“The development of this application positioned us to handle the COVID crisis with ease.”
3Cloud came on board to help the client’s 5,000+ sales representatives more effectively receive and follow up with leads.
3Cloud came in as a Microsoft partner to create a multi-form Power Apps application, meaning it would be able to be used on any device or the web, to simplify the customer’s lead distribution process. Among the top priorities for this project were the establishment of a custom application for campaign creation and lead assignment, and the ability to provide the field reps or call center an automatically created and updated to-do list daily. As a sale happened, Power Automate would automatically create tasks for the user, specifically follow-ups based on time frames. It also allowed the sales team to load information on their previous sales history, and pinpoint exactly who to target based on last purchase made and needed upgrades since.
Several design considerations came into play with this custom application, including security using Azure Active Directory, core data living in Azure SQL DB, flows being used for user notifications and all data being stored in the cloud. It was imperative that the data be stored in Azure for speed, as the entire application depended on field reps being sent the most up-to-date notifications and tasks each day.
During this engagement, 3Cloud worked to finalize the data model for storage of all leads and activities; built the ETL to load the database; created a campaign builder application; built a to-do application for field reps to generate alerts each day including leads; and trained the internal development staff on how to use the application. The custom campaign dashboard we created not only provided a summary of active campaigns and a set of filters to build a campaign, but also allowed a manager to pause a campaign if needed. A stored procedure loaded the campaign and active entities, and users were able to log all new activity in the application.
One of the main benefits of this custom Power Apps application was that it allowed this retailer to dramatically reduce their Salesforce licenses, and therefore costs. The Salesforce Unlimited plan averages $300 per user per month, while the Power Apps Unlimited plan costs $40 per user per month. Licenses for 5,000 field reps went from costing the client $1,500,00 monthly to costing $200,000 monthly – a savings of over $1 million each month.
In addition, our Power Apps solution was built and ready to use in less than a month, unlike a Salesforce, C# or web application which can take months to build and utilize.
After 3Cloud put this Power Apps application for this organization into production, the Covid-19 crisis hit North America, and the company’s CEO, who was very pleased with the results they were seeing, said all markets had to use it immediately. As this retailer discovered, one of the most significant benefits of Power Apps is how quickly 3Cloud was able to develop a highly useful, functioning app. Speed, combined with total integration with Office 365, Power Automate, and Microsoft Power BI, made it easy for them to get data into and out of SharePoint, or Excel, and any of the other 365 apps on which their business depends.
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