help a customer find the right charging station for his electric car
In the transition to electric cars, the need for charging stations is only increasing. To manage this process properly, a scalable digital solution was needed.
help a customer find the right charging station for his electric car (configurator)
help all stakeholders manage the complete process (portal)
optimize internal workflow by synchronization off all data between different systems
applications for interaction with the various stakeholders
management tool to flexibly add new customers
api connection to ERP: products, offers, invoices
api connection and integration of CRM and Marketing Automation
When a company makes an electric company car available to an employee, there are many steps to go through:
choice of an electric car
selection of a charging station that suits the car on the one hand and the existing electrical installation on the other hand
on-site inspection in preparation for the installation of the charging station
preparation of a quotation + approval
ordering the car and the charging station
delivery of the car and installation of the charging station
requesting payment details for reimbursement of charging costs by the employer
preparing an invoice + subscription for a charging card
In such a process, several parties are involved:
the company with its fleet manager that makes a company car available to its employee
the employee himself who chooses a car and needs a charging station for it
the leasing company that supplies the car
the installation company (sales+installation team) that supplies the charging station infrastructure, charging card and reimbursement platform
In order not to lose time in this competitive market, we opted for an agile approach for this project to realize the large (not yet 100% clear) scope in an efficient manner.
At the start, we first defined the different stakeholders. We then brainstormed with the customer about the different scenarios and requirements for the platform and developed them into an MVP.
An extremely simple flow and a user-friendly user interface were therefore the focus for developing the platform. In the long term, different partners with different systems and technologies should be able to connect to this.
With this knowledge in mind, we made a division into must haves, should haves and nice to haves. After developing an initial series of wireframes and a design, we were able to start developing the MVP (Minimum Viable Product) and go live shortly afterwards.
After going live, we held weekly workshops with the customer to continue adding new functionalities and scenarios in the rapidly growing business.
The platform was built on free Open Source PHP technology. The big advantage here is that as a customer you invest in your own application and do not have to pay license costs for the many users and stakeholders. We have more than 100,000 people involved here and licensing costs could quickly add up to high costs.
Within a shielded environment, a portal is provided for monitoring the installations.
In addition, you do not want to reinvent hot water, but you do want to smartly combine existing tools and customization.
For example, we let the sales team use the Hubspot CRM system with extensive Marketing Automation flows.
The finance team uses the ERP system Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central.
All environments are tightly connected via API connection and are kept in synchronization by an integration middleware solution developed by Sevendays.
If your organization wants to grow in sales, service or customer satisfaction, you must be able to visualize the data that is available to the various stakeholders in a simple and clear manner.
This is an absolute must to not only make progress with your company but also to feel and measure your return of investment from the developed application.
A custom application sometimes has the misconception that you have to go back to your developer for every adjustment.
The opposite has been proven here once again: without technical intervention, new companies with their own brand identity, price agreements, car policy rules, fleet, fleet managers, employees and communication can be added.
Within the CRM Hubspot environment you can create custom dashboards and reports with just a few mouse clicks.
In today's digital world you can no longer afford for systems to not be operational.
That is why we had a major focus on monitoring the online activity of the various systems.
