Data-First Operations:
A Zoho Playbook for Measurable Outcomes

Nuvia Smiles' Growth and Zoho Integration

Michael Krigsman: Nuvia Smiles used Zoho to simplify operations and stay flexible as it scaled to 40-plus locations. We're talking with Parl Johnson, Nuvia's Chief Nerd, for practical advice that you can use now.

Parl Johnson: Nuvia Smiles specializes in dental implant surgery. We have over 40 locations across the country, and our specialty is having a 24-hour turnaround from surgery to implant, which creates a much better experience for the patient.

Michael Krigsman: What are you doing with Zoho?

Parl Johnson: One of our primary uses is Zoho Analytics, where we centralize the majority of our data, and that's proven to be one of our biggest wins from Zoho. We are using some Zoho CRM modules and processes. We have some things we're building in Creator.

We're using Zoho Projects for various things across departments. I can't even count how many Zoho products we're actually using.

Michael Krigsman: Parl, how did Zoho help you simplify your processes?

Parl Johnson: They provided a nice central place for us with a lot of different types of functionality. We found three different categories of business value. One right out of the gate was business intelligence.

The fact that we could start centralizing our data gave us a lot more insight into what was happening in our business processes and gave the executives and management a lot more power to make better decisions about what to do next.

Michael Krigsman: So, Nuvia started, of course, as a small company. It now has 40 locations, and it's growing. Take us on that journey.

Parl Johnson: That journey actually started more administratively than it did from a tech or a dev perspective. The management or the upper executives want more visual elements that really help them make decisions, like dashboards and business intelligence and things like that.

Obviously, when you get into those kinds of conversations, you can't get data unless you have good applications that give you the data. And so, it turned into a broader conversation of, is there something out there that could sort of be a catch-all where we could start centralizing all of our processes and operations?

So it's, it's been a great gap-filler, if you will, for us, as well as a great business intelligence tool, and then we're using it in quite a few other ways as well.

Michael Krigsman: You started with over 80 applications.

Parl Johnson: Every location and every department in the company was basically just choosing applications as, on an as-needed basis to do the things that they needed to do. Lots of different spreadsheets. Whatever approach they could find, they would just pick it and use it because there was no centrality to any of those concepts.

And so, that's. You can see how you could quickly get to over 80 applications.

Michael Krigsman: How did all of this complexity affect the business operations?

Parl Johnson: There's two priorities, ultimately, when it comes to our applications and use of software. The executive side, or upper management side, is really just about the data itself. It became evident really rapidly that just controlling the data was kind of our number one priority.

Let's find out how to control the data. And, of course, one of the biggest wins out of Zoho is just using the analytics tool because that gave us a place to start centralizing data and realizing what we actually don't know in the process.

And so you have that side of it, and then the other side of it is actually what's producing the data. So, what applications are getting used? Are these applications we can get the data from? Is it friendly to the end user?

And from those two worlds is where that complexity comes from. And they're really two different conversations have at the end of the day, which I think is where a dev or an IT team can really come into play and have some real strength and power in that conversation, as long as that's what their mission is, to kind of bring those two worlds together.

Collaboration Between IT and Business Teams

Michael Krigsman: That aspect of collaboration between the IT side and the business side is so important because, of course, business leaders know what they need from an operations perspective, but they don't necessarily understand all the ins and outs of the technology, and the IT folks don't know what's in the heads of the business leaders. So, how did you bring people together to make this collaboration work?

Parl Johnson: We discovered quickly that one of the missing gaps between the IT team and the executives or the business operators was that collaboration, was that understanding of the two different business models, if you will. Here you have all these locations that are successfully doing business and bringing smiles to patients' lives, and they're seeing the success and the reward and the outcomes.

And then here comes along this IT team, and what is it that we're supposed to bring to the table? And oftentimes, an IT team can be seen as a detriment or slowing us down a little bit. So having that conversation between those two sides, if you will, becomes an interesting challenge.

And I think oftentimes, companies miss out on some of the connecting tissue between those two things. In the sprint or agile world that I come from, we would call that a product owner or someone that's responsible for having a conversation between the two sides and taking the business knowledge and interpreting it into IT or developer knowledge so that it can be developed in an effective and efficient way.

And oftentimes, a role like a product owner is not even considered real. It's something overlooked quite a bit. And in our company, that was not a role that was filled, and so we sort of had to naturally start filling it.

Parl Johnson: We chose an approach called the customer journey approach, or the user journey approach, which is more committee-driven than it is an individual or a position, where we can bring people from various departments to talk with different people on the IT team so that we both come to the same understanding.

So that's how we've kind of dealt with some of those collaborative complexities, that way, by using more committee-based knowledge and collaboration.

Michael Krigsman: You used the term journey, and that kind of collaboration, for most organizations, definitely is a process of getting there.

Parl Johnson: Absolutely, you have to be consistent with quite a few things, and there are journey frameworks out there in the CX world that you can read up on. A lot of them kind of mirror the actual agile processes or frameworks, where you actually have meetings that you schedule every so often, every two weeks or one week or whatever your cycle is on.

And so following a framework, I think, is very productive and being consistent with it, and making sure that everyone understands they're on the same team. So often, a dev team and a department can think they're on different teams, or they can feel like they're sort of enemies to one another.

One's bogging down the other because they don't understand each other. So, I think overcoming that concern is huge in the collaborative world between different departments. Understanding that we're all on the same team with the same goal and the same mission, and that's to bring smiles to people's faces.

Once you can overcome those kinds of concerns, it's pretty amazing how productive a meeting or a collaboration can be and how actually enjoyable it can be, frankly. And the bigger the company gets, the more time, I think, you do have to spend on relationships and understanding one another and I guess the emotional intelligence of that process.

And so the bigger the company gets, I think, the harder it is to keep those connecting tissues tight and close together.

Data as the Core of Business Transformation

Michael Krigsman: Parl, earlier, you described data as being the core. Can you elaborate on the role and importance of data in driving this transformation?

Parl Johnson: I think we fell back to data at the end of the day because that is really sort of the doctrine by which companies run. I think it's real easy for people in a bubble, like CEOs or administrators or, like, just an IT guy or dev guy to be in a bubble and see things like, "Oh, look how sexy that interface is," and think that the sexiness of the interface is what makes a great product.

And so you can get a lot of confusion about what is important. And of course, a user interface is always really important but is not really the most important thing. You can get by with a less sexy interface as long as the data it's producing is valuable to you.

So, we learned quickly that those priorities needed to become very secondary to the idea that data is our first priority regardless of how good-looking the interface is or any of the window dressing about how we get it, as long as it's as easy as possible for the user to give it to us and, more importantly, easy and interpretable to give back to the executives in a digestible way. So, that data is really a lot more important than any other consideration at the end of the day.

Michael Krigsman: So, the data is not just about producing pretty reports but actually serving to move business operations forward.

Parl Johnson: Correct, and it's so easy get caught in the fray of the, of understanding that, the fray of, if it doesn't look pretty, is it accurate? You know? And, and I guess, to some degree, trust is a big issue with that, trusting the data.

I guess a UI comes in a little bit because it provides a trust level to data, but you can have the best UI on the planet and still have really crappy data. So, for us, we focus a lot more on data integrity now than anything else, and then we'll try and make it as pretty as we can after the fact.

Michael Krigsman: Earlier, you described this large application sprawl. Tell us about that and how you got your arms around it and simplified.

Parl Johnson: There are so many conversations surrounding all those applications, why they chose them, what data they were using them for, or what process and what data lives behind it, and to get through all those conversations is sort of step one. And then, the calculus of all that was, what is really the most important, because there were conversations about interfaces and does it run on a mobile phone, et cetera, et cetera.

And the calculus of all that was, the data is what's important. And knowing that, it really simplifies our perspective on how we migrate and how we look at applications. So, our first question is, can we get the data?

So, that changes the conversation entirely as to, well, we need to get rid of this app. Well, that's pretty aggressive. Can we get the data from the app? 'Cause maybe we can live with that for a little while before we get rid of the app.

So, it really does change the whole conversation and our priorities, and it allows us to be a level, a little more agile with all the applications that are being used. And if we can't get the data or the data is not accurate or providing us with data integrity, then we need to look at something more aggressive or centralizing it into something like Zoho.

Michael Krigsman: That's interesting. So, the data became your reference point for making technology decisions about what to keep, where to change, and it sounds like this was a very measured approach, again, based on the data as the reference.

Parl Johnson: We've kind of ended up there.

Simplifying Processes with Zoho

Parl Johnson: I mean, it's still an experiment, if you will, but it is simplifying our thought process, and it seems to make just common sense. It intuitively makes more sense because the conversations were really convoluted and hard to understand how to prioritize before that.

And so now that we've settled in on this one point of reference for an application, it just makes all of our conversations that much better, and we're not shaking other departments to the core by telling them we're stripping everything they're using tomorrow.

And so there's a lot less fear in it, a lot more trust in the process, and a lot of departments understand that now that we can get the data, we have a more aggressive conversation about replacing it, and they're okay with that because we've walked through the process from that perspective.

Michael Krigsman: And then, ultimately, you moved from this broad application sprawl onto Zoho as a unified platform.

Parl Johnson: We did have some really good successes with CRM. We do use Zoho Projects and other tools. We had success with Cliq and some other communication tools that are in there.

And again, when we made data the priority, we learned that we don't necessarily need to scrap someone's Google Sheet. Or we don't necessarily need to scrap a certain application, just because we now have a central tool to use, because that central tool can sometimes make it more complicated, not less, and make the data harder to understand or aggregate. And so, we've learned how to scale Zoho at a proper pace, I guess is the best way to put it.

Centralizing Data and Ensuring Compliance

Michael Krigsman: Can you describe how you went about centralizing the processes and the data?

Parl Johnson: With a company like ours that was growing so fast, no one really had their arms around data, and so we've really had to kind of chunk that out and take one big piece at a time. So, we have other CRM data. We have other applications data.

And that did turn into us deciding that it was gonna be really important to set up what we call middleware, which is just some servers in the cloud where we can set up some stacks that will do certain things, hit APIs, get data, aggregate data, push data, have web hooks push data to us. Just a nice space where we could catch anything that Zoho couldn't get or that other applications couldn't get for us.

And we learned early on that that was absolutely necessary, and we continued to build on that stack as well. So, that's an ongoing process, but that's kind of where we ended up. So, we ended up with Zoho, a middleware stack, and then all of our other apps where we can share data in between them.

And the more we get control over that data, the better we can make a decision about where we put the next upgrade or build out the next application that we're gonna use. So, it's been a really satisfying process to help everybody come together and say, "You know what? Data is the most important thing here." And if everybody agrees on that, now the application conversation is much different for everyone involved and not just us against them again, like we talked about.

Michael Krigsman: As you were undergoing this simplification process, how did you maintain compliance and data integrity? And of course, you're a healthcare company, so that's very crucial to you.

Parl Johnson: We did need to make sure that Zoho was compliant with all of its data requirements and rules, which they have all those security policies in place for us. The middleware, we've made sure that's protected with security and everything else. It has all the chief nerd stuff to go with it, if you will.

Michael Krigsman: So you started with over 80 applications. How many do you use now?

Parl Johnson: We don't keep a count, and we don't need to count because everything we're doing right now is just a simpler process for us.

Michael Krigsman: So life is just easier?

Parl Johnson: Yeah.

Michael Krigsman: How important is the platform aspect of Zoho to this simplification process?

Parl Johnson: The Zoho platform approach has been more beneficial administratively, more so than technically. So administratively, the fact that Zoho has a very low cost point, they have a really nice program that gets all users access to all products so that you can kind of pick and choose or figure that out as you go.

Administratively, it makes that really nice and cost justifiable to live in that platform so that you can be more agile with it. So I think, the platform perspective, because they've made it so flexible administratively, has been very nice.

Michael Krigsman: How did Zoho's platform flexibility enable you to start in one location and then scale?

Parl Johnson: Zoho really gave us the ability to kind of carve out a process, build it in Zoho, and then train the staff at a single location on that process, and then we were able to observe that and refine it. And once it's working well, we were able to roll that out other locations. So that worked really well for us.

Michael Krigsman: How did Zoho give you the confidence to rely on their platform to such a large extent?

Parl Johnson: Confidence for us was a building process. You really don't gain confidence until you use it. And so we really just needed to jump in, dip our feet in it, get the data and business analytics, try building a few things in CRM, and then our confidence grew from use.

Michael Krigsman: And how about the aspect of being able to share data among the applications sitting on that platform?

Parl Johnson: That's one of our top three considerations. Can we build it in Zoho? Is that. Because it will be central to all of our users right out of the gate. And can we build it better than what's already being used?

And so, that becomes an easier conversation to have because Zoho has an easy building platform, especially when you're considering things like CRM. We have used Creator for a couple of different applications. That gets a little more complicated.

But because that's there and available, and it's not like we're paying a bunch of extra money to add a new process to it, it's just built in, now it's just a common part of our conversation: should we do it in Zoho, do we need some middleware for it, or is the current application we're using sufficient for now?

Michael Krigsman: It gives you that flexibility to make choices as you go, rather than one huge project.

Parl Johnson: That's right, especially as a consideration against custom-built applications and things that would be a much bigger and more expensive to build, for sure.

Benefits and Advice for Simplification

Michael Krigsman: What benefits have you seen by undertaking this simplification process?

Parl Johnson: The company's successful, we're bringing more smiles to the faces of patients, and our end users are loving the products.

Michael Krigsman: Sounds to me like you're describing three benefits. There are hard financial savings, there is employee happiness, if we can put it that way. And better customer experience.

Parl Johnson: Yeah, that's a great way to put it.

Michael Krigsman: Change is always hard. How did you manage expectations and gain buy-in among employees at the company?

Parl Johnson: The more transparent you are, the more honest you are, the more you eat crow when you make a mistake and can take the blame, it keeps those conversations more real and truthful and transparent. And I think the better your collaborations, I think the better the entire experience is for everybody in that process.

Michael Krigsman: Now you've been through it, what advice do you have for other business and technology leaders who are facing this kind of journey?

Parl Johnson: Good collaboration, making sure you have good connecting tissues, I like to call it, between business departments and an IT or developer department. And consider making data the first priority. Beyond that, I would say have fun and collaborate a lot.

Michael Krigsman: Parl Johnson, chief nerd at Nuvia Smiles. Parl, thank you so much for taking time to chat with us.

Parl Johnson: Yeah, it's been fun.