Our client, Michalakis Pateras Trading Ltd is a family owned company specialising in the import and distribution of spare parts for heavy machinery, which has been operating in an outdated and manual way. Customers, orders, and stock management all were happening in an outdated system which was built in 1990 and was running on a local server which was running a legacy operating system with no support. Invoicing and receipt issuing of the customers was happening the old-fashioned way with pen and paper, which in turn was causing too many other manual processes to be created where multiple spreadsheets were required to have the ability to know at any given moment the customer's balances and manage cash flow. Due to the nature of the business, the client also relies a lot on telephone orders from their customers and for this reason, they needed a way to avoid missed calls.

Our assignment was to identify the operational points which could be digitalized and the processes which could be automated to ensure higher efficiency for the client and minimise the operational risk of the systems used.

For this reason, we initiated our services by performing thorough on-site research and investigation including interviews on the client’s day-to-day processes, systems used, and how different departments cooperated and communicated between them. After the initial interviews and research, we analysed our findings and created a list of suggestions per department and per process on how technology could be utilised to enhance their processes. Through this process we identified the following areas that need improvement:

• The computers used by the employees were outdated
• The telephony system used was a legacy one with no multi-line support
• Emails were locally hosted with limited capabilities, which created a significant threat to the security and operations of the business
• The system used for customers, stock and order management was built in 1990, it was very outdated and could not keep all the necessary information needed for the company’s operations. In addition, it was running on a local outdated server with no official support.
• Invoicing and receipt management was happening with pen & paper and the information was then manually transferred to excel spreadsheets for monitoring
• As a website, there was only a “Coming Soon” page with just the contact information of the client.
• There was no presence of the company on social media.

From the multiple needs of the company, it was decided by the client to proceed by utilising the funding scheme of the Ministry of Energy, Commerce and Industry for the digital upgrade of businesses, which could potentially fund 50% of the cost of the project. Proceeding with the project implementation Cocoon Creations provided a clear path for the client in their digital transformation and the way forward for the company.

Out of this Cocoon Creations performed market research for the services/products required that could not be provided by us and found the best possible solutions to best match the Client’s needs. This included:

• Purchase of new laptop computers for all company employees
• Upgrade of their telephony system to a Cloud telephony system by Cyta business.
• Transfer of emails to Google Workspace cloud services

Cocoon Creations also provided the following custom software solutions and software integrations to complete the client’s digital transformation.

Initially, we designed a completely new and custom cloud-based ERP system which enables the client to manage customers, distributors, orders and stock in a very automated way. The system is now fully customised to handle all complexities that the company’s operations require, which include:

• the automated notification of low stock on items
• the automated suggestion for new product orders
• up-to-date management of stock along with warehouse management
• complete record of customers including contact details, previous purchases, statement consolidation and machinery owned for faster parts finding
• complete integration of the system with a cloud-based invoicing and books management system
• fully automated reporting as per the client’s needs.

With the completion of the major overhaul of the client’s internal operations we proceeded to help with the customer-facing elements which included the following services:

• Design and development of the client's informational website
• Creation of social media pages on the relevant social media needed by the client
• Verification of the business in Google my business
• Design and development of a mobile app which is used by their customers to manage their machinery and relevant service required. The app helps the customers find spare parts they need based on their owned machinery, reminds them of normal service needed depending on their average use, suggests parts to order and helps them send an order to the Client for fulfilment.

This client needed help in many different areas to bring their business operations up to date, but with the introduction of all the new services they have been able to minimise the paper used within the organisation, manual mistakes were avoided and most importantly they can now efficiently serve more customers per day, which enabled them to increase their revenues.

The Ministry of Energy, Commerce and Industry has just announced the new funding grant for the digital upgrade of businesses which is aimed at small and medium businesses to upgrade their software solutions and enhance their operations.

If you believe that there are ways that your company could become more efficient by digitalising processes and updating to new technologies then feel free to call us at 22-253233 or fill your details at this link and we will happily contact you to discuss further and find the perfect solution for your needs.