At Ribbonfish, we take pride in our ability to deliver innovative offerings that delight our customers. Because we practice what we preach, we came up with a custom and comprehensive solution that was suited to our business needs. Powered by Salesforce, Timesheet allows us to log work hours and holidays, generate reports, and track projects all in one place. Read Part 1 of 2 of our Timesheet blog series and discover how we managed to turn Timesheet into reality!
Life before Timesheet
Before our team created Timesheet, we used a combination of different tools and platforms. Excel, Word, Jira, Outlook – you name it. We’ve tried to make do with these simple and intuitive tools. While each fulfilled a certain need, this segregated approach caused a lot of internal confusion. It was hard for us to determine where to find the kind of information we were looking for. As such, the lack of visibility prohibited us from making timely decisions which inevitably led to delays and misunderstandings.
Upon realizing the need to urgently remedy this situation, we put our heads together and brainstormed for possible ways to address it. But as we searched for potential applications, we noticed that none of them met all of our requirements. And so, we decided to challenge ourselves and take matters into our own hands. Shortly after, our team at Ribbonfish decided to build our own solution on Salesforce.
Building Timesheet on Salesforce
As the world’s # 1 customer relationship management (CRM) uniting sales, service, commerce, and IT, Salesforce has the suite of capabilities necessary for custom developments, deployments, and integrations. Given our expertise in navigating Salesforce, we knew exactly how to bring out the best out of this software. By adopting an agile methodology, we swiftly moved from design to implementation.
In just one month, we were able to make a working prototype of Timesheet. At the beginning, it only had basic features such as logging time against projects and generating weekly timesheets. But now, we have expanded it by adding auto-generated reminders, invoices, and summaries among others. Now, we are focused on enhancing it even more by embedding functionalities related to monitoring and profitability.
The business value of Timesheet
While it may seem trivial, Timesheet has brought tremendous value to Ribbonfish. With this multi-purpose tool, we have been able to have a holistic view of all our business-related activities from inputting man hours to invoicing our clients. From the beginning, we understood the significance of embarking on this journey which was to create a centralized solution that would act as our single source of truth.
Leveraging our team’s outstanding technical skills, we managed to bring this idea into life. Collaboration, creativity, and commitment to excellence empowered us to work towards a shared goal. In the same thread, we exhibit similar traits when dealing with our partners and prospects in the publishing and media industry. We are dedicated to providing phenomenal customer service to our diverse client base. It just goes to show that Ribbonfish consistently exceeds expectations both internally and externally.
Conclusion
In this short piece, you were able to read our rationale and steps in building Timesheet. You became acquainted with the transformative capacities of Salesforce. And most importantly, you gained an understanding on how quickly we moved from one phase to another thus allowing us to unlock more business opportunities. In Part 2, you will have a closer look at Timesheet (complete with screenshots on how it appears, too). Keep your notifications open and stay tuned!
Got a technology project you need help with? We are offering a free one-hour consultation this month. If you want to take this up, feel free to get in touch with Kevin Paul (Head of Professional Services) at [email protected] with the subject line: Ribbonfish One-Hour Consultation. Hurry, slots are limited!