Part Two: One Example of a Solution Provided By Softright
Last month, Part I of this series discussed the problem that our new program, Softright, is designed to fix. We focused on the issues that business owners have with integrating all of their internal systems. In this article, I’d like to give an example of a customer who we were able to help. The experiences of this customer might sound familiar to a lot of readers.
One of our customers had a robust quoting process. Their process included multiple steps beginning with a customer request to place an order. Different employees in the process created the quote from a standardized list of SKUs, applied unique pricing formulas for individual customers, performed quality checks, and eventually had a sign-off from upper managers. The process had been fine-tuned for their business and everyone in the chain understood their role. Bringing in off-the-shelf software would have required retraining and process changes they didn’t want. In addition, they controlled their pricing through a complicated set of spreadsheets, and they wanted centralized control of all pricing information, so they only needed to update pricing information in one place, and those changes would flow seamlessly through all of their systems including back end accounting, inventory control, and even shipping.
Looking at the entire process from their point of view, we wanted to design an approach that addressed all of their concerns. For this company, we created a web-based version of their quoting process which automates the process flow. Employees can easily see what’s on their plate each day. Managers have visibility into the status of any new quote and easy access to historical information. The website uses a centralized and cloud-based database where they have complete control of their data.
Our team spent a few weeks working closely with the client’s group. Once we learned how they thought about their business systems and understood their needs, we could adapt our implementation to fit their budget and requirements. We rolled out early versions for them to review and give feedback, usually every two weeks or so, which really helped us make sure they were getting exactly what they needed. Now that the product is up and running, we can respond to individual enhancement requests quite rapidly.
So right now you may be thinking about which aspects of this story sound like your business. Are you in a similar situation? Are you looking for ways to improve your internal systems? Would you like to have a conversation with us to see if we can help you too?
Our development process described in this example is repeatable and reliable, and it consistently results in valuable customized software solutions that help businesses become more effective. For more information about Keymark’s Softright team, contact me or Johnny Drozdek at sales@keymark.com or 303-443-8033. We can help you define the problem and the solution.