In the beginning of my career I’ve dived directly into the world of enterprise management software development. ERP, CRM, interconnections, gateways, dashboard and what not more. It is always an interesting question that I still ask myself every time when I’m advising our clients – go for an existing package of business software or develop a custom made solution. The answer may vary on the scalability, automatisation and level of growth your company expects.
As a full-service software company 4BIS Innovations is eager to support our clients business growth with technical solutions that fit. It’s our experience as a software house that specialises in the development and realisation of solutions that we often see that with the growth of the company some technological challanges would emerge. It is an interesting part of our job solving the puzzle of converting complex stuff to simple and straigtforward solutions.
Did you know
4BIS Innovations currently has a couple of dashboard in development. Want to know more?
One of the major challanges of growing a business is keeping track of status, evaluation and the storing of the actual data. Examples like, last time a purchase was made, when the asset should be replaced, how much stock is left, what is the status of the requested quote, the number of unresolved projects, what is the workflow state for this shipment, what is the best performing advertisement or to find the most performing service. This is just a shortlist of questions you probably try to answer each day.
Multiple streams of data, information sources and delayed updates from providers might become a real issue with scaling a product or growing your company. Complicated! The answer could be automatisation and real-time processing. Modern software can process an enormous amount of data and can combine various streams of information. Custom solutions can work with different formats of data and convert integrated services into one simple workflow in a smart portal, client portal, dashboard or datawall.
Let’s look at the Client portal for example, let your customer check the updates and submit requests for themselves. Your collegues will be directly notified and can start working when a new request has arrived. And when the job is done the customer will recieve an update.
Let’s take a quick look at the options.
Flexibility =
Seamless =
Accountability =
So what is customer portal or client portal?
It is usually a custom developed web application that represents quotes, products or services that client uses from your company. A customer portal gives clients the possibility to securely login, access information, files, and services online. Building your own customer portal can shape-shift specific needs of the client-company relationship.
Some of the benefits to build your own customer portal:
– On-demand information access
– Less pressure on company with repetative quotes
– Security
– Greater flexibility
– Implementing recurring business-models
— mijn.4bis.nl —
As a technical solution provider we want to help our clients to realise their business potential. With the development of our own customer portal we started a new level of customer care. Our clients have more flexibility without overdue complexity and can reap the day to day benefits from our new development. For example our email signature generator is integrated in the customer portal and stored so anytime our client has changes they don’t need to start the whole process again and again. We are actively developing new features everyday.
What is a Smart Portal?
A Smart Portal is a custom web application that represents a gateway for different applications to securely connect with each other and receive control commands, do background work or recalculations. It is also a secure environment where separate parts of the company or offices exchange data, handover information on different steps of the execution process or refine the information for decision making. Information systems generate a massive sets of data. In addition, mobile devices such as smartphones or tablets bring accessibility to digital information and cloud services and diversify data sources. A Proper smart portal can provide the utilisation of large volumes of information making it a great tool for operations.
— QuoteManager —
QuoteManager was originally build for Silver Tiger Logistics to follow up the shipments workflow. Intercontinental offices of the company handover shipments to each other 24/7, so every moment there is actual information on the shipment status. QuoteManager smart portal seamlessly integrates Office 365 and cloud.4bis.nl, which allows users to create, upload, store, download or modify information at any moment in the specific shipment. All the necessary documentation is gathered in that one same folder: shipping documents, invoices, vehicle registration documents, client information, etc. QuoteManager outgrew to a more customisable product so Silver Tiger Logistics and other companies can benefit from our development.
What is datawall?
A datawall is a simplified onepage web application with several crucial but basic key performance indicators. Usually we see the datawall on the interactive physical screens in a common spaces or offices. A datawall displays graphs and KPIs to provide real-time information about company performance or business updates without the ability to look at past data. Alerts are an import part of datawall logic notifying the team when their attention is needed. The idea is that after such alert the issue is taken care of immediately. A datawall is like an heartbeat monitor continuously monitoring the heartbeat of your business or an overview that shows limited time snapshots.
— AffiliateMNGR.com —
AffiliateMNGR.com is still in active development. In a simple overview it shows real-time updating graphs and sales popups where you can directly see the status of your advertisement campaign and your last hours earnings, ad and affiliate performance.
What is a dashboard?
A digital dashboard is a custom developed web application with a rich user interface and infographics like interfaces to provide at-a-glance views on KPI’s and major objectives or business process. A crucial part of the dashboard is the possibility to zoom-in or zoom-out on details and retrospective business data. Reports, progress, scoreboards, KPIs and metrics are almost used next to each other in a dashboard. For example, a dashboard may show tear-out parts used in a specific production proces, the number of fails or the influence of changes in the production process.
— Conditiemeter for RET —
Conditiemeter is a custom developed dashboard for an assets management. Specifics lay in the aggregation and processing of large volumes of data. With a simple interface to do retrospective research on the performance of assets and global planning on assets replacement in a company that uses assets for its infrastructure. This dashboard allows you to dynamically add / remove infrastructure objects or create new clusters of assets. In the admin panel of ‘conditiemeter’ dashboard your organisation can adjust sets of technical norms, security standards to calculate compliance levels after each physical and digital inspection of assets. The 4BIS team worked together with stevin.com on this project. Initial development was realised for a public transport company of Rotterdam – RET.
All screenshots are anonymised and using only test data and cannot be used for any reliability
