Integrating Web Site with CRM System--Initially when users submitted inquiries through the public web site, a person from marketing or sales would receive an email, then would copy the data by hand into Onyx, our CRM system. The process used required two interfaces be open, was hard to track, and made user error very easy. I replaced that process with a system that:
- Sent the same email message to sales/marketing when an inquiry arrived
- Stored the information in a database for easy access to historical inquiries
- Allowed sales/marketing to add comments to each inquiry
- On demand, populated a form with the inquiry's information where it could be cleaned up, then inserted that into the CRM database.
- Refused requests by others create (duplicate) records.
- Indicated whether a person's record had been was unreviewed, was rejected, or was exported to Onyx.
Introduced New System for Managing Site Content--Originally, marketing had a difficult time getting new or changed content onto the public website. Before I became the person responsible for scheduling.com's site, marketing would email requests for content changes to the gatekeeper, then it had to hope that changes would be promptly and correctly made. The person then doing the updates had to interpret instructions from an email into changes on the site. This system was both laborious and frustrating. When I became technically responsible for the public website, I introduced a staging environment for it, then I instructed marketing on how to safely change pages and how to move them live themselves. Small task, big benefits.
Automated Internal News Postings--The most frequently performed task whose process I improved was that of posting internal news items. That is described here in the web applications area.
