Logging calls without lagging behind
When you're in Texas selling 3D printers instead of barbecue, finding a proper service agent can be a little problematic. That's where Integra lends a hand. They provide on-demand services for companies that deal with printers and prototyping systems.
Being a service company with more people out in the field than in the office, they run their daily operations based on reports from the field.
No big deal; that's how a lot of companies work.
But Integra had a problem working that way. Their service people in the field would type out details of their work in Word documents and email them over to managers back at the office.
"So as you can imagine, everybody's directories were full of Word documents."
We get that. Piles of unread documents aren't anybody's idea of a great Monday morning. But it's not just the documents, is it?
"We were unable to log calls in an efficient manner to keep track of all our customers. When our guys were in the field, we didn't know if they had problems or couldn't provide maintenance visits."
Now that's a problem that needs a solution. And so they tried Adobe forms. It seemed like a good option for the field workers to submit reports.
They realized something soon enough, though.
"We needed a database to keep up with the different configurations of the machines in the field."
They signed up for Zoho Creator. It was a smooth transition. Even without coding experience, Daniel Delgado, the Technical Sales Manager of Integra Services, managed to get a large portion of their database up and running.
Now, Integra maintains a complete list of all their customers, their contact details, and the configurations of the different machines they deal with. What’s more, they can now do what they couldn’t before: they also log their calls and close more deals.
"I’m seeing much more activity from the guys in the field now that they can sit in front of the machines with their iPhone and log in all the machine information."
But this isn’t just for the short run. They’ve realized they can use Creator when they expand as well.
"In the next five years we're hoping to double size of the company. We're going from a small 14-person company to about a 70-person company in the next few months. And in the next five years, we'll probably see that growth double."
Their application has now evolved into keeping up with personnel, posting jobs, and collecting resumes. They don’t plan to stop there, though.
It'll grow as we grow, and the more we learn about it the more programming we can do with it. We'll be able to utilize it more in our future.
Oh, and would you...?
I would absolutely recommend Zoho Creator.
Thanks:Mike Conner and Daniel Delgado,Integra Services.