AccuRev Closes the CRM Loop Between Support, Development and Sales for QGate

Who Is Using AccuRev?

• Users of AccuRev include managers and developers
   
• Technical services (support engineers) and sales obtain AccuRev issue-tracking information through SalesLogix.
   
• AccuRev is deployed in Hampshire, United Kingdom.

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AccuRev Success Highlights

• Provided right balance between simplicity, ease of use and power
   
• Integrated with existing CRM tool and improved customer satisfaction from proactive sharing of information to all impacted customers
   
• Delivered faster, more accurate real-time status of issues between development, support and sales staff
   
• Significantly reduced merge errors for code shared across releases
   
• Included minimal administrative overhead
   
• Produced greater efficiency sharing code across multiple releases, improved artifact traceability and reproducibility
   
• Improved the integrity of building and tracking of releases
   
• Provided ability to easily visualize the process structure, speeding the development decision-making process

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Software Development Challenges

• Needed a scalable solution that would easily enable overlapping work on multiple concurrent releases
   
• Needed to increase team visibility into all projects and improve the integrity of the build-and-release process
   
• Needed an open and extensible solution to efficiently close the CRM loop between technical services, development and sales
   
• Needed to efficiently track and proactively respond to customer defects and enhancement requests

Customer Profile

QGate is a successful and independent consultancy and reseller specializing in the design, provision and implementation of tailor-made CRM solutions based on the Sage CRM portfolio.

In addition to its CRM expertise, QGate produces its own software portfolio that provides cost-effective Computer Telephony Integration (CTI) and sophisticated data matching and management products. QGate is also a distributor of complementary products for CRM, such as business alert management and course and project services management software.

QGate is a Sage Group Technology Partner as well as a Sage Business Partner and Certified Support Center.

Software Development Challenges

QGate has a strong reputation for providing business solutions that focus on the areas of customer management and sales force automation that help companies exceed their objectives.

Retaining and constantly improving that reputation required an efficient process for managing multiple product versions in parallel; efficiently customizing core product functionality, sometimes on short notice from customers; cultivating a repeatable and predictable way of working that spans all aspects of the software development lifecycle; and maintaining a disciplined yet flexible approach to software development while also maintaining a high level of quality and minimizing risk.

It also required the ability to efficiently manage and track customer-reported defects and enhancement requests from inception to resolution and close the CRM loop between technical services, development and sales.

Business Benefits Utilizing AccuRev and Its Integration with SalesLogix CRM

AccuRev process-centric software configuration management (SCM) provides the right balance between simplicity, ease of use and power, allowing efficient use with minimal administrative overhead and a low total cost of ownership. The ability to easily visualize the process structure directly within the SCM tool also speeds the development decision-making process. AccuRev also provides QGate with enhanced artifact traceability and reproducibility throughout the software development lifecycle. In addition, through an AccuRev integration with SalesLogix CRM, development, sales and support staff now have an automated process to provide faster, more accurate real-time status of issues, resulting in improved customer satisfaction through proactive information sharing to all affected customers while driving down the cost of customer support activities.

AccuRev also significantly reduces merge errors and increases efficiency for code shared across releases, an important element within multiple parallel product developments. QGate has also improved the integrity of the build-and-release process through the use of AccuRev snapshots and its stream-based architecture.

"AccuRev provides us with an extremely beneficial integration to our SalesLogix CRM application by creating a closed loop support ticket system between sales, technical services and development. Now our sales and technical services staff have the real-time development status information right at their fingertips for all customer-reported defects or enhancement requests. Furthermore, when development of defects and enhancements has been achieved, the integration with AccuRev enables proactive responses back to waiting CRM customers."

Mark also highlighted, "An SCM product is not designed to be a CRM product, nor CRM be SCM – each product should focus upon its core strengths and let quality integration be the key to a cohesive, effective partnership."
— Mark Cooper, Director of Product Engineering, QGate

Choosing a Solution

Already a Sage Group Technology Partner, Business Partner, and reseller, QGate had the CRM solution in-house and began an exhaustive evaluation process to determine the best tool to automate a process whereby support data entered into Sage SalesLogix CRM would be parsed on command to software configuration management (SCM). The SCM tool also had to efficiently manage change to numerous products being developed in parallel. AccuRev had all the features QGate expected from a process-centric, enterprise SCM tool, but it was ultimately its open and extensible architecture that made it ideal to integrate with QGate’s existing CRM system.

QGate evaluated AccuRev along with Microsoft Team Foundation, IBM/Rational ClearCase and Perforce.

Although predominantly a Microsoft-based organization, QGate determined AccuRev to be a better fit for its environment over Microsoft Team Foundation. AccuRev also had the best feature set, in the final evaluation, for QGate’s integration requirements.

The Ability to Quickly and Proactively Inform Customers of Issue Status – A 360-Degree View

AccuRev can perform a query to show all the open support tickets that now have a "closed" SCM development status, or those defects or enhancements that have been resolved. This allows the support engineers to proactively report back the outcome to all the customers that submitted the same issue. This responsiveness increases customer satisfaction levels, even when the outcome has not yet been resolved.

SalesLogix CRM Ticket with Integration with AccuRev (Linking CRM Ticket to SCM Issue)

"Just being able to show that the support side of the business knows what the development side is doing, in real time, goes a long way toward demonstrating an elevated level of customer care. Customers are extremely pleased with our ability to proactively inform them of issue status, rather than having to constantly chase down their software vendor for an update."

Using Orbis TaskCentre business alerts management software, which monitors and reports on the status of data, e-mail, files, etc., support engineers in technical services at QGate can receive an email notification alerting them when the status of an SCM issue has been closed in AccuRev.

QGate technical services engineers may also link multiple CRM tickets to the same SCM issue, so they do not create multiple issues for the same support tickets, reducing duplication. For example, if support tickets #151 (from one customer) and #170 (the same issue raised by another customer) both relate to SCM issue #24 in AccuRev, when development resolves that issue, both customers reporting that defect or enhancement request will be notified with a valid response from the technical services team.

QGate develops numerous CRM-enhancing products, tracking each one using SalesLogix CRM and AccuRev through different depots (repositories).

Future Plans

Through its SCM integration with SalesLogix CRM, QGate plans to provide customers improved "self-help" capability via the Internet. This is planned to include access to SCM issue statuses and the ability for customers to submit SCM/CRM issues and gain resolution to known issues via SCM and the QGate KnowledgeBase.