How Ramakrishna Math, Belur Math saved time by choosing low-code

The company

Ramakrishna Math and Ramakrishna Mission are worldwide, non-political, non-sectarian spiritual organizations driven by Swami Vivekananda's message—"For one's own salvation and for the welfare of the world." They've engaged in various forms of humanitarian and social service activities for more than a century. With their headquarters in Belur, Kolkata, the entire campus of the headquarters is popularly known as "Belur Math." The organization maintains 287 centers worldwide—219 in India and 68 across 24 other countries.

The challenge

Previously, Belur Math relied on services like FoxPro and .NET to develop its custom applications. However, maintaining the server posed a significant challenge. They lacked the resources and expertise to manage their servers and wanted to move to a SaaS platform.

Before digitization, communicating and updating the initiation details of over one million devotees was a manual process. It involved generating Excel sheets, running macros, formatting data to create mailing and address labels, and printing lots of papers for checks and rechecks with the help of many volunteers. These tasks were tedious and time-consuming, making it clear that a more efficient solution was necessary to overcome these bottlenecks.

The solution

Belur Math, already familiar with the Zoho ecosystem, sought out a unified solution to manage their devotees' data, guest house operations, and donations. This is when Zitraar Technologies, a Zoho authorized Partner, introduced them to Zoho Creator. With their help, Belur Math built three custom applications, streamlining operations and enhancing efficiency like never before.

Diksha

At Belur Math, the guru-disciple relationship forms the heart of its spiritual tradition. When a devotee is initiated by a guru, their details are recorded in a centralized registration system called Diksha. This application is designed to manage information for over one million devotees, storing comprehensive records, including initiation details, communication preferences, and more.

Diksha allows Belur Math to import new devotee information via CSV files while checking for duplicate identities, grouping family members together, and ensuring each devotee is registered only once.

Through integration with Zoho Campaigns and ZeptoMail, along with SMS for quick updates, communication with devotees at Belur Math for various events has become easier than ever. Zoho Campaigns manages bulk email outreach, while ZeptoMail handles messages for single or small groups of recipients. This, in turn, has saved them both time and expenses.

Email templates in Zoho Writer ensure consistency in formatting so any correspondence can fit inside a letter. There's also a dedicated postal module that sends physical postal letters through third-party printing services.

In addition to this, Diksha integrates with the other applications, Atithi (guest house management) and Dana (donations management), to pull in devotee data, creating a connected ecosystem for managing interactions efficiently.

Atithi

Atithi is a dedicated app for managing guest house room bookings at Belur Math. It was developed to streamline guest accommodations, room reservations, and check-in and check-out processes.

Devotees requesting guest house stays receive a link to a published form where they can submit their details. The request then enters an approval system, during which admins can review the devotee’s stay history—such as previous visit duration and purpose—to determine whether the guest can be accommodated.

Once approved, a confirmation message with a QR code is sent within 24 hours. This QR code facilitates the check-in and check-out of all guests. Rooms are allocated to the guests after confirmation, with real-time room availability displayed to help admins assign rooms efficiently.

Atithi also supports partial check-in and check-out, which is ideal for managing group stays where some members depart earlier than others.

This application plays a pivotal role in supporting the hospitality services of Belur Math and creating a positive experience for visitors and devotees.

Dana

Dana helps streamline donation management for Belur Math, ensuring a smooth process for tracking contributions from devotees. It maintains records of donor information and donation amounts, providing a clear view of all financial contributions.

One of Dana’s standout features is its reporting capabilities. The app generates detailed reports, making it easy to track and analyze financial statements.

Additionally, it automates the creation and distribution of donation receipts, which are sent to donors via email and SMS as soon as their contributions are confirmed—helping them effortlessly document donations for tax purposes. To enhance communication further, Dana also uses SMS notifications to keep donors informed.

Benefits and ROI

Swamiji emphasized his appreciation for the powerful integration capabilities of Zoho Creator, expressing how it's eased Belur Math's workflows and operations. Although the process of migrating data took some time and effort, the end result was worth the wait.

Looking forward

Belur Math is set to develop a disaster management application that will help headquarters coordinate and assign tasks during times of crisis. With a broader vision in mind, they also plan to build several more applications on Zoho Creator to further enhance their operations.