A recent addition to our family of customers is a leading provider of sustainable waste management solutions with a diverse customer base across the UK.
Providing a fully compliant service for commercial, trade, confidential, hazardous, construction and clinical/medical waste, the firm follows a client-centric approach, tailoring its services to meet the unique needs and requirements of each business.
With over 25 years of sector experience, the organisation has built a strong reputation for saving its customers’ time and money through the provision of an efficient end-to-end waste processing service that is managed and delivered entirely by their in-house teams. Their services also include emergency waste removal, specialist cleaning, infection control, planned wait-and-load waste collection and pest control.
Pain points
With growth and expansion comes higher expectations and increased workload. Continuous growth has encouraged the company to review how it manages its customer information to ensure it is collected and used appropriately across the whole organsisation. As such, these new demands prompted the business to review its existing systems, as they sought innovative solutions to help them build on recent momentum.
As the organisation grew, it became clear that a new Customer Relationship Management (CRM) solution was needed to sustain its upward trajectory. Once in place, the platform would allow them to centralise customer data and automate the creation of standard documentation such as new contract paperwork and maintenance renewals. In turn, this would help streamline internal processes, delivering improved communication and knowledge sharing across the entire organisation.
After careful consideration of various alternatives, Circyl and the customer jointly agreed that the Microsoft-based technology stack was the right platform to build upon. This choice was driven by the familiarity and proficiency of the staff with Office 365 and offered seamless integration with their existing work practices.
“Our vision for a transformative CRM platform was realised with the expert assistance of Circyl. Throughout the deployment process, the team at Circyl demonstrated exceptional skill and dedication. They understood our unique business needs and worked tirelessly to tailor the solution to meet our requirements. Their hands-on approach and attention to detail ensured a seamless transition to the cloud and we were thrilled with the results. The benefits of our new CRM platform have been outstanding – we now experience streamlined processes, enhanced collaboration, and improved data management across the organisation. ”
Customer Head of IT
Objectives and approach
The core requirement for the project was a comprehensive business platform with the primary functions of a CRM solution. As such, it needed to have the extendibility to include automation, document creation, app integration, reporting and Business Intelligence (BI). The solution’s design had to address the following requirements in order to improve timelines, speed of response and company-wide efficiency:
Workflow management – The platform architecture needed to include robust workflow management capabilities to streamline processes, automate tasks and ensure a smooth/efficient handling of tasks from start to finish.
Seamless communication – The solution needed to facilitate seamless communication and collaboration between team members and stakeholders, enabling real-time information sharing whilst fostering a productive work environment.
During the design phase of the engagement, it was agreed that an extension to the CRM platform was required to deliver a graphical interface for improved job management and planning – this tool would allow authorised users to holistically view daily jobs and quickly allocate them to different days and resources.
The final design was underpinned by a number of key deliverables, including:
- Transparency and visibility: The platform must deliver transparency and visibility of data, ensuring that relevant information is accessible throughout the organisation.
- Showcasing innovation: The CRM platform would service as a showcase for company and user innovation, encouraging creativity and forward-thinking within the organisation.
- Automation and efficiency: Cumbersome and time-consuming manual tasks must be optimised, allowing employees to focus on high-value activities.
- Enhanced knowledge exchange: The CRM platform should facilitate better knowledge exchange and communication amongst teams, fostering a culture of shared learning.
- Scalability: The solution had to be designed to scale and adapt seamlessly with future growth.
- Centralised data management: Implementing single data entry points to ensure consistent and accurate data across multiple applications.
Outcomes and principles
To ensure key objectives were delivered, Circyl utilised its innovative approach to create a user-friendly and intuitive CRM platform that was tailored to the organisation’s unique needs and requirements. Industry best practices were then used to ensure the system was robust and maintainable, ensuring a smooth transition for existing users whilst encouraging a culture of self-service through the removal of bottlenecks.
The needs of individual team members was a key focus throughout the delivery process. Firstly, a centralised record management system was implemented to consolidate all case-related information into a unified platform – this will enhance business productivity by giving case workers easy access to vital information. Meanwhile, document handling is streamlined through the integration of a comprehensive document management system, ensuring relevant documents can be stored and accessed without creating information silos.
The new solution facilitates data sharing and transparency by enabling secure data exchange amongst authorised stakeholders, encouraging collaboration, decision-making and better outcomes generally. This user-centric approach has ensured the solution is both intuitive and easy to navigate, providing case workers with an engaging interface and straightforward functionality to enhance operational efficiency.
Key reporting and analysis processes were also implemented to help deliver clear tracking and monitoring mechanisms for task management. Real-time updates and notifications can now be sent and received, allowing stakeholders to accurately manage the progress of individual jobs and intervene if needed.
To meet the requirements of an upgraded planning tool, a modern, responsive web application was also developed using the react web development library. In doing this, Circyl were able to quickly build a bespoke application with modern user interface (UI) alongside an improved user experience (UX). With this tool at their disposal, users can now plan daily activities by dragging jobs between days and allocating resource to these tasks in the same manor.
Through direct and secure interaction with CRM, the planning tool can also harness additional business data to assist in focusing priorities such as unallocated jobs and understanding supplementary info such as resource availability. In all, this tool greatly improves the understanding of daily operations, with clear visual indicators allowing them to quickly highlight critical data around jobs. They customer now has access to a fully operational business platform that can grow and evolve with the business.
Technologies utilised
During the project, Circyl leveraged the following technologies:
Auth0: Auth0 is a lightweight Authentication platform that can be used to create users, assign them to roles, and authenticate them securely on multiple applications and frameworks.
Material UI: Material UI is a collection of ready-made user interface components, such as buttons and text boxes, implementing Google’s Material Design system.
Node.js: Node.js is a JavaScript runtime environment that executes JavaScript code outside of a web browser.
Power Apps: PowerApps is a service used for building and using custom business apps that connect to your data and work across the web and mobile, without the time and expense of custom software development.
Power Automate: Power Automate is a service designed to help businesses create automated workflows between popular apps and services, allowing them to synchronise files, receive notifications and collect data.
Power BI: Power BI is Microsoft’s cloud-based enterprise and self-service analytical solution that provides data modelling and visualisation capabilities across a range of data sources.Â
React: React is a front-end JavaScript library used for building user interfaces based on components
TypeScript: TypeScript is a high-level programming language developed by Microsoft that adds static typing with optional type annotations to JavaScript.
“The customer had a clear vision of how a new CRM platform could drive change within their organisation. Fortunately, our experience of delivering CRM solutions in conjunction with PowerApps and Custom Application Development showed we were the right partner for them. Their desire to maximise the benefits of their Microsoft 365 solution is testament to their commitment to excellence.”
Roger Peacock
Business Development Manager, Circyl
Want to know more?
Circyl offer free consultations to allow businesses to discuss their productivity issues and ask us in-depth questions about our services and pricing.
Call 03333 209 969 to speak to a member of our team directly or send a message by filling in the contact form here.