Saving Companies Millions by Building Custom Software Solutions
Does Your Company Do Some Redundant Tasks That Can Be Automated?
Wallfrog has been working on an enormous efficiency program for a national client that is designed to help them with their marketing, leads, quoting, customers, scheduling, task process, workflows, production, quality assurance, packing process and shipping. Basically this is an end-to-end problem that most businesses have in where a good percentage of their work actions can be automated. This company has a complex process but their actual service is very straight forward, simple and repetitive. It has a very large profit margin but they have been experiencing huge leaks in their cash flow due to efficiencies. Wallfrog was hired to consult from how they collected money to how to keep track of their inventory in order to analyze the internal process.
We also developed an automated process to help all of their employees not to have to figure out what they had to do for each customer but they can now simply follow the instructions and not have to constantly ask questions about it which was one of the main inefficiencies.
Custom Quoting in Seconds!
One of the largest inefficiencies was the quoting process. Since there were dozens of products in the field that they service, each product had its own set of criteria and pricing. What once took 8 hours to analyze, quote, present and contract now takes under a second! Once the data is inputted, with the press of a button the output is displayed on the screen and each task is distributed to each department. With so many leads coming through from all over the country they were losing opportunities. With annual service contracts anywhere from several thousand dollars to several million dollars that is a big issue for their revenue stream.
For years this has gone unfixed but they had no idea where to go for help. Since we are a marketing and web design company, we were able to go in with a fresh eye and help them gain control of their marketing but when we got down to how to deal with the leads and quoting it opened up a can of worms to their daily operations. Wallfrog made some suggestions on how to fix some of the simple things which led to helping solve how they ran their business. By having the programming skills to go in and fix the problems we were able to help the company patch up their sinking ship and turn it around to help them make several million dollars per year. Over time they now have an exponential growth model which will allow them to take this newly designed process and setup shop all around the country to meet the demand. Needless to say, it is a great feeling to be able to work aside of a client and show them the light at the end of the tunnel. New beginnings.
What is the Solution?
So how did we do it? Since every company is different, there should be a customized solution for every problem. Where to start? There is no out-of-the-box product you can buy and have it work. So we spent several months learning how they ran their business and identified what can be automated and what can be manual. We found that 90% of what they were doing could be done with computer programming and the rest is what they did best which was service the customers product. How cool is that! So what that means is that they spent 90% of their time doing the same things over and over that took way too much time. We sat down with them and put all of the variables in a pile along with all the tools they were using such as quickbooks and ups shipping, etc and searched for a flexible solution that will adapt with the times and never go out of date. Most off the shelf programs need to be installed with a disc and updated. Over time the support goes down the tubes and the system again becomes antiquated. We also wanted something that played nice with online marketing tools to help continue with the growth. After some time we found ZoHo. It is completely customizable with a way to program functions to perform the sizable tasks we needed. After flowcharting all the processes and quoting requirements we were able to build a program and use the database to store everything including the inventory which automated the 90% they were struggling with. After some testing and bug fixing we took the training wheels off and let it go. The system we built is completely versatile and can expand and contract with ease. Needless to say we worked very hard to get a company out of financial hardship and provide them with the tools they needed to do what they loved while becoming successful doing it. Mission accomplished.