Executive Summary
Since 1919, Louisiana’s Community Coffee has brought people together everywhere with each exceptional cup of coffee. As the world has demanded more of the coffee that captures southern charm, CC’s needed more than an information distribution process consisting of an email chain of spreadsheets amongst their employees. Sparkhound, with expertise in building custom applications and mobile development, delivered a centralized iPad application for CC’s that streamlined the process of collecting information and reduced the workload for their Management Team and Sales Representatives.
CHALLENGE
CC’s Sales Representatives are scattered around the country making communication and accountability difficult and would routinely enter all of the survey data at once toward the end of a workday. This process caused errors in counts and setback Management’s ability to translate intel on performance into actionable items. Updating the survey questions was taxing as well. If they wanted to even slightly adjust their survey, brand new spreadsheets had to be emailed out to everyone, limiting their power over their own data. Overall, the manual system was overall not equipped to deliver the on-demand information CC’s needed to make timely decisions for their growing business.
SOLUTION
Community Coffee’s Development Department teamed up with Sparkhound to create a much less burdensome process with personalized iPad and web applications. Community Coffee developed the web portal that allowed Managers to create store specific surveys and report on the collected data as Sparkhound created the iPad application that synced all of the stores’ information to the device.
Now, the Sales Representatives can work completely disconnected with all of the store’s up-to-date information at their fingertips, and reminders are automatically created to ensure Sales Representatives are visiting the correct locations in a timely manner. Managers also have the flexibility to change survey questions with ease. Using the iPad’s camera, Sales Representatives can now take pictures of the displays, which is invaluable for subsequent visits where comparisons can be made at a glance.
Sparkhound also provided on-site training to Community Coffee’s development team to fill-in knowledge gaps on mobile development and the specific technologies used. We delegated Xamarin to write the iPad application in to leverage existing .Net skills.
IMPACT
Community Coffee now has a streamlined process with more accurate and timely data. They can now make more informed decisions about inventory enabling them to increase revenue which was previously unattainable. With more accountability, they have higher productivity to save costs as well.
Since the iPad application was written in .Net and Sparkhound provided Xamarin training, Community Coffee was then able to support the application in-house with their own development team to allow for quicker internal customizations and cost savings.
