The Process
We've taken the best of online shopping, and applied it to business requests. Using the familiar shopping cart experience, no training is required.
Step 1.
Business needs
Over a coffee, or in your office we’ll get an understanding of how your business operates; your target market, your successes to date and most importantly the pain points you’re currently facing in terms of operations and customer experience.
Step 1.
Step 2.
Tailored demo
It now makes sense for us to run through a demo of our capabilities. This is generally a dedicated demo site which has been built specifically to incorporate what we’ve learnt so far and demonstrates how a finished product could look.
Step 2.
Step 3.
Scope and proposal
It’s time for commercials. We’ve proven we can do what we say, and we’re ready to explain what we’ll be doing, what we’ll need from you, how much it will cost and when will it all be ready.
Step 3.
Step 4.
Design
At design stage we’re looking at everything from the look-and-feel (branding, colours, fonts etc.) to the flow of activities from a customer request to fulfilment. Here is where we map out the customer journey, the information we need to collect, the systems we interact with and the end results.
Step 4.
Step 5.
Integrate
This is where the magic starts to happen. By integration time, we’ll have a working site with a beautifully presented front end ready to go, and we’re making things happen in other systems as well. Goodbye manual process! It might be pulling stock levels from an inventory system, raising an invoice in a finance system or creating a work ticket for an engineer to action.
Step 5.
Step 6.
MVP
MVP equals Minimum Viable Product, a first release, functional enough to be a system. What this really means, however, is that we’re ready to start testing a few dummy orders and check everything is behaving as it is designed to do. The site should be looking great, functioning as expected and it’s time to wheel in the execs in for an internal preview.
Step 6.
Step 7.
Soft launch
Time to pick some “friendlies” (customers with great relationships) to go ahead and do their worst! Despite our collective best efforts, you’ll never test something like a real-world customer. They just have a knack for finding things we’d never imagined. This is OK though, we know it can happen and that’s exactly why we start small, to iron out any final issues.
Step 7.
Step 8.
Staff Training (self-training videos, on-site workshops)
This step can be optional and depends on how we’ve agreed to work together. We offer a fully-outsourced approach where we take care of the day-to-day admin, but some customers elect to keep some management in house so this is where we make sure everyone is up to speed on how the system operates, where to find help and who to call if something goes wrong.
Step 8.
Step 9.
Go Live
Go time. It’s over to Sales, Marketing, and all front line staff to do their part. Announcements, social posts, customer walk throughs. We’ve got an amazing platform up and running – so let’s get the most out of it!
Step 9.
Step 10.
Refine / Improve
As customers start regularly using the system, we’ll learn where refinements might need to be made. Perhaps that ‘stage 2’ integration needs to come forward earlier than expected, or there’s a particular enhancement which will just make things sing. We’re all ears, and we run a heavily customer-led roadmap and platform development strategy.
Step 10.
Step 11.
Benefits realisation
After some bedding in, there comes a time to measure our success. At the very beginning of our journey we discussed the needs and outcomes required, so we’ll sit down and take another look at the before and after just to make sure we have nailed it. Are customers happier with their experience? Has time gone down, quality gone up?
Step 11.
Step 12.
Analytics
With lots of activity flowing through the system, and therefore some data to mine into, it’s a great time to introduce some of analytic capabilities we offer. We collect usage information across the system and it’s time to explore that. For example, we can take a look at search queries to determine if there are queries leading to unserved opportunities or mis-named products. We can also dive into a great level of detail in terms of orders, products and margins as well.
Step 12.
Step 13.
Optimise
We believe in software partnerships. Whilst we are a software-as-a-service platform, we realise that every solution ends up being a little ‘custom’ and therefore needs to be nurtured and developed over the longer term. We have very little churn in our business and that’s a testament to us taking the time to invest in your business as much as you invest in ours.
Step 13.