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.