The customer portal put online all the information that customers used to get from TXI through calling, faxing, or the mail. We've had very good feedback from customers about being able to access that information through the portal.
It just made it very difficult for our customers to do business with us.
We developed this system to aid other workflows. If you don't have the right people reporting to the right people, the routing won't work. The great thing is that it reduces the data entry at the back end and empowers the managers and employees on the front end to make transactions.
Just identifying our top companywide customers was hard to do.
If you start with an application that people may or may not decide to use, you'll have a hard time getting adoption.
It's been an eye-opener seeing who they are and what they purchase. It's helped upper management make better decisions about where to place our capital and where to invest in the future.
