Overview
Storm Communication Pvt. Ltd., a PAN-India event management company, was facing operational inefficiencies due to fragmented systems for finance, HR, reimbursements, and vendor management. With a highly mobile workforce and multiple concurrent events, the lack of real-time visibility impacted productivity, profitability tracking, and employee satisfaction.
By implementing Zoho Books, Zoho Expense, Zoho People, and Zoho Payroll, the organization achieved centralized control, faster reimbursements, real-time event profitability insights, and seamless coordination across teams.
Key Takeaways
- Unified digital platform for finance, HR, and travel
- Faster reimbursements and approvals
- Real-time event-level profitability
- Improved audit readiness and compliance
- Higher employee satisfaction
Executive Summary
Storm Communication Pvt. Ltd. is a full-scale event management company executing large corporate events across India. The organization manages multiple events simultaneously, each with distinct budgets, vendors, timelines, and teams. Their workforce is highly mobile, often traveling across cities for on-ground execution.
- Location: India (PAN India operations)
- Industry: Event Management
- Nature of Business: Corporate events execution and management
- Employees: Distributed and travelling workforce
“Our operations are extremely dynamic. Managing finance, reimbursements, and people across locations without a centralized system was becoming unsustainable.”
Problem Statement and Key Challenges
Before Zoho implementation, Storm Communication was operating with manual and disconnected systems that severely affected daily operations.
Key Challenges Identified
- Delayed employee reimbursements due to manual submissions
- No structured approval workflows, causing frequent bottlenecks
- Difficulty tracking attendance and availability of travelling employees
- Absence of centralized HR and leave management
- Inconsistent event-wise expense tracking
- No real-time visibility into Budget vs Actuals
- Manual vendor payment follow-ups with no live outstanding view
- Scattered storage of bills, invoices, and receipts
- Delayed accounting closures and audit challenges
- Event profitability known only long after project completion
- Poor coordination between finance, HR, and operations
- Lack of mobile-first tools for on-field teams
“By the time we understood the profitability of an event, the opportunity to correct cost overruns was already lost.”— Finance Team, Storm Communication Pvt. Ltd.
Evaluation
The Zoho Partner team conducted a detailed evaluation of Storm Communication’s workflows across:
- Event operations
- Finance and accounting
- Employee travel and reimbursements
- HR and payroll processes
Through requirement workshops and process mapping, gaps were identified in approval hierarchies, event-level tracking, and mobile accessibility. Based on this assessment, a tightly integrated Zoho ecosystem was recommended to eliminate silos and enable real-time decision-making.
Proposed Solution(s)
The following Zoho applications were proposed and mapped directly to the identified challenges:
Zoho Books
- Centralized accounting platform
- Event-wise income and expense tracking
- Vendor management and outstanding tracking
- Real-time profitability analysis
Zoho Expense
- Mobile-based expense capture
- Auto-scan and receipt management
- Event tagging of expenses
- Multi-level approval workflows
Zoho People
- Attendance and leave management
- Employee tracking for travelling workforce
- Centralized HR data repository
Zoho Payroll
- Automated payroll processing
- Seamless sync with reimbursements
- Statutory compliance and reporting
Each product was selected to ensure scalability, mobile accessibility, and seamless integration across departments.
Implementation
The implementation was executed in a phased and structured manner:
- Configuration of event-wise accounting structure in Zoho Books
- Custom approval workflows for expenses and reimbursements
- HR and attendance setup aligned to a travelling workforce
- Payroll integration with finance and HR modules
- User training and adoption support
Despite the complexity of multi-location operations and dynamic workflows, the implementation was completed efficiently with minimal disruption to ongoing events.
Results
Post implementation, Storm Communication achieved measurable improvements across operations:
- 60–70% reduction in reimbursement processing time
- Real-time visibility into employee attendance and movement
- Accurate Budget vs Actuals tracking per event
- Faster accounting closure and improved audit readiness
- Real-time dashboards for event profitability
- Reduced cost overruns through automated controls
- Improved employee satisfaction due to timely reimbursements
- Single source of truth for finance, HR, vendors, and events
“Zoho has given us complete visibility and control. We now know the financial health of every event in real time.” — Leadership Team, Storm Communication
