Altos Web Solutions, inc. – 5725 Bravo Ave, Reno, NV 89506 USA
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Altos Web Solutions, inc. – 5725 Bravo Ave, Reno, NV 89506 USA
Several modules have been eliminated and the necessary ones simplified.
The fields used have been reduced and made more relevant to the purpose.
We must never forget that removing is much easier than adding!
A Swiss start-up wanted to produce and sell an innovative product. This means that right from the start this company had all the problems of a large company and did not have the skilled enough resources to do it well!
If we then add that he didn’t have much money to invest in a still embryonic organisation, with young and inexperienced resources, then this situation indicated that operational break-even was a challenge already lost before trying.
We had identified the modules he immediately needed: centralized email, email campaign, social marketing management, custom relationship, trouble ticketing, supplier management and a small outsourced production management, small projects to manage, invoicing, orders, management of negotiations, management of internal and external documentation, management of appointments and some other things…
All this monitored by the general manager who was supposed to address the inconsistencies of collaborators, some of whom had just finished the internship period.
Everything that vTiger could do, the customer immediately needed but in a different way!
We wouldn’t have had time to convince the client to a more structured workflow. The only thing to be useful to him was to accompany him on their messy path instead of changing the path. If we had only attempted to impose our vision, we would have created a relational rift from which no winner would have survived.
I Ultimately we customized some features, unquestionably following the customer’s wishes, writing PHP source code. The positive thing was being able to figure out where the customer wanted to go and therefore know the real final solution.
After this initial traumatic and rambling phase, we began to see, together with the client, the light at the end of the tunnel. From this moment on we began to eliminate the source code made to adapt the operational workflow of the start-up to the functionalities as designed by vTiger or as available in the plug-ins of the vTiger market place.
the final solution – after the initial temporary storage – included:
after one year no contamination of source code the company took off organizationally.
only use purchased (or free) plug-ins from the vTiger market place.
reached operational break-even
vtexperts.com
after one year no contamination of source code the company took off organizationally.
only use purchased (or free) plug-ins from the vTiger market place.
reached operational break-even
vtexperts.com
The goal of the two companies was too unlikely!
Convince your respective salespeople to collaborate in selling the same products!
The package envisaged in the agreement was the integration of two parts, each of which was developed by one of the two companies which were both considered market leaders but only for their own part.
Naturally the integrated package would have had a higher value than the sum of the two parts and a more appetizing profitability if only damping techniques and wars up to the bloodiest discount had been avoided.
So the deal was perfect on paper but was it feasible?
Complicated business model with unlikely reachability!
The first approach was to ask the respective salespeople to work on two CRMs at the same time. The products within the agreement on a CRM visible to all salespeople of both companies, the other instead limited to the company to which the salesperson belonged.
It was immediately realized that it couldn’t work due to the confusion, complexity and errors in managing the same lead by duplicating information on both CRMs but being careful not to reveal things that could cause damage.
So, we were involved as a trusted third party entering the joint venture whose remuneration was exclusively based on a percentage of each sale as long as the agreement worked profitably.
So, we have configured a single vTiger CRM for all products of both companies. The information relating to the agreement remained completely visible while the others were omitted to the salespeople of the company not owning the deal.
Naturally we had to reconfigure the modules and fields to make the information non-overlapping.
The CRM was hosted on our server and we were the sole administrator of both.
Our burden remained the management of users and the adaptation of the specific operational workflows of each company without contaminating the other company’s workers.
This was possible because neither of the two companies had manipulated the source code and our work was limited to the configuration of additional modules when the structure of the fields was not possible to make uniform.
The NDA we signed imposed strict constraints on us not to disseminate commercially sensitive information.
An internet provider with a large number of services needed to immediately satisfy every request from its customers.
He would have liked to use the customer care channel to develop his business with a cross-selling & up-selling logic.
It is known that solving a customer problem places the customer in a debt situation which most often results in a new purchase order.
Therefore customer care was considered the critical success factor for company growth.
The company had an exceptional result on the following year’s balance sheet. The customer care department was managed by over 8 salespersons who worked 4-hour shifts to cover 12 hours of assistance.
In practice, many requests for help became new commercial opportunities well exploited by salespeople in the role of technical assistance.
We added a marketing expert to the sales team in the role of technical support who provided keys to interpreting customer reactions.
This expert could enter the chat and suggest the most effective actions in real time.
Our compensation had a percentage coming from the performance. Something like a joint venture that has been successfully won.
A reseller of services provided by a multinational needed to manage a widespread commercial network throughout the national territory made up of representatives, sellers and area managers.
It was necessary that sales and reports were not over-selling in order to avoid the risk of losing exclusivity from the supplier.
The company had decided that every negotiation had to be monitored and only the area managers could give the OK to close the contract after having assessed that the proposal was commercially correct and sustainable.
Not only an authorization workflow but also daily monitoring of each negotiation to nip negotiations in the bud that would not then be approved.
So the focus was
These controls were constantly refined every time a new critical issue slipped through the control filters.
Therefore continuous maintenance was the responsibility of the area manager himself who was able to define the rules (we would say the algorithms) despite not having any technical background.
To obtain the reports we used a plugin to access vTiger data via API. The external system receiving the data was an open source data integration system (Talend) that was able to easily edit diagnostics on the data using the native SQL language.
The diagnostic results were exported to Excel which the area manager was able to easily interpret and manage.
As regards the authorization processes, the parameters that entered the contract were accessible to Talend which subjected them to a data quality process: in practice a compliance diagnostic always written in SQL.
The data quality procedure was able to highlight the critical points and their modification could be easily resolved by modifying the diagnostic rules written in SQL and interpreted natively by Talend.
The report, also produced by talend, was able to highlight suspicious cases which were not necessarily always negative but certainly worthy of attention and this facilitated the area manager’s decision even by spending just a few minutes.
B2B trading companies that sell high-tech products to large corporations.
For these reasons they must be fully compliant with GDPR and similar. Including privacy (option-in/option-out).
The client is a company whose turnover is represented by 100% B2B sales of high-tech tools owned by the German parent company.
The company had decided that to achieve maximum sales performance, each sales account would be able to independently coordinate all sales, marketing and privacy activities for its key accounts.
In organizational terms, the Sales account covered the role of: Sales Account, Data Protection Officer (DPO), Product marketer to plan and manage the results of the mail marketing campaigns.
To implement this working method, each activity had to be managed within a single platform and the Sales Rep had to be autonomous in each of the activities of its role:
CRM modules strictly dedicated to marketing and sales are absolutely useless, but only at the moment…
However, many other modules remain very useful for speeding up the delivery of the application and saving time. For example, calendars, the shared email client, document management, organization records, customer contact records, online chat, the possibility of generating even rather complex reports, the possibility of modifying forms, the different API methods to facilitate integration, the possibility of modifying the fields of a form, the search and editing methods, the use of the portal to delegate the customer to certain activities and to increase communication channels and many others .
Having all these features immediately ready to go, “off the shelf” is a great saving in time, cost and high standardization thanks also to the rich and captivating user experience that you don’t have to do all over again every time.
Furthermore, having modules that are not necessary but potentially usable in the future at zero cost represents a possibility of scalability to open up new commercial opportunities.
To create the application we now have to develop specialized modules for every single functionality we may need. So new pieces of a mosaic of applications to complete the puzzle for the release of this specific customization if we don’t have a similar one ready already used by another customer with similar problems.
In this case the reusability of the code is not just an abstract concept but a further return on investment by increasing the juiciness of the profit.
vtiger open source
plug-in from vtexperts.com
API integration with custom external executable plug-in developed in C# .Net
Altos has signed joint venture agreements with some small commercial companies that wish to sell their products and services via eCommerce independently without using large marketplaces (one of them being Amazon).
In this type of agreement, Altos is the technology partner that invests in proportion with the product owner who manages production and maintenance (including after-sales support).
Altos is all about reducing costs and using a solid architecture that can be scaled as the success of the sale gains acceptance from the global market.
This architecture could be unique to a group of joint venture agreements or dedicated to a single joint venture agreement.
So very flexible and very scalable.
Until go-live (pilot version) the architecture is ready to go identical (or almost) for all contracts of this type.
After the initial period of verifying the market’s receptivity of the product, the solution could be redesigned to make the business more profitable.
As long as the joint venture agreement is active, this approach remains stable.
When the joint venture ends, new scenarios – all to be investigated – will arise.
The joint venture agreement allows small businesses, who are not experts in online sales, to get off the ground with an experienced partner who risks proportionately with them.
A lasting, time-limited agreement or even failure could arise.
Who knows?
Art transport companies that also deal with the organization of events and any other aspect relating to this type of need.
Including a vault where the works of art can be safely stored in controlled environments with optimal temperature and humidity.
Being a market where customers are very few and hidden in remote corners of the planet, it is necessary to first find them and then reach them with a convincing proposal.
Therefore, customer research is the first obstacle to overcome.
Then the retailer alone is unable to do anything because there are many factors for success and none of which can be overlooked.
The general manager must oversee every aspect of the project. No small error is allowed and the only way for this to occur is that everything must be centralized in the safe hands of the general manager and the entire team must revolve around him.
Therefore IT support is indispensable but very basic and very flexible and given the size of the market there is nothing similar at sustainable costs available on the market.
We used a rather unusual engineering approach.
We have installed a “virgin” open-source download version on our private cloud infrastructure.
The customer had no access. We would have used it to develop the modules of which they were aware of what the customer really needed and which was not widely available on the market.
Therefore develop only the indispensable minimum as a last resort.
We then activated a vTiger SaaS contract on behalf of the customer, considering it as an “emulator” of the pilot version. the Cloud version managed by vTiger is truly rich in modules and with a competitive aspect that is nothing to fear compared to the most renowned systems on the market (Salesforse, Navision, Dynamics etc.).
The price per customer was less than €60.00 month/user. Taking advantage of exceptional 24-hour technical support from helpful and expert staff.
Let’s not forget that vTiger is the most popular CRM on the planet.
The technical support took place via chat and we “listened” to the conversations, obtaining two types of valuable information.
Very often vTiger suggested particular plug-ins or proposed a custom development, quoting the time and costs and identifying the solution that the customer would accept.
Using this method, the solution on the emulator took shape and the monthly costs went up.
However, we discovered which additional features had been appreciated and which instead needed to be modified or redesigned to achieve what the customer really needed.
Therefore the requirements for us became increasingly clearer and we had the time to design, quote and create the optimal solution for the customer which would only come into operation when all the modules the customer needed were fully emulated in the cloud version.
Only at that point did we export the data from the CRM to SaaS and import it into our open source. So the cut-off was made and the client continued to work on ours without interruption and with little new compared to the method used until then.
The monthly cost has been drastically reduced. All additional users were added while the one-off cost could be amortized over time.
The soul of the application is made up of very few programs that have rather complex algorithms that emulate the billing of the telephone contract that the end customer has stipulated with his telephone provider relating to the numerous mobile phones that the company has entrusted to many employees and collaborators for exclusive business use.
Then application verifies that
The what-if simulator is a typically interactive program as opposed to invoice verification programs which is batch.
iThe refactoring of the solution is based on porting the invoice recalculation algorithms from the historical application into an executable plug-in that can be called via API from the CRM.
Each plugin is specialized for a particular provider.
The plug-in can be easily customized by adapting to the periodic contractual reviews agreed between the corporate and the telephone provider.
Even the evaluation of the adherence between ascertained traffic and the contractual limits agreed between the mobile phone holder and the corporate is developed in a specialized plug-in for this purpose.
This plugin is currently hosted within vTiger but nothing prevents it from being integrated into other CRMs.
A further interesting advantage is that the plug-in can be integrated with another CRM such as SalesForce, Dynamics, Navision, SAP etc.
This solution, totally agnostic, could be exceptionally preferred by large customers with thousands of assigned mobile phones who could activate this service simply by installing it because it is available on the CRM marketplace they have adopted and paying for it with a monthly fee
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