Client
We were contacted by a US company that creates high-performing windows and doors (smart manufacturing solutions) that conserve energy, increase thermal performance, and reduce noise.
The company that worked on energy efficiency by making sustainable buildings attainable needed a new CRM+ERP system to improve its operational efficiency of a rather sizeable company (sized 500-1000 employees). We’ve developed many custom ERP solutions in the past and had a workforce to start cooperation. Custom CRM system development is also something we have a lot of experience in as well. We’ll call the software solution a CRM further in the text, although some features and functions make it a little closer to an ERP system.
Project Description
Our customer’s CRM system was outdated and needed refinement. As they work across various industries, a CRM system helps their salespeople track leads, manage sales pipelines, and maintain detailed profiles of each client. This ensures a personalized approach and stronger customer relationships.
An outdated CRM the company was using didn’t respond to all the requirements the company needed, so they decided that they needed custom CRM system development. Their internal developers team needed workforce reinforcements, so they hired an outstaffed engineer from Elinext.
Challenges
Our client needed a CRM with improved functionality as their previous CRM wasn’t anything near modern, updated, and corresponding to the company’s needs. Their new system should have allowed our customer’s company to manage all processes for the company’s sales team: from contacting potential customers to dealing with orders being delivered to their buyers.
The new system needed to have improved usability over the old one and a set of new features. Custom CRM system development was needed as it was decided to develop a new system rather than enhance an old one. The scope of work was too gigantic for the customer’s internal development team to deal with this on their own, so they involved third-party developers.
To get to the development of the new project, aside from integrating some old features of the existing product, the following was needed:
- Collecting feedback from users on the work of the previous app to identify shortcomings
- Identifying new features for the development that were absent
- Assessing potential peak load on customer’s servers
- Selecting and identifying the modules and components of the future application that will be used for the development
- Defining the strategy of data migration to a new system
Process
A software engineer from Elinext collaborated with the Project Manager on the customer’s side via MS Teams. Manufacturing software development services delivered by Elinext is one of our specialties.
Essentially, the custom CRM system development team was the following:
- Team lead from the customer’s side
- Developer from Elinext
- Developer from customer’s side #1*
- Developer from customer’s side #2*
*Both of the developers from the customer’s side joined the project 7-8 months in.
All the developers had extensive experience in backend development (PHP), frontend (such as HTML, CSS, JavaScript, jQuery), database structure planning, and interaction with databases. That contributed to the smooth process of development.
Solution
The solution had to be a feature-rich CRM that would help with the centralization of ongoing processes between user groups and would eliminate the need to transfer or import information between subsystems manually.
System users:
- Business development managers
- Project managers
- Biddings
- Drafters
- Support department employees
- System administrators
- Some other groups of users (~50 users)
Here is the visualization of how the system should work:
The end product of our custom CRM system development is a CRM consisting of four modules:
Module 1: Projects
This module enables logging in to the authorized personnel. A sheet with logging changes history has been created. The feature “Bidding-Proposals-Draft-Positions” here allows gathering information from a proposal to a completed specification that would enable the start of manufacturing at a factory.
The Submittals feature enables PMs and bidding managers to have info about future projects: components and materials for the buildings, properties, and limitations, windows/doors installation methods and features, and warranties for selected materials and components.
This module also contains a mockup feature that enables generating proposals in a special form, a documents feature that allows exchanging docs for the projects, and a quote-issuing feature.
Module 2: Orders
The Orders module allows users to explore the set of products included in the order, their contents, characteristics, costs, discounts, and taxes applied. There is also a feature in this module that allows generating a model for optimal packing placement of order components, depending on dimensions, weight, and quantity of order element.
Also, this module contains history, summary, and priority list features of all the orders put into the CRM.
Module 3: Purchase orders (includes orders to external suppliers for some positions)
This module allows managing purchase orders (CRUD external orders and set prices for buyers and received prices from suppliers). With the help of the module, one could create proposal documents according to purchase order and export them into XLS files.
Module 4: Settings
With the help of this module, one could adjust references, prices, user groups, document templates, supplier information, and accessory templates.
It is pretty self-explanatory:
The references feature allows the configuration of reference books used in various application modules, for example, questionnaires, checklists, specification lists, and product systems configurations. The pricing feature allows adjusting the price system according to the updated pricing lists. Documents and accessory templates features of the modules allow the creation of relevant templates.
The suppliers' feature allows managing info about the external suppliers and finally, the users/groups feature allows managing users' rights in the app.
PHPUnit test framework was used for test automation as one of our PHP web development services. As the project is pretty complicated from a business logic point of view, so automated tests allowed us to avoid a lot of bugs (for example, in price or parameter calculations of final products) when making changes or adding new features to the project.
The final result of our CRM system development services collects information about:
- users of CRM (names, emails, locations, permissions)
- clients contacts
- deals
- products characteristics
- orders information
- reference info
Аull project breakdown for the customer is enabled within the solution: with material options, and prices listed; multiple options are offered, and coordination with subcontractors is suggested.
Results
With the help of the software engineer from Elinext, the project was successfully delivered on time and within the allocated budget. We added this one to the big list of custom CRM solutions we’ve built for our customers.
The development of the new CRM system was a resounding success, meeting all of the client’s goals and expectations. By collaborating closely with the internal team, the Elinext software engineer played a key role in delivering a robust and efficient system. The new CRM system vastly improved operational efficiency, user experience, and the ability to manage complex processes across multiple departments.
We received very positive feedback about our CRM system development services from the customer, and it’s quite possible they will get back to Elinext with new software development tasks if they need them.
Benefits for the Client/Business
The new ERP/CRM system has been used by the company for more than 5 years now. The new system improves the process of lead tracking and sales pipeline management while maintaining detailed profiles of each client.
