Smart portal, the answer for the growth of your company

When I advise our customers, the question always arises - Should you go for an existing package of business software or do you develop a custom solution. The answer may vary based on the scalability and level of automation of growth your business expects. There are 4 major distinctions to be made in the field of dashboards. The smart portal, the customer portal, the dashboard and the data wall. Below I will try to clarify the differences between these 4.

At the beginning of my career, I immediately dived into the world of enterprise management software development. ERP, CRM, interconnections, gateways, dashboard and what not more. It's always an interesting question that I keep asking myself when advising our clients – should you go for an existing suite of business software or do you develop a custom solution. The answer may vary based on the scalability and level of automation of growth your business expects.

As a full-service software company, we as 4BIS are ready to support the growth of our customers with appropriate technical solutions. In our experience as a software house in developing and realizing solutions, we often see that the growth of the company brings a number of technological challenges. It's an interesting part of our job solving the puzzle of turning complex things into simple straightforward solutions.

One of the biggest challenges of a growing business is keeping track of statuses, evaluating and storing the actual data. For example: when a purchase was last made, how much inventory is left, what is the status of the quote requested, the number of unresolved projects, what is the workflow status for this shipment, what are the best performing ads or laundry is the best performing service? This is just a short list of questions you probably try to answer every day.

Multiple data streams, sources of information, and delayed updates from providers can become a problem when scaling a product or growing your business. The answer could be automation and real-time processing. Modern software can process an enormous amount of data and combine different information flows. A custom solution can work with different data formats and convert integrated services into one simple workflow in a smart portal, customer portal, dashboard or data wall.

For example, in a Customer Portal, you let your customer check the updates and submit requests themselves. Your colleagues are immediately informed and can get to work as soon as a new request comes in. When the job is done, the customer immediately receives an update.

Let's look at the options:

But what exactly is a customer portal?

It is usually a custom developed web application that represents questions, products or services that your company's customer uses. A customer portal offers customers the possibility to log in securely, access information, files and services. Building your own customer portal can change specific needs of customer-company relationships.

Some advantages of having your own customer portal built:

– On-demand access to information

– Less pressure on the company with repetitive questions

- Safety

– Greater flexibility

– Implementing recurring business models

4BIS Innovations Customer Portal

As a provider of technical solutions, we want to help our customers realize their business potential. With the development of our own customer portal, we have embarked on a new level of customer service. Our customers have more flexibility without overdue complexity and can take advantage of the day-to-day benefits of our new development. For example, our email signature generator is integrated into the customer portal and stored in the customer's account so that when our customer makes changes, they don't have to start the whole process again. We are working daily on new features for our customer portal.

What is a Smart Portal?

A Smart Portal is a custom web application that represents a gateway for different applications to securely connect to each other and receive control commands, do background work or recalculations. It is also a secure environment where individual parts of the company or offices exchange data, transfer information about different steps of the execution process or refine the information for decision making. Information systems generate huge amounts of data, in addition, mobile devices such as smartphones or tablets provide access to digital information and cloud services and diversify data sources. A good smart portal can facilitate the use of large amounts of information, making it a great tool for general business operations.

QuoteManager

QuoteManager was originally built for Silver Tiger Logistics to track the shipping workflow. The company's intercontinental offices deliver shipments to each other 24/7, so there is up-to-date information about the status of the shipment at all times. The QuoteManager smart portal seamlessly integrates Office 365 and cloud.4bis.nl, allowing users to create, upload, save, download or modify information at any time during the specific transmission. All necessary documentation is collected in the same folder: shipping documents, invoices, vehicle registration documents, customer data, etc. QuoteManager grew into a more customizable product so that Silver Tiger Logistics and other companies can continue to benefit from our development.

Read more about QuoteManager

What is a data wall?

What is a data wall? A data wall is a simplified one-page web application with several crucial but fundamental performance indicators. Usually we see the data wall on the interactive physical screens in common areas or offices. A data wall displays charts and KPIs to provide real-time information about business performance or business updates without the ability to look at past data. Alerts are an important part of the datawall logic, notifying the team when their attention is needed. The idea is that after such a warning, the problem will be solved immediately. A data wall is like a heart rate monitor that continuously monitors your company's heart rate.

AffiliateMNGR.com

AffiliateMNGR.com is still under active development. In a simple overview, it shows real-time updated charts and sales popups where you can immediately see the status of your ad campaign, your earnings from the past hours or your ad and partner performance.

Read more about AffiliateMNGR.com

What is a dashboard?

A digital dashboard is a custom-developed web application with a rich user interface and infographics. Such as interfaces that give you insight into your KPIs, important objectives or business processes at a glance. A critical part of the dashboard is the ability to zoom in or zoom out on details and retrospective business data. Reports, progress, scoreboards, KPIs and metrics are used almost side by side in a dashboard. For example, a dashboard can show tear-out parts that are used in a specific production process, the number of malfunctions or the influence of changes in the production process.

Conditiemeter for RET

Condition Meter is a custom developed wealth management dashboard. Special features lie in the aggregation and processing of large amounts of data. Provides a simple interface to retrospectively examine asset performance and global asset replacement planning in a company using assets for its infrastructure. This dashboard allows you to dynamically add/remove infrastructure objects or create new asset clusters. In the admin panel of the Condition Meter dashboard, your organization can customize sets of technical and security standards to calculate compliance levels after each physical and digital asset inspection. The 4BIS team collaborated with stevin.com on this project. The first development was realized for a public transport company in Rotterdam – RET.