Customer Engagement Initiative (CEI) – The Mexico Success Story

With the growing number of customers in Business ByDesign and continuous legal changes in different countries, we always strive hard to stay compliant with our country versions. Last year we were in a situation where our Mexico country version was rapidly slipping into the Red zone. We were struggling constantly with customer escalations. Customers like Ryder were unhappy with the gaps that we had. Though we were working hard to close these gaps, due to the time zone difference and distance of the place, it was very difficult to sit together for a dedicated time and work on all the scenarios. We were also not getting any clarity on all the scenarios where our process was becoming non-compliant. Despite all our sincere efforts, when we still could not get clarity, we finally decided to use the CEI (Customer Engagement Initiative) forum to meet the customers, partners and local product management to address the issues. This approach helped us tremendously to pull the Mexico country version of ByDesign back into the Green zone.

I would like to share the whole experience of meeting customers and partners with the help of CEI and how it has benefited us.

We conducted two CEI workshops in Mexico in the last one year. The first workshop happened in the first week of August 2018. With the help of our local product manager we contacted our customers and partners regarding the planned workshop. Our partners Seidor and Dintec participated in the workshop. There was an in-depth discussion on the important processes in Mexico, like E-payment and E-invoicing. The gaps in E-payment, like cash discount scenarios were clarified and prioritized. Most of these items were eventually planned for the 1811 and 1902 releases and delivered successfully. Customers were happy with the solution and it shows in the 40% rise in our customer base in Mexico after the first workshop.

There was a second CEI workshop in Mexico in the third week of March 2019. The primary agenda of this workshop was to finalize E-Accounting Report and Tax Returns in Mexico. The E-Accounting Report is a mandatory legal report in Mexico, which was becoming non-compliant due to new law changes and many unknown gaps in the report. We needed the support of our customers and partners to understand these gaps. Our partners Seidor, Dintec and Redsinergia and customers Ryder, Windsor and Groupo Dirego participated in the workshop. We made sure that all the required personas were involved in the discussions. Hence, we could get inputs from accountants, partner developers, finance head and project managers, which helped us shape the overall development. The discussions were very productive, and we have planned the expected changes for 1908 and 1911 releases.

Currently we have around 60 customers for Business ByDesign in Mexico and with our continuous customer and partner collaboration, we expect the numbers to keep growing.

With this success story, I would like to emphasize the importance and benefits of collaborating closely with customers and partners when a critical situation like above arises. Its a much faster and more efficient way to prioritize and resolve the issues than trying to figure out solutions sitting worlds apart. Hope you find the blog post helpful while dealing with such critical problems.