A nonprofit organization dedicated to supporting underserved communities—particularly those relying on sign language—was facing major challenges with data tracking, reporting, and program management. Their mission to provide accessible services and education was being held back by inflexible tools and manual processes.

Originally, the organization recorded activities using paper forms, later transferring them into spreadsheets. As they expanded, they moved to a traditional database tool—but it quickly proved limiting:

•Inflexible templates with unnecessary fields

•High customization costs

•Low staff adoption due to tool complexity

•Manual, error-prone reporting processes

•Disconnected workflows across programs

These inefficiencies led to duplicate efforts, high administrative burden, and delays in generating essential reports.

A new team member introduced the organization to Zoho Creator, a low-code development platform, based on their prior positive experience.

The organization started small—replacing their most critical program workflow with a Creator app—and immediately saw improvements in usability and customization.

Encouraged by early success, they migrated all major programs to the platform and began building custom apps in-house for:

•Program registration and tracking

•Volunteer and HR management

•Community support and education services

•Real-time reporting dashboards

•Role-based portals for staff to log in and access relevant data

•Mobile-ready apps for on-the-go data entry and updates

•Online forms to replace faxed or paper-based submissions

•Custom dashboards (Pages) for quarterly reporting

•Automated notifications and approval workflows

•Increased data accuracy through standardized digital forms

•Faster reporting with real-time dashboards

•High staff engagement due to user-friendly design

•Elimination of paper-based processes, supporting sustainability goals

•Scalable platform supporting future programs without extra licensing cost

The organization continues expanding its use of Zoho Creator to cover HR, finance, volunteer coordination, and service evaluation. The flexibility of the platform empowers them to build, iterate, and scale—all while maintaining full control over their data and workflows.