The challenge
The Response Team, a young marketing services company, have expanded rapidly since their launch in 1998, and they were going through some growing pains. As the sales team expanded, their media sales system – a bunch of linked Excel and Access databases – was beginning to buckle under the strain. And the company was starting to miss opportunities.
The solution
We used a business consultancy approach to help us work out exactly what the company’s operational process problems were. That meant listening to the users of the current sales system (always a highly revealing tactic), which resulted in a set of user scenarios.
The technology was based around the latest Microsoft .NET platform, using an SQL Server database, and integrated seamlessly with MS Office so TRT could go on producing the same reports its clients were used to.
As we often do, we delivered the full solution in a series of stages so we could tune things as we went along and, if necessary, adapt the final stages. We even ran the new system alongside the existing databases to ensure data consistency.
For bug fixing, we used an innovative approach. The system emailed us a detailed report if any unexpected errors occurred or if performance speed slowed – allowing us to respond instantly and give proactive support to the client.
The result
Many tasks that took staff hours now take minutes. The time savings have freed up staff to do their actual jobs, selling more media space and improving sales figures. The Response Team have found the new system gives them a demonstrable edge over their competitors.