Guidance to a Small company cEO

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Context

Small company lead by a person with very reduced knowledge of IT which has 3 administrative people working with old software that is legacy and hardware that is required to be replaced. Some main pain points are clear:

  • Remove the back-up bottleneck that currently is a problem.
  • The local company that provides the legacy CRM is offering an alternative that supposes an important investment that is not clear if it’s required.
  • The 3 administrative people are really good with the use of applications and a transition to new tools is not a relevant risk.

Purpose

Understand what are the alternatives to upgrade the hardware, the software and the way the data is shared and stored. Understand the best solutions for the software: office pack and CRM solution.

Results

For the hardware replacement 3 offers were obtained with similar level of features (to enable a fair comparison) and the preferred option was acquired.

For the software packages the Microsoft Office was acquired (basic for type of content they manage), and the decision on the shared place for the documentation was discussed between Google and Microsoft. Finally the Google solution was decided. The reasons:

  • Better price,
  • Easy integration with mobile: they all have Android mobiles and the integration for the sales people and the CEO (that are always with the mobile) makes things easy.

The decision to the election of the CRM was delayed to see how the other things were executed (6 months).

Initially the option of the local solution was seen as the best one: trust on the company, have people to support the issues and not having major issues, etc.

After the integration of the Google Services into the day to day of the administrative staff and given the fact that the communications were improved a lot: quick approvals with links, better use of folders in the email, etc. The decision was to get a service with the basis for CRM purposes that has great integration with Google services (option 2).

The plan was to use the service with a small amount of customers and cases and check how it works during 3 months. After 3 months make a decision: go or kill it. Finally it was a go.

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