Spreadsheet intake
Customer and proposal intake for many stakeholders ran in spreadsheets.
Versago for SAP B1 Case Study
How Certified, a corporate relocation and installation services company, replaced a spreadsheet-based proposal process with a Versago web portal synced with SAP Business One.
About Certified
Certified provides project management and logistic services for complex, large business transitions in the corporate, legal and healthcare communities. For day-two services, it uses technology-based approaches to handle clients’ on-site logistics and off-site asset management.
The Challenge
Proposal processing is a core job for Certified’s account management team. Each project’s scope, resource allocation and timeline depend on it. Its customers include household names in media, finance and healthcare, so there is no room for error.
Proposals moved through spreadsheets and email shared by managers, finance and accounting staff, and customers. Coordinating everyone took heavy overhead, and the process was prone to errors. Keeping SAP Business One in sync took the manual effort of three administrative resources.
Certified needed to centralize and automate proposal intake in a way that would scale with its growth.
Customer and proposal intake for many stakeholders ran in spreadsheets.
Translating between proposal formats repeated work and led to errors and delays.
Valuable staff time went to keying data into SAP Business One.
Revenue and costs were calculated by hand, without timely insight.
The Solution
Certified brought in Third Wave and its Versago portal to centralize and automate proposal intake. Versago ships with pre-built screens and integrations to SAP Business One, and users reach it from simple web pages on a computer, tablet or smartphone.
Account and project managers work with their clients directly in the portal. Relationship managers, finance and accounting, and administrators each have role-based access. Each person sees and updates only the information their job needs.
Users start a draft proposal from a web page, or base it on a copy of a previous one. Choosing a business partner fills form fields from SAP Business One or other sources, and the service type adds the required wording. Long lists of line items upload from a file. Data entry is faster and more accurate.
Versago applies discounts, surcharges and taxes from the project classification. It also spreads project revenue and cost over time from the project’s start and end dates. Finance and accounting drop a manual step, even as project details change.
When a user marks a draft complete, the proposal enters a workflow. Rules and status changes open it to the right users for review, input and approval. Each user gets an automated email when a proposal needs their action.
Internal stakeholders see status reports that link to each proposal. Volume reports for planning and revenue reports for forecasting go out by email on a schedule. Portal activity syncs with SAP Business One in real time. Every stakeholder has the visibility their role needs.
Certified’s director of account management on what moving proposal intake into Versago has meant for the team.
The Result
Certified gets more from its SAP Business One investment, and clearer communication saves significant time. Next, users will start a Bill of Lading in Versago that imports automatically to an Enterprise Job in SAP. Third Wave’s Bizweaver integration will share that data with trades labor scheduling systems.
Several staff moved from process administration to value-added jobs.
Certified reports a significant reduction in proposal errors.
Manual project revenue and cost forecasting is gone.
Every stakeholder sees the proposal information their role needs.