Symbio case - Innovative Customer Collaboration for B2B partnerships

Symbio provides software product engineering and R&D co-creation services to its customers and has tight partnerships with the worlds leading technology innovators

Together with one of their partners, an incumbent Fortune500 company, Symbio provides high level software and hardware expert services to a shared customer base. While everything was going great businesswize, it was really hard for Symbio to keep track of different opportunities together with their partner. It didn't help at all that interpreting the actual communications would sometimes require a degree in rocket science (and this is not a joke!).

While different opportunities kept on flying in and demanding different expertise Symbio and their Partner would more than not end up with lots and lots of email circulating sales people together with different experts on different sometimes niche areas of expertise their shared customer opportunities were in need of. To put it in other words, communications and opportunities were really hard to track and while some issues had to wait for expert evaluation before proceeding to an offer phase in the sales cycle, it was crucial to have all the information distributed to all parties as soon as the information was available.     

INNOVATIVE CUSTOMER COLLABORATION BY SYMBIO, PEPRON AND ZENDESK

Pepron and Symbio sat down and started to think ways of tackling the issues faced with this complex communications set. The most important prerequisites were that Symbio's customers and partners wouldn't be forced to change their modus operandi and the solution would be easy to use together with Symbio's  existing project management solutions, espacially Atlassian's JIRA and related tools.

Pepron proposed a concept of a Customer Collaboration Portal to tackle the challenges. What this means is that all communications between Symbio, their partner and the actual customer where needed would be centralized inside one tool. The tool would be accessable by all parties through using email, phone calls or via a web portal. Using the web portal for communications would offer benefits for all the parties such as the ability to set transparent due dates and priorities on a given issue, but who ever used the collaboration portal would be able to do so with just plain email or even through a normal phone call just like before. Zendesk was the weapon of choice for Pepron to provide the actual toolset and platform for the Customer Collaboration Portal concept.

One of the keypoints rooting for Zendesk as the platform was the out-of-the-box ability to tightly integrate Zendesk with Atlassian's JIRA. For engineers and other more technical Symbio personnel this means the solution lets them use their existing tools and processes through JIRA like before, but with the added ability to see and participate to the actual communications leading up to the created JIRA issue.

In a practical example, when Symbio's partner in US introduces a joint opportunity through the Customer Collaboration Portal to a Project Manager or Sales representatvie in Finland and the opportunity needs technical input from Symbio's development in their China office, the opportunity is shared with JIRA. When the opportynity is shared with JIRA, the person handling the JIRA issue in China is able to see all previous communications, ongoing communications and participate in the discussion without leaving JIRA. And both the partner in the US and the Project Manager or Sales representative in Finland can see the issue progress through Zendesk. What the Customer Collaboration portal does in essence is it integrates email and communications through other channels to the actual workflow through Zendesk and JIRA also dramatically lessening the need for circulating emails and phone calls around the offices to get everybody on board.

FOR SYMBIO THE CUSTOMER COLLABORATION PORTAL OFFERS

• A centralized view on all project related communications
• Transparent traceability on all input and output from the customer interface
• Tight integration with project management through Atlassian's JIRA
• Ability to easily keep track and poll technologically demanding sales opportunities
• Ability to easily have secure in-house discussions without complicated and error-prone email forwarding hassle 
• Much less headache!

FOR SYMBIO'S PARTNER THE CUSTOMER COLLABORATION PORTAL OFFERS

• A centralized view on all joint project related communications
• Transparent traceability on all communications
• Ability to prioritize and schedule issues for Symbio
• Ability to easily keep track and poll technologically demanding sales opportunities
• Much less headache!

Want to know more? Visit Pepron 

Symbio

Symbio, a leading software foundry, provides software product engineering and R&D co-creation services to the world technology innovators. We combine cutting-edge expertise, an advanced global delivery network and specialized solutions to enable software product development of the highest quality, speed, cost-efficiency and innovation. Symbio's headquarters are in Silicon Valley with eight development centers in China, Finland, and Sweden, and eight offices across the United States, Europe, and Asia Pacific.

Learn more at www.symbio.com

Zendesk

Zendesk is the leading provider of proven, cloud-based customer service software. For growing organizations, Zendesk is the fastest way to enable great customer service. More than 25,000 Zendesk customers, including Sony Music, Box, Gilt Group, Disney, Vodafone, Rovio, Xerox, Groupon and Gov.UK, trust Zendesk with their most valuable assets: their customers, partners, and employees.

Learn more at www.zendesk.com

Pepron

Pepron Ltd specializes in utilization of the latest cloud and mobile technologies as part of their customers overall business development. Pepron Ltd offers consulting, delivering of cloud and mobile systems and the maintenance of delivered systems and processes for their customers.

Learn more at www.pepron.com