Background

Rob Macaulay, a highly influential business-to-business marketer in the US according to BtoB Magazine, approached Maafor with the objective of developing their innovative cloud-based business assessment and enhancement tool.

Rob specializes in providing business development services and assisting in the improvement of businesses. Rob and his team utilized a distinct methodology along with a specific web-based tool. The previous version of the product, developed by Maafor, primarily comprised dynamic web forms and underlying algorithms, which were used to analyze completed surveys, calculate the company's "sellability index," and generate reports and recommendations based on the gathered data.

Recognizing the tremendous value that the "Sellability Score" project brought to his company, Rob aimed to transition more of his business logic to an online platform and ensure broader accessibility to a wider audience, all while avoiding the expenses associated with maintaining a physical presence in multiple locations.

Business Challenges

Value Builder had to cover the next steps following the Sellability Score assessment and provide a guided business enhancement tool that both customers and agents could use. It had to incorporate 12 monthly modules with practical tasks and methodological materials aimed at improving different aspects of the business. The step-by-step enhancement process required systematic interactions with certified advisors as well as the ability to keep records of the results.

In this regard, the Maafor team needed to cope with the following challenges:

• Map out the business logic.
• Conduct an exhaustive business analysis.
• Move most of the client's business processes online.

Value Delivered

To help John bring his vision to life, we needed to provide not only competent engineering services but also delve into the logic of the business and company processes. As a result of our team's efforts, a new tool, "the Value Builder system," has completely transformed the client's business. Its benefits include:

Improved Business Logic and Thought-Out Development Process

It took three steps to create the product: Planning and prototyping, UI design, and engineering. The team mapped out the product structure and created detailed prototypes for every page, wrapped them up in custom UI, and implemented it all using engineering best practices. Thanks to the outstanding planning and careful preparations, the engineering process was more predictive and fast, resulting in significant savings on time and cost for the client.

Thorough Business Strategy Implementation

A complete business analysis, conducted by Maafor, fleshed out the end product. In order to develop an outstanding solution, our team dug deep into the product itself: we even analyzed the formulas underlying the calculations in the system itself. This helped us provide valuable advice and improve the existing modules' structure.

Complete Digitization of Business Processes

The process of improving the company's value, which initially used offline materials and systematic manual follow-ups, has been completely moved to the cloud as part of the cooperation. Thus, both the business owner and his advisor can now access the methodological assets at any time and efficiently interact online.

Approach and Technical Info

The product was built by the Maafor team using PHP and the latest version of the Symfony HTTP framework and additional tools like AngularJS (JavaScript), HTML, CSS, AJAX, jQuery, and MySQL. Continuous integration has been implemented using Jenkins.

The basic version of the project was delivered within 4 months by the team consisting of 4 members. Additional resources have been involved part-time throughout the process.