The company
FACT Magazine is a luxury lifestyle publication covering Food, Art, Culture and Travel across the UAE, KSA, London and Singapore. Alongside its print and digital titles, FACT produces the FACT Dining Awards, held across London, Dubai, Abu Dhabi and Riyadh.
At its core, FACT Magazine is in the business of media and advertising. The company sells advertising and marketing tools to clients across industries, connecting brands with audiences through its magazine titles and associated platforms. Beyond print and digital advertising, the company also organizes events, including corporate award ceremonies held across multiple cities, adding an experiential dimension to its media portfolio.
Today, the organization runs across four entities: two UAE companies, one in KSA, and one in London. Across all of these, Robert Shaw, the Head of Operations and Finance, oversees the systems and processes that keep the business running. He joined the company in 2020, right at the start of the pandemic, and has since been at the center of building a more efficient operational foundation for the team.
The challenge
When Robert joined FACT Magazine in 2020, the company was already using Odoo as its combined CRM and accounting platform. On paper, having both functions under one roof seemed practical. In reality, it was anything but.
The CRM side of Odoo worked reasonably well for the sales team, but for Robert, the accounting module was a persistent headache. FACT Magazine deals in multiple foreign currencies, a common reality for a company operating across the Gulf and Europe, and Odoo simply could not handle that requirement in a way that worked.
Beyond the software itself, the team had developed a reliance on Excel spreadsheets to fill the gaps. Client databases were being maintained in master Excel files, and tracking deals, quotes, and deliverables was fragmented across spreadsheets and the CRM. It was a workable setup, but not a scalable one.
Robert knew the company needed a platform that could handle both the CRM and accounting functions properly, in a way that talked to each other seamlessly. The search began.
"The accounting part for me was a disaster. We use foreign currency, so it just did not work for me whatsoever. That's what made us decide to look for other platforms that we could use together, as opposed to having two separate things."
The solution
Robert started his search the way most people do: by looking for a better accounting platform. That search eventually led him to Zoho, and within the Zoho ecosystem, he found two products that caught his attention: Zoho Books for accounting, and Bigin for CRM.
Zoho CRM was also on the table, but it quickly became clear that it was more than what FACT Magazine needed at the time. Bigin offered the right level of functionality without the complexity or the cost.
By 2022, FACT Magazine had fully transitioned to Bigin, and the platform has been at the center of their sales operations ever since.
Team pipelines
The sales team at FACT Magazine uses Bigin's pipelines to manage the full journey of a deal, from the moment a potential client is identified to the point the deal is closed. The company has set up five pipelines tailored to different aspects of its business: a main sales pipeline, a project tracker, an invoice status tracker, an event sponsorship pipeline, and a Fact Live pipeline. Each pipeline stage reflects where a deal is in the process, giving Robert and the broader team a real-time view of what's in progress and what's being closed.
Client and product database
Every client FACT Magazine works with is now stored in Bigin's Customers and Products modules. The same goes for all the advertising tools and products the company sells. This replaced the master Excel files the team had previously relied on, consolidating everything into a single, searchable system that the entire organization can access.
Zoho Books integration
The integration between Bigin and Zoho Books is one of the most valued aspects of the setup at FACT Magazine. The two platforms work in tandem, allowing quotations created in Bigin to flow to invoicing in Zoho Books without duplication or manual re-entry.
Dashboards
Robert uses Bigin's dashboards to keep a close eye on sales performance across the team. The dashboards have been customized to show monthly sales figures, individual team performance, and pipeline health. With targets being tracked visually, it's easier to spot where deals are moving and where they're stalling.
Activities and meeting tracking
The sales team logs their external and face-to-face meetings through Bigin's Activities tab. For Robert, this serves as an oversight tool, giving him visibility into the team's meeting cadence without needing to chase updates manually.
Workflows and email templates
FACT Magazine has workflows set up in Bigin to trigger actions at key stages of the pipeline, including notifications when deals stall in the pipeline. The team also uses email templates in Bigin for client communication, particularly for staying in touch with contacts throughout the sales process.
"The flow from Bigin to Zoho Books is so much better. It's so much easier to go from a quotation to an invoice. That's what has really improved our process."
Benefits and ROI
The shift to Bigin brought about meaningful changes in how FACT Magazine operates, both at the team level and for Robert in his role overseeing operations and finance.
- The Excel-based master client file is gone. Every client, deal, and product sold now lives in one place inside Bigin, accessible to the entire team across all four offices.
- The connection between Bigin and Zoho Books made the journey from a sales quote to a finalized invoice far more efficient, cutting out the duplication of effort that came with managing two disconnected systems.
- Top management now has a clear view of sales performance through customized dashboards, without having to piece together information from multiple sources.
- The team took to Bigin quickly. Compared to what they were using before, the day-to-day experience is considerably better, and that ease of use made adoption smoother across all offices.
"We've obviously had an increase in sales since we started using Bigin. And being able to communicate with clients through the system has been amazing as well. It just made everything so much easier."
Looking forward
FACT Magazine is still building out its use of Bigin. One of the integrations currently in progress is with Zoho Projects, which the team uses to manage project delivery. Connecting Zoho Projects to Bigin would close the loop between the sales pipeline and the execution side of the business, ensuring that what's sold is tracked all the way through to delivery.
The company is also looking at expanding how it uses workflows and automation within Bigin, particularly for the sales team. There is room to reduce more of the manual follow-up work and let the system handle routine triggers and notifications.
"The user experience is so much better for the team as a whole. We used to use a lot of Excel spreadsheets for things, but now we consolidate so much of that within Bigin. It's made everything simpler."
- Industry typeMedia and entertainment
- Employees
- Type of businessPrivate
- Previously Used SoftwareOdoo & Spreadsheets