Prehistory

We needed an internal corporate system for exchanging messages, chat, general tape, documents, information, etc. - in a word, something like internal corporate Facebook. But there was also the need to keep track of tasks, write notes / comments, tools for delegating and collaborating on tasks, time tracking and other personnel management tasks.



When we only thought about it, we already had SharePoint. We used it not for the complex tasks of a CRM system (the reason for this is below). The product is well-known, large, it is used by large corporations - so we naturally decided to continue using SharePoint, but with the functionality we needed. For this, we planned to hire developers who would customize it to our requirements. We have been using SharePoint for 4 years and, as the team grows, the tasks and the required level of automation, we have already started to get together a rather impressive wish list.
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For example, it was necessary to have a more convenient task setting with tracking who performs, who gave the task - in order to track the entire chain (decision making, and iterations) on the task. In SharePoint, all this could be done - it is such a constructor of cubes, but it took a lot of time for a SharePoint specialist. All this could be done - but in view of the high cost of refinement (more on this below), it was postponed all the time. 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 was not rational, because there was no regular SharePoint programmer, therefore not very high-quality results were obtained with high working hours, which is natural - our programmers do not know this system as well as people who constantly work with it. Therefore, either nothing was done in this direction, or how it came about to do it yourself, it worked like that.

Story

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

We understood that in order to realize all this - you need to redo a lot of things anew, but this is a question of quite tangible investments. To understand how much it will cost us, we make a small one. the task is one of those functions that are most needed right now. We make a request for implementation among companies and freelancers. Companies gave us transcendental sums, as for us (for example, if for revision on the PHP engine - it was about 1 to $, then the conversation started from 6 to the task, and our full task could be delayed by 30 to - for it was possible to write your own CRM money from scratch, with your staff programmer, using some engine as the basis, and refine everything we need to it.

Then there was a thought: “Can freelancers change the situation?”. Here the situation was even sadder: because any more or less suitable programmer 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 sifted through 20 people of such freelancers - and realized that the guys have a very bad responsibility: they don’t finish anything, they just do it as if they are trying to pass on their tasks to someone else, they don’t know what they can't verify it, and they just give you a hand, in the hope that everything is fine there.

As a result, they understood that freelancers from Asia are not suitable for such a task at all. If you pay 50 euros per hour to a good freelancer, you end up with the same amount 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's products (SharePoint, MS Dynamic) are sharpened for huge corporations with several thousand employees in different countries, for small and medium businesses they are not quite suitable, for the reason that they have a huge number of components designed for significant refinement for the customer, but the fact of the matter is that such an average solution, calculated as if for everything and for everyone, but not for everyone.

Long live Bitrik24!

Then they decided to look again whether alternatives appeared on the market. From the very beginning, we, periodically, analyzing the market of CRM systems, RPM systems, looked at what was on our market, and every time we were convinced that the products are very raw, they were: Bitrix and Megaplan. We collected feedback on these systems and were not particularly impressed, we realized that we would change the same SharePoint that we have, with the same system functionality. But after 4 years, we once again looked at Bitrix, the more we are a partner of Bitrik .

An important factor was that we noticed that, lately, our clients have become very active in working with the Bitrix24 system. More and more customers began to deploy Bitrix, we help clients with the integration of the system on the hosting, set up the system, help to correct mistakes, help clients in setting up. This was another reason to look at Bitrix, and we saw that the decision was much better over the 4 years - we decided to take a closer look.

A demo installation of the system was made - they tested it for 3 weeks, it was clear that it was not perfect either, that we also had to work on something - made simple requests to freelancers - saw that the numbers for improvement were much more modest, about 10-20 dollars an hour, 20 dollars - this is already a good bitrix specialist. Actually, after that there was an introduction of employees to this test portal, for a month we tested it, ran it in, listened to comments - first of all we transferred the b2b department there - managers watched 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, the managers said that in the bitrix, setting tasks and other functionality is much more convenient. MS Dynamic, after the Beatrix test, didn’t like it anymore, 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, where more than 1000 people work (such a mega-CRM system) - then this system is not entirely appropriate.

Acquired Bitrix. Now we are using it, today we already have a whole list of improvements we needed to introduce, but the developers stopped us, saying that Bitrix promises that much of what we need to finish, promises to fix it in a future release, which should be out soon.

What is more Bitrix wins:

- 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 standard set of RAM, processor, disk, and SharePoint itself also requires the amount of resources with which it starts up, there are 2 gigabytes - and it doesn't matter how much people will use it. Of course, for a hosting company (as well as for very large companies) there is no such hard limit in resources, 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, in large companies resources are abundant, but for small and medium-sized companies - SharePoint is too “big”.

For us to work SharePoint - we supported 2 virtual servers - one with the database, the other with SharePoint. In the case of Bitrix, the entire system is now working in one box, in one VDS.
(We’ve left some connection with MS - because if our 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?

The accounting of working hours out of the standard schedule. We have departments that work on a normal schedule of 9-6. There is technical support, which is on duty round the clock, and here the transition from day to day is not taken into account. For example, the admin took over the shift at 21.00, then closer to 12 at night the system will begin to say that you need 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 managers themselves in some companies do not see the point of such working timekeeping, but this is important and necessary not only for the manager, but also for the employee.

It is important for the manager to know what happened or did not happen on the shift - the employee keeps a logbook where he writes everything that happened on the shift. Because if in a couple of weeks a situation emerges, everything can be seen in this magazine, see the ticket on this date, compare the facts and see where this situation began and how it developed - a useful thing, not only for the management, but also for the employee - he will not need to painfully remember: what was it then? All these accounting systems are necessary in order to have a transparent picture of what is happening (happened) in business processes, since with such a system an employee in the event of some kind of miscalculation cannot clean up the traces of this everywhere. In a word, it will be possible to understand better: so the circumstances were formed, or was the employee still to blame? All this accounting, the accounting of time, the accounting of tasks and logbooks - the help to the head if something needs to be found or to understand a situation.

Disclaimer creative admins :)
In the management literature, everyone writes that simple timekeeping — recording, keeping a diary of what happened, with a time stamp — gently and imperceptibly disciplines any person.

For example, the admin comes to replace, and before you go to make coffee (after all, people still), 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 back to 5 minutes to make coffee (we do not believe in discipline for the sake of discipline - it should serve something, and not be a totem for which it prays mindlessly).

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

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