Background

We needed an internal corporate system for messaging, chat, general feed, documents, information, etc. - in a word, something like an internal corporate Facebook. But also it was necessary to keep tasks, write notes / comments, delegate and collaborate on tasks, time tracking and other tasks for personnel management.



When we only thought about it, we already had SharePoint. We used it not for complex tasks of the CRM-system (about the reason for this - below). The product is well-known, large, it is used by large corporations - therefore, of course, we decided to continue using SharePoint, but with the functionality we need. To do this, we planned to hire developers who will tailor it to our requirements. We used SharePoint for 4 years and, as the team, tasks and the required level of automation grew, we began to have a rather impressive wish list.

For example, we needed a more convenient setting of tasks with tracking who performed, who gave the task - in order to trace the entire chain (decision making, and iterations) according to the task. In SharePoint, all this could be done - this is such a designer from cubes, but it required a lot of time for a SharePoint specialist to work. All this could be done - but in view of the high cost of completion (more on this below) all the time was delayed. There were attempts to do something on our own: then, as a result, we saw how much time we spent on it, and realized that it wasn’t rational, because we didn’t have a full-time SharePoint programmer, so we didn’t get very high-quality results with a lot of work time, which is natural - our programmers do not know this system so well as people who constantly work with it.

History

Then, we open an office in Kiev, increase staff, and different ideas arise about how to make your corporate online system, where employees could write a report and indicate where they are (at work / on vacation, get sick (God forbid)) - and so that this entire accounting system is automated.

We understood that in order to realize all this, a lot of things had to be redone again, but this is a matter of quite tangible investments. To understand how much it will cost us, we do a little tech. The task is one of those functions that are most needed right now. We make a request for implementation among companies and freelancers. Companies set us sky-high sums, as it was for us (for example, if we finalized it on the PHP engine - it was about 1 to a dollar, then here the conversation started from 6 to per assignment, and our full assignment could drag out by 30 to - for these money, you could write your CRM from scratch, with your regular programmer, taking some engine as a basis, and modify everything we need for it.

Then there was the soap: “Can freelancers change the situation?”. Here the situation was even sadder: because any programmer that suits us in the least cost from 50 euros per hour, and, let's say, “residents of Asian countries” take from 5 to 20 euros. We tried to give one small test task, we went through 20 people of such freelancers - and realized that the guys have a very bad responsibility: they don’t finish anything, they’re just doing it, they’re trying to transfer their tasks to someone else, they don’t know what they are handed to them, they can’t check it, and they just give it to you, in the hope that everything is fine there.

As a result, we realized that for such a task, freelancers from Asia are not suitable at all. If you pay 50 euros per hour to a good freelancer, in the end the same amount came out that the companies offered us - it will be a little cheaper only if you order the development in a large package.

In my opinion, Microsoft products (SharePoint, MS Dynamic) are geared towards large corporations with several thousand employees in different countries; they are not quite suitable for small and medium-sized businesses, because they have a huge number of components designed for a significant completion for the customer, but the fact of the matter is what an average solution is, calculated sort of like for everything and for everyone, but not for everyone.

Long live Bitrik24!

Then they decided to see again whether alternatives appeared on the market. From the very beginning, we periodically, analyzing the market of CRM-systems, RPM-systems - looked at what is in our market, and each time we were convinced that the products are very raw, these were: Bitrix and still Megaplan. We collected feedback about these systems and were not particularly impressed; we realized that we would change the same SharePoint that we have to the same functional system. But after 4 years, we once again looked at Bitrix, especially since we are a partner of Bitrick .

An important factor was the fact that we noticed that, recently, our customers began to work very actively with the Bitrix24 system. More and more customers began to deploy Bitrix at home, we help customers with the integration of the system on the hosting, configure the system, help to fix errors, help customers to configure. This was another reason to look at Bitrix, and we saw that the solution became much better in these 4 years - we decided to consider it closer.

A demo installation of the system was made - it was tested for 3 weeks, it was clear that it was also not perfect, that something needed to be improved too - they made simple requests to freelancers - they saw that the numbers for revision were much more modest, it was about 10-20 dollars an hour, $ 20 - that’s how a good Bitrix specialist is already worth it. Actually, after that there was an introduction of employees to this test portal, for a month we tested it, tested it, listened to comments - first of all, we transferred the b2b department there - managers looked at CRM, tested how convenient it was and gave feedback on this system.

There was still such a moment - in parallel with SharePoint we used Microsoft Dynamic CRM - in which the b2b department worked - after the Bitrix test, managers said that setting tasks and other functionality is much more convenient in Bitrix. I didn’t like MS Dynamic, after the Bitrix test, because MS Dynamic is too huge for our tasks - if the company does not have a huge network of sales departments in different regions and countries with more than 1000 people (such a mega-CRM system) - then this system is not entirely appropriate.

Bought Bitrix. Now we use it, for today we already have a whole list of improvements we need, which we already wanted to implement, but the developers stopped us by saying that Bitrix promises that a lot of what we need to complete, promises to be fixed in a future release, which is due out soon.

What else does Bitrix win:

- Bitrix requires 2-3 times less resources.

With the current volume of tasks, physical memory and other resources, it consumes significantly less. The minimum installation of SharePoint for 1-2 people requires the database to be deployed, and SQL already requires its own standard set of RAM, processor, disk, and SharePoint itself also requires the amount of resources with which it will start, there are 2 gigs - and it doesn’t matter how much people will use it Of course, for the hosting company (as well as for very large companies) there is no such strict resource limit, and for other SharePoint users of small and medium-sized businesses this is an urgent issue.

We understand that there are objective factors - SharePoint is written in ASP, and it requires a lot of resources, but probably large resources have abundant resources, but for small and medium-sized companies - SharePoint is too "big".

In order for SharePoint to work for us, we supported 2 virtual servers - one with the database, the other with SharePoint. In the case of Bitrix, the entire system now works in one box, in one VDS.
(Gone from some binding to MS - since if the entire infrastructure is tied to MS - in case of problems - according to our observations, they start globally.

What would we like to see in Bitrix first?

Accounting for working hours outside the standard schedule. We have departments that work on a normal schedule of 9-6. There is technical support that is on duty around the clock, and the transition from day to day is not taken into account here. For example, the administrator started the shift at 21.00, then closer to 12 at night the system will begin to say that it is necessary to close the shift, and it turns out that instead of one, there will be 2 shifts. Bitrix developers promise that this moment will be finalized - a system of shift work schedules, which we really need.

Why do we need time tracking ?

Often, not only employees, but also the leaders themselves in some companies do not see the point of such working timing, but this is important and necessary not only for the leader, but also for the employee.

It is important for the manager to know what happened or didn’t happen on the shift - the employee keeps a logbook where he writes down everything that happened on the shift. Because if in a couple of weeks a situation pops up, you can see everything on this magazine, see a ticket by this date, compare the facts and see where this situation started and how it developed - a useful thing, not only for management, but also for the employee - he will not need to painfully recall: what then was? All these accounting systems are needed in order to have a transparent picture - what happens (happened) in business processes, since with such a system an employee, in the event of some miscalculation, cannot erase traces of this everywhere. In a word, it will be better to understand: did this happen, or is the employee still to blame? All this accounting, time tracking,

Disclaimer to creative admins :)
In management literature, everyone writes that simple timing - recording, keeping a diary of what happened, with a time stamp - gently and discreetly disciplines any person.

For example, the admin comes in to replace, and before going to make coffee (after all, all the same people), he must accept the shift, see if there is something urgent and burning, and only after he is convinced that there is nothing like that, move to 5 minutes to make coffee for ourselves (we don’t believe in discipline for the sake of discipline - it should serve something, and not be a totem that we pray thoughtlessly for).

We think that this year our beloved Bitrix24 will not be finalized, we will collect a discreet wish list, and then see what the Bitrix company will fix in a future release, and therefore we will see if we need anything else from our corporate portal Bitrix24.

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