The company is a significant player in the niche of last mile logistics, operating real estate in big European cities.
With over 1000 assets in eight countries, the company dedicates much effort to creating a better urban environment and boosting e-commerce.
Local businesses need more warehouse property to ensure the fastest possible delivery time.
Our client used to run paperwork and manage operations with Excel spreadsheets.
With the growing number of assets and high demand for a new property for lease, the business experienced difficulties to keep things in order.
The property operator turned to our partner to create and configure a better platform to create and process quotes, communicate with customers, and conveniently keep data on assets and prices.

Our customer previously used the Yardi platform, which kept data on units of property and prices; however, it lacked communication opportunities and customization.
The company experienced difficulties dealing with multiple requests, calculating final prices, and creating proposals.
They needed tools for quote generation and signing contracts. In addition, the company decided to use a unified format for all templates with an easily customized layout.

The steps we took to overhaul the client’s software

The project started in the spring of 2021, this summer we created an MVP software version, configured the CPQ correctly, and enhanced the interface according to the client’s team feedback.
The Yardi is used for asset information, while Salesforce is meant for working with clients, generating proposals, and signing contracts.
Salesforce CPQ was tailor-made without a discount calculator, however capable of breaking bills into installments and approving deferred payments.
An enabled subscription tool can prolong any contract fast with just one click of a responsible manager, which is part of CPQ.

What we did about quote generation is that we implemented the Custom Java Script Calculator plugin to customize the template interface and remove all unnecessary items depending on the property type.
This plugin is often underrated and not commonly used, but we saw the great value it can bring up here and enhance the functionality of the standard quote line editor.

The Advanced Approval app also comes in handy while working on this project.
Considering multiple approval levels, in case of possible rejection at any of them, there is no need to start from the first.
A manager can make corrections and continue the approval process from the current level, which saves a lot of time.

We implemented and configured the Visualforce pages that keep all the data on the quote as a dynamic and flexible document.
Users can collapse unnecessary fields and lines and send a quote directly to the customer as a PDF document.
Then a customer signs it up, and the next stage begins.

The next important tool for this approval stage is the DocuSign cloud software.
First, an employee creates a template in DocuSign, then sends it to a client as a PDF file.
As soon as the quote is signed, this information is sent directly to the Yardi platform, which activates a lease.

We used Copado for continuous integration and deployment (CI/CD) and moved all the metadata to the production environment without losses.
The solution helps us avoid errors, deploy faster, track the progress, and track down the event history.
We always prefer Copado over the default Salesforce tools as we are result-oriented and want to easily manage errors and empower the developers with good tools for collaboration.