Situation:
My employer, like many divisions of larger businesses, had many, many software tools they utilized to run their business. Some were home-grown. Some were not. Some were outdated waiting on company-wide consolidation. MRP, CRM, quoting, reporting, marketing etc. One thing for sure, our inside salespeople needed all of them, and none of them "talked" to each other. Users had to log into each one separately and switch back and forth between applications throughout the day.
Task:
How to get separate software systems, some on different platforms, "talking" so our inside sales team could work in multiple applications without having to switch back and forth and load customer information in each application.
Action:
A "Hub" to bring all these tools together and limit the number of separate applications our inside sales team had to bounce between. Better yet - the tools needed to be "connected".
Result:
Working with stakeholders in sales, I created a master interface that framed our core MRP system with a dynamic menu of tools. Launching the tools from the "hub" shared authenticated sessions behind the scenes and opened connected "child" windows.
With a dual screen setup our inside salespeople could now access all the tools they needed with a single login.
The hub offers a powerful search feature able to search by customer, zip code, phone number, PO, order, invoice or RMA all in a single search field with auto-complete.
With MRP, CRM, sales history or a variety of other windows open, users can search for a customer, select from the drop-down result list, and all the windows update to the selected customer. It also offers one-click shortcuts to information that previously required drilling down through multiple screens.
