippoWebhooks with retries

Doing the same paperwork for every order?

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