Centerpoint Direct Uses CoActLive to Track Leads
(www.CenterPointDirect.com)

Centerpoint Direct is one of Atlanta’s leaders in telecommunication solutions with a steady growth in the education, healthcare and stage government segments. We began working with a small group of sales people within the company who had a need to streamline their lead management and referral business. We started the project on a Monday with a two hour requirement’s gathering session where they described to us how their current business process is very efficient but is antiquated.  They used a system of manila folders to track each lead and referral.  This worked great, provided you had the file cabinet with you at all times! Centerpoint’s process had a linear workflow that systematically qualified the leads and progressed them through the buying and installation phases.  Their needs were very specific about this business process.  They said that the system had to be easy to use because they didn’t want to spend a week learning it.  Their business was growing fast so they could not afford to slow down, especially in their lead management process. Once the requirements were gathered and documented (in our corporate wiki), we began to build the Lead Management Micro App.

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The first iteration was ready within a day.

We deployed it to their wiki and they began to review the functions.  They compiled a list of ‘tweeks’ which we completed on the next day.

Three Days - Requirements to Deployment

By Wednesday of that week, we had completed the requirements gathering, developed the application and got sign off from the client.  On Thursday morning the team was using the new Micro App without a beat missed!

The Key to Acceptance

The whole project was dependent upon how easy the Micro App would be to use.  Our strategy was to make the workflow identical and the interfaces ‘familiar’.

Linear Workflow

The wiki platform is hugely flexible when it comes to linear workflow.  The structure can be created easily and exactly to the business specifications.  We were able to create the 7 phases of a lead and successfully implement this using forms and AJAX powered interfaces.

Familiar Interfaces

The key to our interface design was to make the online system ‘look’ like their offline system.  This was achieved by making the screens resemble the manila folders they were used to using.

Lead Before - Using folders		Same Lead After - Using a Wiki
Notice the business card stapled in the upper right corner.		Notice the business card scanned into the wiki document.

From Chaos to Order

An amazing thing happened when the Micro App was deployed.  All the sales people now could easily access their lead and customer data from anywhere.  They began spending more time doing presentations and sales demos.  Moreover, management now could easily login to the Wiki and see what each sales rep was working on.

Here is an example of one person’s desk before CoActLive and after the deployment of the Lead Management Application.

Desk before - Chaos		Desk after - Order