Overview

Career Shake-Up® is a career and leadership consultancy founded by Bonnie, an award-winning strategist, author and HR Business Partner with nearly two decades of corporate experience. Bonnie works with accomplished leaders who are ready to make transformative career moves and also partners with small to mid-sized companies as a Fractional HR Business Partner to build smarter, modern HR systems.

As her business continued to grow, Bonnie faced the challenge of managing an increasing volume of clients, campaigns and operational processes across multiple tools. She needed a unified, automated system that would seamlessly connect her lead generation campaigns, client management, invoicing and meeting scheduling. The goal was to create a smooth, hands-free workflow that reduced manual effort, eliminated data duplication and enhanced both client and internal team experience.

Client Requirements

Bonnie’s client lifecycle begins when potential clients respond to campaigns managed through ActiveCampaign. These leads fill out forms, which then need to create contacts and deals in Zoho CRM. From there, her team manages meetings, invoices, payments and support, all of which were previously handled manually.

She needed an automated setup that could handle every stage of this process. The key requirements included automating client data capture, sending welcome emails and portal invitations, generating and syncing invoices between Zoho CRM and Zoho Books and managing payments directly through the CRM. Also, Bonnie wanted to set up Zoho Desk for internal notifications whenever payments were received, meetings were booked, or deals were won. A smooth integration with OnceHub was also essential to manage meeting scheduling, rescheduling and cancellations. Finally, she wanted to generate accurate weekly, monthly, quarterly and yearly reports showing revenue and deal performance by stage.

Discovery During the discovery phase, it became clear that Bonnie’s systems had grown complex, due to multiple manual touchpoints and disconnected tools.  Leads coming in from different campaigns were not syncing properly with Zoho CRM,  which caused duplication and missing information.  The invoicing and payment processes between Zoho CRM and Zoho Books involved several manual steps,  leading to delays and inconsistencies.  Team notifications were inconsistent, resulting in missed updates when meetings were booked or payments received.  Also, documents uploaded through forms were not automatically attached to the correct contact or deal records,  making client data harder to manage. We began by mapping out the full client journey, from the moment a lead fills out a form to the final stage of deal closure  and identified where automation could simplify the process and ensure complete data integrity.

Strategy Our strategy was to build a fully connected automation system within the Zoho ecosystem,  minimizing third-party dependencies and optimizing data flow.  The plan focused on ensuring that every lead captured from ActiveCampaign  was automatically created as a contact and deal in Zoho CRM.  Upon creation, the system would trigger an automated welcome email and an invitation to the client portal,  ensuring an immediate and professional onboarding experience. On the financial side, we integrated Zoho Books with Zoho CRM to automate the generation of quotes and  invoices as deals progressed and to record payments instantly once received.  We also set up Zoho Desk to notify the admin and support team when specific actions occurred  such as a payment being received, a deal marked as “Won,” or a meeting being booked.  For scheduling, we integrated OnceHub so that all meetings created, canceled  or rescheduled would automatically sync with Zoho CRM. Finally,  we aimed to optimize existing Zapier integrations to fix data mapping issues, eliminate unnecessary steps, and improve system performance.

Build

The implementation began by integrating ActiveCampaign forms with Zoho CRM to ensure automatic creation of contacts and deals. We then configured Zoho CRM’s email automation to send personalized onboarding emails and invitations to the client portal as soon as a new client entered the system. The connection between Zoho CRM and Zoho Books allowed invoices and quotes to be created instantly, automating the entire invoicing and payment cycle.

In Zoho Desk, we created automated workflows to generate tickets for key triggers including new meeting bookings, rescheduled or canceled meetings, payments received and deals marked as won. This ensured that the team stayed updated in real-time and could take immediate action when needed. The OnceHub integration enabled a two-way sync so that all client meetings remained up to date within Zoho CRM.

We also developed a document-handling process where any file uploaded via client forms would automatically attach to the respective contact and deal record and update in the client portal. Zapier automations were cleaned up, data mapping issues were resolved, and all workflows were optimized for reliability and speed. Lastly, we built comprehensive reports in Zoho CRM to track revenue performance across weekly, monthly, quarterly, and yearly periods, as well as pipeline progress and deal stage movement.

Delivery

The result was a fully automated, end-to-end system that streamlined every client interaction from the first inquiry to final payment. Bonnie and her team now have complete visibility across the client journey, without needing to manually transfer or manage data between platforms.

The automation has reduced administrative workload by over 80%, eliminated data duplication and ensured 100% synchronization between CRM, invoicing and scheduling systems. Client onboarding became instant and consistent, with automated portal access and follow-up communications. The internal team benefits from real-time notifications through Zoho Desk while detailed reports provide clear insights into revenue and performance trends.

With this new integrated workflow, Career Shake-Up® operates with greater efficiency, clarity and scalability allowing Bonnie and her team to focus on what they do best: transforming careers and supporting leaders with modern, results-driven strategies.