South African digital media design company V4 Creative achieves a 40% increase in productivity and digitizes their operations with Bigin.

The company

Established in 2014 and located in South Africa, V4 Creative is a digital media design service agency whose goal is to provide professional, top-quality, results-driven, and affordable branding and web design services.

Dawid Roux, Managing Director at V4, has over 15 years of experience in the web design and graphics industry, and runs the company, which consists of nine employees.

The challenge

In the past, Roux used Google Sheets and Monday.com to run his business before realizing that what he really needed was a CRM that unified all of the company's customer-facing teams on one platform. He wanted a flexible yet compact CRM for his business that could provide a quick turnaround time, as well as a streamlined business process that he could use to track his customers' lifecycle. These factors pushed him to opt for a more competent CRM than his existing one.

The solution

Roux began exploring his options in the market and stumbled upon Bigin through a Google search. Having set his criteria during the evaluation phase, he quickly concluded that Bigin was well-suited for his business, as it checked all of his boxes. The deal-breaker for him was Bigin's Team Pipelines—a feature that unites all his teams on one platform, thereby making the business's entire process seamless and transparent. The initial setup took about two weeks, and the first team to start using the CRM was the sales team via their Quotation pipeline. The team pipelines quickly began to transform the business, and there was no looking back; all the teams in the organization started using Bigin. Let's look at how V4 Creative uses Bigin.

Quotation pipeline

Dawid first set up the Quotation pipeline for his sales team. As a digital media company, the team naturally works on multiple projects simultaneously. Once a project lands in Bigin, users send out quotes and estimates regarding the costs of projects and await responses from prospective customers. The sales team uses the following features in this pipeline:

• Tasks - Salespeople set up tasks that remind and enable them to follow up with customers via email and phone.
• Email Insights - Salespeople use this feature to track the statuses of emails sent to customers.

Billing pipeline

If the customer approves the quote, the deal moves to the Billing pipeline. For all of its accounting needs, V4 Creative use Zoho Books, which integrates with Bigin, thereby making it easier to send out estimates and invoices to customers from within Bigin.

Payments pipeline

The team also uses a Payments pipeline. Zoho Books provides a payment gateway integration so that customers can pay directly via a link. If the payment is received, the deal moves to the next stage and users manually mark the invoice as paid. If the payment is overdue, the team schedules follow-ups and reminders to stay in touch with customers on a timely basis to receive payment. The team uses the following features in this pipeline:

• Tasks - The accounting team set up tasks that remind and enable them to follow up with customers via email and phone.
• Calls - The team makes calls to customers from within Bigin using built-in-telephony.

Projects pipeline

After receiving payment confirmation from a customer, the deal moves on to the Projects pipeline via connected Pipelines. The team uses workflows to assign projects to individuals automatically on a round-robin basis. They can view the status of each project visually with the help of Bigin's dashboards. The team uses the following features in this pipeline:

• Workflows - The team uses workflows to automate the process of assigning projects to users.
• Dashboards - The team uses dashboards to track ongoing, overdue, and completed projects in a visually appealing format.
• Connected Pipelines - When a deal reaches the desired stage in one team pipeline, the same deal can automatically appear in another team pipeline.

Support pipeline

V4 Creative also provides their customers with after-sales support via the Support pipeline, both before and after the completion of a project. Users schedule meetings in the Activities module to assist with the queries. The support team uses the following features in this pipeline:

• Calls - The support team makes calls to customers from within Bigin using built-in-telephony.
• Events - They set up events in the Activities module to schedule meetings with customers.

Benefits

Having used Bigin on a daily basis for two years, it has become second nature to the team at V4 Creative. The benefits listed below highlight how Bigin has improved operations and boosted overall business success.

• Productivity has surged by 40% within a year of using Bigin.
• Customer retention is growing at a substantial rate.
• Bigin's easy-to-use mobile app helps salespeople keep track of projects on the go.
• Marketing campaigns create a bigger impact due to Email Insights.
• The team communicates more effectively thanks to Team Pipelines.
• Automating certain activities saves time and avoids manual errors.

Looking forward

All small businesses need are the right tools to grow. Roux chose Bigin two years ago and has been a loyal customer since. The team at V4 Creative believes they have an efficient system that can help track the complete customer lifecycle and provide timely support. Having used Bigin's newly released features and functionality, Roux is confident that his business will grow as the technology evolves.