Neevan: Catching the Right Time with Odoo

Neevan is a corporate tax consultancy with a large R&D tax credit practice. They use their wealth of industry experience to ensure clients receive maximum value from the services they provide. Mid-2020, Neevan decided to conduct a review of their internal processes. During this review they found a number of areas that needed improving. Their first discovery from the internal audit was their primary tool was Excel and business development executives were solely working from excel data sheets. This made it difficult to maintain organised notes and tasks for each client. Notes and tasks were often kept in files containing over 300 potential companies to contact. With no organised system in place, it became difficult for Neevan to keep track of pending and completed tasks.

Another pain point Neevan uncovered was they had no dedicated CRM system in place. This made it difficult for the company to differentiate leads and opportunities. It also meant a significant amount of time was dedicated to important yet time consuming admin tasks. In addition, business forecasts often came from unorganised spreadsheets thus presenting inaccurate figures. Neevan wanted this addressed so that they could conduct better forecasts and prepare for the future.

Odoo for the win

After deciding it was time for a change, Neevan reviewed a number of ERP softwares on the market. Initially Neevan wanted to implement the CRM tool Pipedrive, however after a consultation with Odoo implementation partner Flowbird, they quickly came to the conclusion that Pipedrive wasn’t going to be as flexible as they required. As a telecommunications company, Neevan filters through a large amount of leads therefore, they have a number of stages in their sales pipeline that go beyond intro, win and loss. Neevan required a solution that would accommodate extra fields and add additional sales stages. They also wanted a solution that extended past its sales function. After further analysis, the company realised Pipedrive was never going to be able to cope with the various stages they required.

Neevan chose to go with Odoo because it met the two key aspects where Pipedrive fell short. It is a tool that can go beyond sales and the CRM app could extend its fields and sales stages thanks to Odoo’s customization functions.

In addition to this, the company found Odoo to be user friendly. Whilst Odoo seemed easy enough for Neevan to ‘have a go’ at installing, they decided that the best way to get the most out of the software would be to work with an implementation partner. This was particularly vital for Neevan’s VOIP system. Initially Neevan wanted to use Odoo VOIP but due to incompatibilities, this wasn’t possible. As an alternative, Flowbird opted to use Ringdesk, a third party Odoo module developed by Ringdesk B.V. which enables full call-control of Swyx, 3CX, Xelion, BroadSoft PBX solution integrated into an Odoo solution.

When installing Ringdesk into Neevan’s solution, a few module tweaks occurred to ensure all solution needs were met. The nature of Neevan’s business is a farming company. The company receives huge sets of data which they extract leads from, then the telesales department is in charge of following up these leads. Due to the financial cycle, timing is everything. Catching a lead at the right time is crucial. A lot of the configuration that went into the Ringdesk integration was around ensuring they didn’t miss a lead during a pinnacle time period.

During these periods, time is of the essence. With every minute counting, time can often be wasted on being unable to find a contact in the database. This was something that initially occurred in Ringdesk if a contacts’ number had a space in it. To avoid this from occurring, another configuration was implemented to ensure that a contact was identifiable even if their number contained a space.

Up and running

The implementation began towards the end of 2020 working on a short timeline to stay within budget. The first phase of implementation began with requirements gathering. This occurred within a week. Configuration followed and also took one week and software user training took 3 days. The most time consuming part of the project was the phone integration (Ringdesk). This took around one month with additional tweaks to the system occurring afterwards.

The following Odoo apps were the building blocks for Neevan’s solution: Discuss, Calendar, Contacts, CRM, Sign, Employees, Time Off and Dashboards. Overall, Neevan’s Odoo solution was up and running very quickly and out of the box, Odoo met around 80% of the company’s business requirements. Neevan was pleased with the speed of the implementation, the software and the help they received in learning how to operate the new system. The Ringdesk integration was the most lengthy part of the process but they understood that it was better to get it right at the beginning to avoid future issues. Now a few months after going live, Neevan can definitely say the wait for the integration was worth it as it has been smooth sailing since.

Odoo has now replaced Excel as the tax consultancy’s primary tool. With a dedicated CRM system in place, Neevan can now differentiate between leads and opportunities. With Odoo CRM they are able to assign individual tasks tailored to current and potential clients. This has enabled the company to keep in touch with prospects on a regular basis and streamlined the new business process in terms of furthering or removing prospects from the pipeline.

As previously mentioned, Neevan works with a large number of prospects and contacts to reach out to. The Contacts app has been a great asset for this as it enables a large contact volume approach. In addition, because Contacts pairs perfectly with CRM, Neevan has found it very simple to create opportunities from their contacts once they’ve had a good meeting with a prospect.

Odoo Sign has enabled Neevan to go paperless. All relevant documents that require a signature are now completed digitally and they also have a quick and easy platform to send and receive signed documents. Having this on one platform has made it simple for the company to search for documents should a client ever require them.

The Ringdesk integration has been extremely useful for the company’s business development team. Prior to the integration with Odoo, the team used to manually find clients by searching their phone number. Whilst this may sound like a relatively small issue, having to repeat this search multiple times a day took up a lot of the business development team’s time. With Ringdesk, the telesales process has sped up. Inbound calls are immediately identified and put through to the right person. The team no longer needed to individually search each client, inevitably saving the team a significant amount of time on manual admin tasks.

“Odoo has allowed each employee at Neevan to manage our workflow in a more efficient and effective manner. It has meant we are able to maintain a high level of organisation so that we can ensure each client is given the attention that they deserve.”
-Matt Revell, Account Executive at Neevan

The most valuable aspect of Odoo for Neevan has been the ability to use a plethora of apps through the same system. This has allowed Neevan colleagues to streamline many aspects of their internal workflow. From sending emails, requesting client signatures, ensuring notes are logged for each client interaction and tasks are set for each opportunity. In addition, the company has found it has been a great tool in forecasting future sales and potential growth of the company. 

About Neevan
Neevan is a sector specialist tax consulting firm that works with high performance, science and technologically focused clients who are looking to be supported in their developmental work. We use our wealth of industry experience to ensure clients get maximum value from the services we provide. Learn more at https://neevan.co.uk/

About Flowbird
Flowbird is an Odoo UK Silver Partner. Our philosophy is simple, start slowly and deal with the essential issues first. This ensures that we can get you operational as quickly as possible, with minimum impact on your business. Our scoping process divides your requirements into three key categories: Essentials, Desirables and Future. Implementing tools and processes and helping sales people hit their number. Learn more at https://flowbird.co.uk/odoo-uk-partner/