CAD2M is a supplier of Solidworks and related systems such as Solidcam and 3D printers. CAD2M serves customers within the manufacturing industry for whom they optimize these solutions.
CAD2M is a loyal user of Vtiger CRM and this CRM followed the company in its growth and development. Now a new phase was dawning for CAD2M and Vicus was asked to help with a number of modifications to Vtiger.
Scalable service
The wish of CAD2M is to make its services more scalable. For this purpose a number of work processes had to change. This concerned the processes for project management and registration, issuing quotations, invoicing and communication to customers.
This desire to better scale up services touched several parts of the organization, and thus CAD2M was on the eve of change management within its organization.
Recording and invoicing of validated project hours
A first step was to be able to invoice its customers for services provided on a post-calculation basis. Previously, projects were often offered as fixed price. CAD2M wanted to switch to carrying out projects based on post-calculation. This meant that a comprehensive time registration had to be maintained. This time registration had to be made completely transparent to customers. This meant that for the customers of CAD2M it had to be visible which activities were performed, on which date and by whom.
CAD2M not only wanted a conclusive project registration but also wanted to simplify the billing process. The desire was for all validated billable project hours to end up on the invoice with a simple action.
Within this project, a relationship was also made to the Sales Order module for the project hours sold. This enables CAD2M to compare the sold hours with the executed hours and the finally invoiced hours. This completes the Sales - Execution - Invoicing cycle.
Vicus developed most of the modifications for the time registration module and the most striking of these was the display of project hours in a weekly overview. This allowed employees to quickly see which hours they were missing in order to achieve a balanced time registration.
Another modification developed by Vicus was the ability to quickly invoice project hours that the project manager had approved. This means that it is now possible to pass on the project hours made for invoicing immediately. The invoice consists of an hourly total and an appendix with timesheets.
Transparent communication to customers
The result of this project is that CAD2M is now able to maintain a comprehensive time administration to get a better grip on the project hours made. In addition, the adjustments to Vtiger CRM provided more transparency in the communication to customers about the hours worked within projects.
Finally, a significant amount of time is saved by the company's consultants and admin staff. They no longer have to look up and verify what activities had been performed within the project for those specific customers who wanted to see a timesheet. Also, requesting all project hours made from consultants for invoicing was eliminated and invoicing has been dramatically shortened in time.
