Aristo Intelligent Catalyst Technology (acquired in 2014) develops cost-effective catalysts to reduce emissions from mobile sources of air pollution. They rely on proprietary methods developed through extensive R&D to manufacture catalysts customized to their customers' needs. One challenge they faced was enabling sales in a repeatable and consistent way, as they offer a wide array of products that require technical expertise to sell correctly.

To make sales easier, they developed an Excel spreadsheet with all of the proprietary calculations and R&D baked into formulas in the spreadsheet. However, this did not scale well - that's where we stepped in.

Goals

• Create a web application for Aristo Sales technicians to generate quotes based on their Excel spreadsheet
• Produce customer-ready sales quotes faster
• Collect and store quotes in a database
• Keep the application small, lean and simple

Process

At Sam Heuck Web Development, we rely on a software development process that is consultative and agile. Through ongoing collaboration with subject matter experts and business stakeholders at Aristo, we identified the most important features of their custom quote process and baked them into a simple, easy-to-use web application.

In each two-week sprint, we met with the team to review progress, discuss what comes next, and address any bugs or misunderstandings that arose during development.

Due to the highly technical nature of the sales process for their products, it was absolutely critical that the mathematics and science painstakingly developed for the spreadsheet be translated to application code accurately and precisely.

Thanks to continuous collaboration and communication with the experts at Aristo, we were able to write application code that handled every nuance within the spreadsheet, producing branded and easy-to-read sales quotes on demand.

Design Approach

So many businesses rely on Excel spreadsheets for critical operations. With growth often comes challenges that are too cumbersome to solve by sharing a spreadsheet with multiple teams.

One common solution is to develop a business process in Excel, then upgrade to a cloud-based web application based on that spreadsheet, so the business process can scale with the growth of the business.

In this case, we relied on a tried-and-true 3-tier architecture: a SQL database, a custom PHP application server-side, and a Javascript Single-Page-Application (SPA) for the front-end.

This provided several advantages over the Excel spreadsheet:

• All input data would be stored in a database
• Sales quote generation became automatic
• Sales representatives could access the quote tool from the field
• The visual design and information architecture could vary independently from the business logic (separation of concerns)

Development & Features

The application itself was structured as a series of 5 web forms that would walk a customer step-by-step through the product selection process, gathering input on each form.

The customer needed to provide a handful of variables in order to ensure they received an accurate quote that would meet their unique needs.

To ensure accuracy and ease of use, the input forms featured input validation with real-time feedback every step of the way, with precise constraints devised by the experts on our client's team.

The design was kept minimal and unobtrusive - favoring a function-over-form approach that aligned well with their ideal customer.

Results

We delivered a custom web application with cloud hosting provided, on time and on budget. The OxiCat sizing tool helped our client scale their sales efforts more effectively.

• Reduced the time & effort required to generate sales quotes
• Established a database for gathering customer input and preferences
• Enabled the sales team to scale up with less friction

When you work with Sam Heuck Web Development to build a new web or mobile application, we provide you with working software throughout the agile development process. This means you get to test and provide feedback every step of the way.