A full-service business solution incorporating a customer relationship management (CRM) tool, finance, human resources, and project management modules based heavily on user roles and responsibilities.
Industry
Professional Services
Company
An engineering services firm that has been in business 33 years and employees over 120 individuals at 2 separate locations.
The Challenge
The company was using multiple spreadsheets, databases, and 3rd party software solutions to manage unique portions of their business. While the systems functioned fine independently, there was little visibility and information sharing between departments and multiple spreadsheets had to be created independently due to limited functionality. There was little central management of data and each project manager had their own methods for tracking project progress and measuring success. While looking for other full-service software solutions, the team was shocked to see that not only was the initial software cost significant, it also required yearly maintenance, upgrades, and training costs per employee.
The Solution
The company challenged our developers to create a unique proprietary software system, eventually dubbed Orka, that housed all important business information, allowed for visibility between departments, was cloud-based (allowing access from any location), and most importantly provided a 360-view of the business to make sound business decisions.
What is Orka?
Orka is a proprietary business system that provides full business operations functionality including finance, project management, executive insight, business development, and a complete CRM system.
Modules
- CRM: The Customer Relationship Management (CRM) tool allows the sales team to add and monitor potential and current customers, jobs, and opportunities. All projects, open or closed, are visible with details regarding the contact, purchase order, assigned project team, due dates, costs and other information. In addition, the sales team can utilize the CRM to create and send accurate and timely bids. Bids are tracked over time and reports are provided to the executive team to determine bid effectiveness and allow for strategic positioning in the future.
- Project Management: With multiple projects and project managers, the company wanted a module that allows limited access for separate jobs. A project manager has permissions to set up the job, assign the team, provide a due date, and see a snapshot of the job as it progresses to determine due dates. Team members can log their hours through the time management portal, and indicate the work is done which automatically applies to job costs and scheduling modules determining if work is being done on time and on budget. Project managers previously had visibility to the financial performance of a job with 30-day old data. Now, they have real-time data that is refreshed constantly.
“As a project manager, it’s critical to be able to see potential overruns as early as possible. Orka’s ability to track hours and produce meaningful reports allows me to keep a constant eye on where projects are at and where they’re headed. This allows small adjustments to be made as needed along the way to stay within the budgeted hours.”
- Finance: After projects are complete or as billing progresses for specific jobs, invoices can be created within Orka easily copying over information from the job setup. Invoices are automatically generated, available for editing, and sent to the executive team for approval. Invoices can then be emailed to customers and payments are recorded – without the use of an Excel spreadsheet!
- Human Resources (HR) & Time Management: With a mid-sized team (120+ users), the company was looking for a solution to easily manage PTO time, company memos, and company policies. This was accomplished using a permissions-based HR and Time Management modules which house current PTO credits and allows all employees to view company-wide PTO schedules as well as important HR documents, along with automatic distribution and recorded acceptance of the documents.
- Administration: Invisible but crucial to the entire project was to have varied and secure permission sets allowed different levels of access to modules and approval functionality. Company executives can easily add, remove, and modify both users and their permissions relating to what portions of the data they can access, and what they can do with that access. Further, the program is built on a dynamic platform. Company executives can modify variables (such as cost codes, custom entry fields, and settings), archive old data, and monitor chat on the collaboration tool without needing the assistance of an IT expert or developer.
“With Orka, we finally have the ability to enter and track all project data in a single software. This not only saves significant time but also allows that data to be crunched and analyzed in ways that weren’t possible before.”
Technology Utilized
Programming Languages:
- AngularsJS
- NodeJS
- ReactJS
- PHP
- Laravel
Database:
- MySql RDS
Operating System:
- Ubuntu 14/16
Cloud:
- Amazon (AWS)
The Outcome
Orka has been in use since 2016, with additional modules and functionality added during the last few years with business growth and expansion. Additional modules, logs, reports, dynamic search, and a messaging and collaboration tool are just a few of these awesome integrated features our developers have included!
“Orka has proven to be one central database which has made all employees more productive with their daily tasks. This very easy to use program has made everything from inputting timesheets to invoicing a breeze. The comprehensive reports help managers track projects and costs from the beginning to the close out of a project. This program is everything we expected and more.”
Looking for an experienced, yet affordable, software development team? We would appreciate an opportunity to connect with you and establish a partnership. Feel free to contact us with your information, and we’ll be in touch shortly!