Global Protection Corp.® (GPC), a leading sexual health product manufacturer and Karex subsidiary, migrated its B2B support operations from Zendesk to Odoo to eliminate data silos and improve operational efficiency. The company consolidated around 55,000 tickets and 150,000 contacts (filtered from an initial 300,000) into Odoo, enabling sales, support, and logistics teams to access unified customer records and historical interactions in one ERP system. By integrating helpdesk, CRM, invoicing, and order data, GPC replaced manual workflows, improved data order, and gained full visibility into the customer journey from inquiry to purchase.
About Global Protection Corp.®
Global Protection Corp.® (GPC) has evolved from a campus startup for HIV/AIDS advocacy into a leading manufacturer and distributor of sexual health products headquartered in Lynn, Massachusetts. As a subsidiary of Karex, the world’s largest condom manufacturer, GPC balances high-volume manufacturing of innovative products — like ONE® Flex®, the world’s first condom enhanced with graphene — with a complex distribution model serving both retail consumers and large-scale public health institutions. To streamline operations and eliminate data fragmentation, the company recently moved to consolidate its B2B support functions, migrating approximately 300,000 contacts from Zendesk into Odoo. This integration allows sales and support teams to access historical ticket data alongside transactional records, replacing manual cross-referencing with a unified, efficient workflow.
Why Global Protection Corp.® Migrated from Zendesk to Odoo
To improve efficiency and reduce cost, GPC migrated its B2B support from Zendesk to Odoo ERP. The company was spending nearly $15,000 annually on Zendesk licenses, yet the system remained siloed from its sales, invoicing, and logistics data. Beyond the financial ROI, the move solved critical data gaps — specifically replacing a manual, PDF quotation emailing process with a centralized system that automatically tracks the pipeline from purchase order to sales to post-sales support. This shift ensures better data hygiene and gives the team full visibility into the customer journey from support ticket to final order.
The transition also involved replacing secondary tools like Jotform with Odoo integrated ticket forms, which automatically creates opportunities in the CRM or tickets in the Helpdesk. This ensured that incoming data from non-profit applications, wholesale requests, and general inquiries follow a structured path into the company's central database, further supporting the push for actionable data.
Factors Influencing the Selection of Odoo
GPC chose to consolidate its operations within Odoo to leverage the interconnected ecosystem, moving away from the "data silos" of legacy systems like Zendesk. By integrating the Helpdesk module with the existing ERP, GPC gained a 360-degree view of the business, linking support tickets directly to warehouse logistics, inventory, and invoicing under a single unified customer record.
Strategic Advantages of the Odoo Migration
- Operational Visibility: Support staff can now view real-time shipping and order status without leaving a ticket.
- Revenue Growth: Tickets can be instantly converted into CRM leads, ensuring no sales opportunities are missed.
- Advanced Analytics: By piping Odoo data into BigQuery and Looker Studio, GPC created a "Master View" that tracks SLAs, CSAT scores, and ticket trends — capabilities that required additional subscriptions while data was trapped in Zendesk.
Expert Tips from the Global Protection Corp.® (GPC) Team
The preparation for the migration was a rigorous, collaborative process that began in September 2024. Because Odoo Helpdesk was an unsupported destination for the migration tool at that time, GPC worked closely with the Help Desk Migration team to define the requirements for a custom-built connector. This planning phase spanned several months and involved multiple technical deep dives into Odoo’s API capabilities and database constraints.
Investigative Milestones and Preparatory Steps
Before any data was transferred, the team conducted a series of investigative phases:
- Custom Scope Definition: Initial discussions with Relokia established a fee for the development of an Odoo Helpdesk destination connector.
- Data Deduplication Strategy: The team identified a significant challenge with GPC’s 300,000 Zendesk contacts. To optimize hygiene, they developed a strategy to filter tickets by brand, which reduced the contact migration target to a more manageable 150,000 relevant records.
- Identifier Mapping: To prevent duplicates, a rule was established that individuals would be matched by email address and companies by name. If an exact match was not found, the tool would create a new record and apply a specific tag for later audit.
The Migration Process: Support and Methodology
The process began with a "Full Data Migration," which transferred the bulk of historical tickets and contacts into Odoo. Following this, a "Delta Migration" was scheduled before the live cutover. This delta sync was critical for capturing any tickets created or updated in Zendesk during the window between the initial migration and the official switch to Odoo.
Throughout the transfer, Help Desk Migration provided several layers of support:
- Agent and Group Matching: HDM ensured that Zendesk agents and groups were mapped correctly to their Odoo counterparts. For deactivated Zendesk agents who were authors of historical comments, HDM created customer records with the same email to maintain the integrity of the conversation history.
- Custom Field Mapping: Through the easy UI, critical fields such as "Ticket Type" were mapped to custom fields in Odoo.
- Attachment Transfer: HDM successfully migrated ticket attachments, which were absolutely critical for preserving history of B2B transactions and design approvals.
- Tagging and Categorization: HDM developers implemented a customization to tag every newly created contact with the category "Helpdesk_Migration". This allowed the GPC data team to isolate and audit the migrated data for potential duplicates without impacting existing records.
For GPC, the migration was not just about moving data; it was about preserving a 40-year legacy of customer trust. B2B sales teams rely on support history to understand account health and previous issues, making the transfer of attachments and internal private comments absolutely vital.
The Significance of Data Attachments and Tags
Attachments in GPC’s history often include design files for its Custom Condoms® brand and documentation for public health contracts. Losing these records would have significantly hampered the team's ability to service long-term institutional accounts. To manage the vast quantity of data, GPC was highly selective, choosing only to migrate tickets associated with its primary brands.
The application of the "Helpdesk_Migration" tag to every imported contact served as a critical safeguard for data hygiene. This tag ensured that:
- Duplicate Isolation: Any contact that was created by the tool (rather than matched to an existing Odoo record) could be easily identified and audited.
- Post-Migration Deduping: The data team could run automated cleanup scripts focusing specifically on records with this tag to merge any remaining "near-matches".
- Process Verification: It provided a clear audit trail, differentiating records moved via the HDM tool from those entered manually or via other integrations.
The Benefits of Automation in Complex Transitions
The transition of over 55,000 tickets and 150,000 contacts represented a technical burden that exceeded the capacity for manual entry or basic CSV imports. GPC leadership highlighted the speed and accuracy of an automated migration tool as its primary value proposition.
- Expedited Data Mapping: Automated tools like Help Desk Migration are highly efficient at identifying necessary fields and pulling information from complex databases far faster than a human could manually map tables.
- API Integrity: By using direct API methods, the organization ensured that records were created correctly according to Odoo's internal logic, including the preservation of relational links between contacts, companies, and tickets.
- Error Checking and Validation: HDM provided a "Skipped/Failed Records Check," which addressed discrepancies in mandatory fields or inactive employee assignments that would have otherwise gone unnoticed in a manual migration.
Ryan Findling, GPC's Director of Operations, emphasized that the tool was
particularly when navigating the nuances of Odoo's Postgres architecture.
Strategic Guidance for Enterprise Software Migration
Based on the 17-month arc of this project, GPC offers several pieces of tactical advice for organizations planning similar platform consolidations:
1. Mandate a 10-Day Validation Window
A full data migration should never be followed immediately by a live cutover. The 10-day retention period provided by HDM’s Signature Support Plan allowed GPC to validate results, verify mapping accuracy, and ensure that custom field data was displaying correctly in Odoo before any communication channels were switched. This validation period is essential for catching silent errors that only become visible through active system use.
2. Prioritize Staff Readiness over Target Dates
Operational success is dependent on team adoption. GPC postponed its go-live by a week to ensure that key leadership was present and that every team member had completed the Odoo Support training module. Establishing biweekly "collaboration meetings" during the transition period helped build buy-in and ensured that the team felt supported as they moved from a familiar tool (Zendesk) to a new ERP environment.
3. Implement Strict Data Hygiene and Filtering
The migration process should be used as a "cleaning event." By filtering records and implementing specific tagging for migrated contacts, GPC ensured that its new Odoo instance would not be cluttered with irrelevant historical data. Organizations should identify their primary matching identifiers (such as email) and establish clear rules for how the system should handle partial matches before the migration begins.
Conclusion: The Integrated Future of GPC
The transition from Zendesk to Odoo Helpdesk marks a milestone in GPC's digital transformation journey. By collapsing the silos between customer support and the ERP, the organization has achieved a "single source of truth" that simplifies daily B2B workflows and improves reporting visibility for leadership.
As GPC continues to lead the industry in sexual health innovation — from graphene-enhanced condoms to mission-driven public health advocacy — its technological infrastructure is now aligned with its operational needs. The strategic partnership with Help Desk Migration ensured that this transition was not merely a technical task, but a thoughtful investment in the company's long-term ability to serve its global community with accuracy and excellence.
Global Protection Corp.® successfully transformed its B2B support operations by migrating from Zendesk to Odoo, creating a unified ecosystem that connects helpdesk, CRM, sales, and logistics data. By consolidating 55,000 tickets and 150,000 contacts into a single ERP environment, GPC eliminated data silos, improved data hygiene, and gained full visibility into the customer journey — from initial inquiry to post-sales support.
Through careful planning, data filtering, and the use of automated migration tools, GPC preserved critical historical records such as attachments, private notes, and customer relationships, ensuring continuity for long-term B2B partnerships. The integration also reduced operational costs, replaced manual workflows, and enabled more advanced reporting capabilities through centralized analytics.
Insights for Teams from Help Desk Migration
When planning a platform migration, consider it as more than just moving data — it involves data, processes, and systems. A successful transfer requires careful attention to all three layers:
- Data: Clean, deduplicate, and map critical records to ensure accuracy in the new system.
- Process: Review workflows and automate where possible, but anticipate conflicts between existing automation and migration activities.
- Systems: Understand integrations, dependencies, and API limitations to maintain relational integrity.
Analytical Insight
- Testing is critical: Run multiple to validate field mapping, attachments, and workflows before the Full Migration.
- Automation conflicts are expected: Temporarily disable triggers, notifications, or workflows in the Target system to prevent duplicate records or incorrect status updates.
- Holistic approach: Treat migration as a system-wide transformation rather than a simple data transfer — success depends on coordinating people, processes, and technology.
