From The Client:

I cannot say enough about the quality of work and level of service that SouthSide MarketPlace received from 12 Foot Guru. They are absolute geniuses.

As Owner and President of a small, but rapidly growing new business, with limited staff and resources; maintaining organization was becoming increasingly difficult. Upon explaining our situation to John, it was such a relief to know that we there was a solution that we could afford. The database that created for us went above and beyond our expectations, while staying within our budget.

The company is now nine years old and we are still as happy with it, as we were in the beginning. The program has grown with our company and will do so in the future. At SouthSide MarketPlace we truly value our relationship with 12 Foot Guru.

Teresa Scruggs
Owner/President
SouthSide MarketPlace Real Estate Advertising

SouthSide MarketPlace (SSMP) is a small company that produces a monthly, black and white real estate sales magazine. They employ a number of typesetters to design ads for the magazine and provide the basic layout needed. They had recently moved out of a single office, and were now working from their various homes. This was a much more convenient working environment, but it presented a number of potential problems. The initial help request we received from SSMP  has actually become a recurring theme in our business: a group of individuals, working from different locations and trying to keep track of a large recurring project using an Excel spreadsheet. We would hear these problems time and time again. Who has the most current copy of the spreadsheet? When did it get updated last? Who updated it? What did they change? Does their change affect what I am doing or can I safely ignore it?

If any of this sounds familiar to you, it’s probably a good idea to look at shifting from Excel to a web-based database tool. The tool we created for SSMP was designed to solve two basic problems: keeping track of customer requests for advertising and tracking where each ad is in the process.

The first part of this is a pretty standard Customer Relationship manager (CRM). This type of tool provides all the contact information for each client and also links them to any work requests that are made. Additionally, fields are provided for any relevant notes, and all notes are stamped with the date, time and the person who entered it.

The second part of the tool is where things get really interesting. SSMP has a very clear step by step process for placing an ad in the magazine:

  1. Ad Copy Received
  2. Ad Photo Received
  3. Ad Copy to Typesetter
  4. Ad Photo to Typesetter
  5. Proof Sent
  6. Proof Changes Requested
  7. Proof Changes to Typesetter
  8. Re-Proof Sent
  9. Approved by Client
  10. Finished Ad On FTP Server (Request Complete)
  11. In Paper

Each step of this process means different things to different people. The typesetter can look and see if there are still materials they need to get before they can start work. They can also quickly see if changes were requested to their work. The managers can see if the typesetter is waiting on additional materials, or if they have finished their work and are available for additional work. The managers can also quickly see how many ads have been sold and completed so that they know if additional pages should be added to the magazine. The billing department can see which ads are complete and ready for billing.

The process itself was consistent and fairly simple, and we needed to build a tool to track it without overly burdening the user and adding steps to the existing project. We decided that our one guiding rule should be that if documenting the task takes longer than doing the actual task, then we were doing something wrong. With this in mind we came up with a simple list of check boxes for each step. As the user completes a step, they check the box. The system records who checked the box (based on the user’s login information) and the date/time the box was checked. This method keeps the documentation of the process as simple as possible and provides the system with a ton of data for generating views of the process for the various stakeholders.

We have continued provide web hosting for the system as well as tweaks to the interface and responding to new requests for features. Additionally, plans are on the board for making a new version of the system publicly available in a Software As Service model. This would allow client companies to sign up and define their own process steps and begin using the software to track their own work flow in this new web based system.

The current version in Use by SouthSide MarketPlace has been in regular use since April of 2005. The system tracks all the data for a monthly publication with over one hundred ads per issue. Incremental backups are made of all the data in the system and the site has been in constant use with minimal downtime since the initial roll out.