Colorep

Customer Relationship Management (CRM)

Download >

Innovation in ink transfer to virtually any medium and a focus on green technology set Colorep apart from other custom print shops. Based in Rancho Cucamonga, Colorep recently purchased Transprint in New York and spun off a new company, Betacolor, also in Rancho Cucamonga.

Problem

With a customer base and sales force distributed across the country and no two orders alike, Colorep needed a customer relationship management (CRM) application that could replace the existing manual system.

In addition, Colorep required a shipping manifest system that could take customer, address, and order information from the CRM and automatically print shipping labels.

Both the CRM and shipping systems had to integrate with an accounting system, and all three systems required an audit-trail for a potential IPO.

Finally, the CRM had to support Colorep’s order process for producing unique products—from banners, to carpet, to clothes—for every customer and job.

Process

Colorep’s Chief Technology Officer brought Fairway in to evaluate and recommend options for the three systems. Having worked with Fairway at a previous company, the CTO knew he could trust Fairway to understand his technical and business requirements and thoroughly analyze the solutions.

With a plethora of options for all three systems, Fairway and Colorep narrowed down the field by determining that the prevailing requirements were a low up-front cost and the ability to integrate easily. SugarCRM Professional Edition, Malvern Manifest System, and Microsoft Dynamics accounting software fit the bill.

After the evaluation phase, two primarily off-site Fairway developers worked with developers from Malvern and CBIZ Technologies to implement the integration. Fairway supported the Colorep project manager by providing regular status updates and working directly with the third party representatives.

Fairway created an integration manager through SugarCRM that produced the customer, address, and order data in the formats necessary to be ingested by the other systems. Working closely with Malvern, Fairway provided the specifications SugarCRM required to use the shipping information and redefined the Colorep shipping process to manage such occurrences as voided shipments, multiple addresses, and multiple boxes.

SugarCRM is designed for repeated products chosen from a catalog, so Fairway helped define and implement customizations to the CRM order and product modules to manage Colorep’s custom products. In addition, Fairway created a report that is accessible through the CRM and which audits the CRM, shipping, and accounting data.

Colorep wanted to take advantage of new features in SugarCRM’s out-of-the-box version 5.0, so Fairway upgraded the software and environment from SugarCRM version 4.1 to 4.2, 4.5, and now 5.0. In conjunction with the software upgrade, Fairway also migrated the environment from a LAMP stack to Windows and from PHP 4 to 5.

Results

Colorep’s sales pipeline increased greatly as a result of the campaign, opportunity, and lead management features of SugarCRM. Custom and standard reports allow executives to easily gain insight into the health of the company. The order system and automated alerts have improved Colorep’s customer service, and the shipping and invoicing processes have been significantly streamlined.

Technologies & Tools

Environment

• MySQL 5
• Windows Server 2005/IIS 6
• Linux/Apache
• DEV and PROD Systems

Languages

• PHP 5
• SQL
• bash

Code Tools

• Adobe Dreamweaver
• Subversion SVN Source Control
• NetExtender Virtual Private Network
• HeidiSQL MySQL interface
• SSH Secure Shell Client