How we did warm tube automation

Hello, Habrahabr. In this post I will talk about building an automation system for a small offline business, located in the city, which for several years now has been located at around 1 million people called Rostov-on-Don.

If you are interested to know how it was, what came out of it, and also (who knows?) To apply some practices to your business, then all as usual - I ask for kat, gentlemen.
')

How it all began.

It all started with the fact that one May evening I met in the anti-cafe (if someone does not know, this is just like a regular cafe, just from food — cookies and coffee) with the head of the local psychological cabinet. As it turned out, she wanted to expand intensively and the IT sector looked like a good place to use financial and time resources.
From this point on, I can say that I joined her at work and we jointly began to develop a generalized plan of the necessary changes.

And how it all began.

Before embarking on direct work, it was necessary to determine three things:

• Current status and direction of business and business processes
• Desired medium term condition of the same in the future
• The market situation and the general infrastructure in which this market operates

Ultimately, the other two are tied to the third paragraph, so we began our analysis with it.

About the city.

As I said at the beginning of the post, it happened in Rostov. This is important, because, in my opinion, this city, as well as others similar to it in terms of its economic situation and number of residents (I ’ll leave the link to Wiki here, suddenly to someone ), now create almost ideal conditions for IT development of small business in tandem with small (read "the same small") firms, this development is carried out.

The cities are larger and, moreover, the giants are oversaturated with financial resources. Their ability to pay is combined with high development rates, crazy volumes of tasks, level of responsibility and risks and dictates their requirements, which a small company is almost impossible to satisfy.

In contrast, small cities, urban-type settlements and other similar entities have too weak infrastructure and low solvency.

Average cities (and I refer Rostov to just such) have the greatest potential in our case: there are free niches, there is effective demand, there is a more or less adequate infrastructure to rely on.

As it was.

Thus, having come to the conclusion that “there is a chance,” we turned to the next item - the analysis and summarizing of the current state of affairs in the firm.
In short, this summary could be represented by the following list:

• The company is almost completely analog (not counting the ancient site on Justin).
• The company does not experience an acute shortage of customers, which means that at the current level it operates more or less efficiently.
• With all this, it is obvious that the working potential is not fully used, some business processes could be simplified without reducing (and increasing) their own efficiency, and there is also no possibility of generating passive income.

For those who are somehow connected with a small business, this is most likely a familiar picture.

Who is to blame and what to do.

Obviously, it was necessary to dwell on the last point of raising and developing capacity, which was the third step (the desired future).

This step probably took the most planning time and, as a result, such a to-do list was formed:

• To redesign the site and facilitate it, to structure the information
• Facilitate interaction between employees
• Improve customer records and simplify their information
• Create the ability to work with clients remotely and learn how to quickly answer their questions
• Initiate access to the next stage of development by creating a new service and a source of constant generation of passive income

How these tasks are solved and solved.

Nothing extraordinary, it's simple.

Site.

First of all, the site required changes. The following steps were needed:

• Improve appearance
• Speed ​​up loading
• Improve content delivery and add more user interaction items.

Since the site is more or less static and small + does not imply user registration, it was decided to abandon any CMS and simply rewrite it in pure html / php / css. In addition, a new design was ordered and the system for presenting information was revised. Coupled with the replacement of hosting with a more stable VPS (switched from ihc to wmhost) and image optimization, this gave a good result in terms of reducing the download lag and comfort of general surfing the site. We are still actively finishing the site, but you can see what has already happened here .

As for adding elements of user interaction, we included social buttons (small but effective!) And the ability to ask questions, record, or advise something in all articles, news and events, while notifications of a new request come to me On the phone by SMS, which allows you to quickly find out about them and, accordingly, respond. It’s not very active advice yet, but those who do do it are satisfied, and this means that the overall happiness ratio in the world is increasing :)

Accounting for customers and employees.

The increase in customers has clearly shown that it is very, very difficult to keep their records and interaction with the rest of the employees in the classic handicraft ways (through a notebook and phone).

At the moment, we have switched to Google Docs in terms of customer accounting and the Megaplan system ( system capabilities ) for convenient monitoring of employee activity. I realize that after a while these measures may also turn out to be insufficient and this direction will require additional study, but so far.

Simplify customer information and remote work.

I'll start with remote work. This question is perfectly solved by the organization of the usual Skype-consulting. Seriously, I sincerely do not understand why most regional psychologists (and other comrades) often neglect this opportunity! The only thing is really worth spending on a good webcam and Internet channel. We chose a model from Logitech with code C615 for 2600 rubles, which I still have no regrets. The camera provides excellent picture quality, good sound and is equipped with several useful features such as normal autofocus, adjusting to light and so on. Yes, and under Ubuntu it started up without any problems, just plug'n'play, for which she, too, plus karma.

We decided to approach the issue of simplifying the information of clients without much innovation. How have informed customers before? By sms and e-mail. And now we will act as well, only in the sms instead of the number you need to substitute the Latin name and do it all through the convenient link of the sms.ru service and the client distribution program. The client program is currently in development, but a general idea of ​​its functionality can be obtained from these screenshots: one time (general view) , two (view in a group)

And the last. A new round of development.

The development we rely on now is an increase in the level of involvement in the digital society (social networks, thematic forums, partnership programs). We love to give and share experiences, as well as listen and take advice. In addition, very soon we are launching commercial and non-commercial webinars that fill in the informational voids that others for some reason did not see, or did not want to see.

What else would like to say.

Now, when I write this text, I understand that most of all I would like to tell not so much about the specific techniques that we used, but about the enormous potential that opened up to us with these changes. He is next to everyone, we just looked at our side.

To effectively translate a company into the digital age, it is not necessary to be an Internet giant. And no matter what you do: provide psychological services, prepare food, sell flowers, or make crafts from beads.

It is only important whether you are ready to accept new opportunities, spend some amount of time and resources on their integration and transfer your business to new rails.

“In the small town next to the hardware store that has existed here since time immemorial, another new one has opened. The owner of the first shop, wanting to put in place a new competitor, posted a sign: "We have been trading in this place for 150 years now." The next morning, a sign hung on a new shop: “We trade at this place for one week, no junk.” „