ProGeen, an Albania-based construction company, switches from spreadsheets to Bigin and triples savings!

The company

ProGeen is a construction company founded in 2013 and located in Albania. They specialize in constructing apartments and condos and selling these properties to eligible buyers. Additionally, ProGeen acts as a general contractor, managing projects for various companies and individuals. Their services include not only construction but also design and document management. Currently, the company has a team of 180 members—a number that's rapidly growing.

The challenge

During their early stages, the teams at ProGeen—consisting then of just five to seven employees—widely used Excel spreadsheets to manage business operations. Challenges arose as the team and business expanded because the tools they relied on for capturing client and project data were limited; assigning leads to the sales team in Excel was a major roadblock. The sales process involves acquiring leads, making initial client contact, and closing deals. Once a deal is closed, it moves to the technical team, who gathers all available information regarding the customizations of each property, as well as designs, documents, contracts, renovation details, and more—all over a period of two to three years. Because construction projects take time, this is the typical timeline of every project. For ProGeen, managing all this data in Excel became a daunting task—especially as the company grew.

The solution

After realizing the limitations of Excel spreadsheets, Thanati explored several CRM options, and initially considered Salesforce before deciding it was too costly. A Google search for a more budget-friendly tool led him to Bigin. A two-week trial confirmed that Bigin was suitable for ProGeen's purposes.

With Bigin in place, ProGeen's teams gained greater transparency into business processes and improved collaboration capabilities, as they were able to tracking conversations more easily. When team members are absent, others can cover for them using Bigin's Notes field, where businesses can store comprehensive client information. The company effortlessly tracks email conversations using Bigin's email integration functionality. The teams use Bigin's Connected Records feature to track deals throughout the entire customer life cycle, and have deployed workflows to automate processes and push closed-won deals from the sales team to the technical team without human intervention. The sales team also streamlines their operations further via an in-house app with Bigin by using APIs to exchange data with the finance team and to facilitate detailed reports and forecasts.

Benefits and ROI

Thanks to Bigin, ProGeen has achieved the following benefits:

Looking forward

ProGeen is eager to integrate their website with Bigin to boost lead generation. One highly anticipated feature they've yet to explore is Bigin's WhatsApp integration, a powerful communication tool that enables agents to communicate with customers and provide better turnaround times. As the company grows, they envision using the option to scale up to Zoho CRM—a transition that ensures seamless data migration with just a click.