How Zoho Creator Centralized Shopify Data to Unlock 25% Revenue Growth

For e-commerce businesses, scattered spreadsheets don’t lead to deeper insights; they drain efficiency. One e-commerce brand experienced the impact of fragmented data and partnered with SayOne for a scalable solution. This case study describes the challenges they faced, how we solved them, and the outcomes they achieved.

Executive Summary

An e-commerce brand on Shopify selling beauty products was struggling with disconnected spreadsheets for inventory, orders, and customer insights. Dealing with multiple spreadsheets exhausted the team and led to critical errors, which began to affect their bottom line. As they approached SayOne for a solution, we developed a custom app that pulls real-time data from Shopify, creating a single central dashboard for operations, sales, and fulfillment.

Challenges

The lack of a unified dashboard to track data on inventory, orders, and customer insights led to the following challenges:

Data Silos and manual entry

Orders from Shopify had to be manually copied into spreadsheets for tracking, leading to duplicates and outdated info across teams.

Inventory management issues

Spreadsheets couldn't handle real-time stock updates, causing frequent overselling and stockouts during peak seasons.

Fragmented reporting

The data on sales, customers, and inventory lived in separate tools, making it impossible to form an overall view without hours of consolidation.

Scalability limits

As orders doubled, manual processes slowed everything down, risking customer satisfaction and lost revenue.

The Solution

SayOne developed a custom app that became the e-commerce store’s unified dashboard to track all data in one place using Zoho Creator. We chose Zoho Creator for its low-code flexibility and smooth Shopify integration via Zoho Flow and APIs. The custom app featured:

• Bi-directional synchronization of orders, products, customers, and inventory through Zoho Flow and Shopify APIs.
• A centralized dashboard with role-based views for executives, inventory staff, and customer service.
• Automated notifications alerting low stock, late shipments, and high-value orders.
• Built-in reporting engine with drill-down charts for sales trends, cohort analysis, and profit margins.
• Workflow automation for returns, exchanges, and vendor reordering.
• Mobile-responsive design that enables managers to monitor operations anywhere. This replaced dozens of spreadsheets with a single intuitive platform tailored to their needs.

The implementation was completed in two months, and we overcame the following challenges during this period.

Data mapping complexity

Since Shopify and Zoho Creator organize their information differently, details from one system didn’t automatically fit into the other. To solve this, we learned what each data point meant and created a clear reference guide for all data.

Performance optimization

Early dashboard versions loaded slowly when handling high-order volumes and complex queries. We improved performance by loading information in smaller chunks, organizing data better, and using smarter data lookups. This made the dashboard load almost instantly, even at high order volumes.

Initial integration testing

API rate limits and webhook delays caused occasional sync lags during early testing phases. We resolved it by implementing retry logic, scheduling batch updates for non-critical data, optimizing webhook triggers, and load-testing under simulated peak traffic to ensure reliable real-time flow.

Results

Here are the transformative gains that the e-commerce brand experienced in six months post-launch:

Faster order fulfilment

The order fulfillment cycle reduced from 48 hours to less than 24 hours on average, freeing staff for customer service.

Improved inventory accuracy

The inventory accuracy increased to 98%, which significantly eliminated overselling incidents.

Increase in revenue

The monthly revenue rose by 25% using data-informed decisions that allowed identifying high-performing products quickly.

Reduced operational costs

The overall operational costs were reduced by 15% through the elimination of repetitive tasks via automation.

Key Learnings

This project imparted valuable learnings that helped us refine our approach for similar e-commerce clients.

Start with process mapping

Begin by uncovering hidden pain points in spreadsheets by documenting exact workflows to ensure the app automates the right tasks from day one.

Prioritize real-time sync

Ensure data transfer and accuracy by investing significantly in building robust and reliable integrations.

Scale as you go

Design modularly-separate concerns such as reporting, workflows, and integrations. This helps in easy addition of warehouses or sales channels, or AI features later on, without much hassle and at a considerably lower cost.

Looking Ahead

As their dashboard continues to progress, the brand will next look to implement AI-powered forecasting.

Is your Shopify store struggling with fragmented records? Contact us to build a unified dashboard with Zoho Creator.