CRM development for British American Tobacco

  • WEBSITES
  • CUSTOM SOFTWARE

British American Tobacco (BAT) is a cigarette and tobacco manufacturing company headquartered in London, England.

Our projects

Business needs

We were approached by the team at BAT to fulfil the delivery of a CRM system that they had already specified to a highly detailed level. The system’s primary aim was to allow the promotional team within BAT to undertake customer surveys, visualise the results and allow for down-stream data analysis. Consequently, BAT were able to specify, not only structural elements such as the access roles and rules for the user base, but also functional considerations such as specific survey tools to use. This meant that the whole engagement process could be delivered and tracked, from creation and completion of a given survey, to management understanding of the specific survey’s outputs and learnings.

  • Research
  • Design
  • Front-end
  • Back-end
  • Support

Technology stack

  • Vue.js
  • Bitrix
  • REST API
  • MySQL
  • Git
  • GDS

Analysis and suggestion

Our specialist teams reviewed the specification in detail to assure we had complete understanding of the task at hand. As a result, we provided several options for how best the system could be implemented. All the options we provided were centred around the main requirement, and therefore the main delivery focus of the project, namely the ability to create a multi-user role system with the ability to efficiently create, execute and evaluate surveys, and additionally monitor the performance of those conducting the surveys, in person, with those in the target market.

Functionality & design

As the colour palette and brand guidelines of BAT were to be adhered to at all times, we implemented them in such a way as to emphasise the blue accent colours against the white space within the product. To this we added custom illustrations and, for areas where font choice was our determination, we chose typography that was deliberately contemporary and engaging, in order to add to the general feeling of modernity we were aiming for.

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A major consideration before we even started core development, was how to overcome some technical challenges presented by legislative restrictions. These issues were age related, where we needed to ensure only adults completed the surveys. We managed this requirement through the implementation of the Regula API service, as solution that extracts data from identity documents to automate the process of form completion, whilst validating the user simultaneously.

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We developed the CRM to work on multiple platforms. The web/desktop version can be used on Windows/MacOS/Linux, and there are dedicated apps for both iOS and Android.

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Roles and permissions are obviously used within the system to define what functionality should be available to whom. The Administrator level, for example, has the ability to create surveys of any complexity, and do so using the ‘Custom Slide’ visual editor, which allows the user to define the layout, perhaps with the incorporation of photos and videos to accompany the main content.

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Once in progress, Supervisors can monitor the activity of those ‘in the field’ conducting the surveys, in real time. Surveys can be sent to groups of employees based on location and, upon completion, the location of where the survey took place is recorded using GPS and/or by the User uploading photos.

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In order to ensure data security, we decided to store the data generated/collected into a new Oracle Cibel CRM instance that we would implement for BAT. This included all data: form captured, campaign outputs, data elicited from interactive maps, etc – everything would be stored under this tight security system.

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The identity of survey respondents is validated by signatures that are entered directly onto mobile device during the initial registration.

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Finally, we developed a separate web app for the survey agents specifically, who would manage the submission of public reviews for subsequent analysis of the potential audience's interests by the Marketing Department. The web-application has an intuitive interface, which allows it to be used by specialists with any level of user knowledge.

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In summary

By the end of the project we had developed a fully featured CRM, optimised for market research and new product ideation. A cross-platform product, which allowed for the collection and analysis of potential audience/market data, survey results & outputs, and facilitated the selling of goods using an integrated e-commerce platform based on locational data – all within one system.

At project work

  • Business Analyst
  • UХ Designer
  • Front-end developer
  • Back-end developer
  • DevOps Engineer
  • Content manager
  • Project manager
  • QA Engineer