LOGO CRM has been the standard CRM tool for transport and logistics for 25 years now. Thousands of users worldwide use this sales tool. Decisive impulses for the continuous further development come from the group of users.
LOGO consult trains the multipliers who carry out the CRM projects in their companies, work out the rollout plans with the management and develop the training concepts. The LOGO super-users conduct many of the training sessions themselves and are the point of contact in their companies for user questions.
Who knows more precisely what users expect from a sales tool than this group? Who discusses with the management which evaluations from the CRM are needed for strategic management decisions? Often the sales manager himself is one of the super-users and in medium-sized companies a member of the management or the owner’s family is usually one of them.
From this group, LOGO consult obtains invaluable information about what the various stakeholders expect from the CRM.
The day before the Logistics CRM Summit 2018, all LOGO CRM super users were invited to a very special meeting.
The LOGO User Community met at Lake Starnberg to network and exchange experiences
LOGO consult uses numerous open source tools in its development and the LOGO developers are among the main contributors to the developer community in this area.
What could be more obvious than to continue the open source idea and open communication at the user level as well? For many years now, LOGO has been checking customers’ requirements to see whether they are company-specific or universal. In many cases, LOGO recognises that the improvement a customer wants would make the daily work easier for all LOGO users. If the effort for implementation is not too high, the programming is not charged individually but carried out as part of the maintenance contract.
Every year there are 2 new releases of LOGO CRM and always a number of free improvements are included. This is how LOGO CRM grows user-driven and gets better and better.
Representatives from many of our customers made the long journey to Lake Starnberg and were rewarded with great weather and a fantastic location.
The reception by the LOGO team was warm and networking started right away in the castle park with coffee, pretzels and cold drinks.
Due to the football match in the afternoon, we had to streamline the programme quite a bit, but a quick run through of new features was possible. For many participants, it was the first time they realised how all LOGO customers have been contributing to making the system better and better and, above all, more user-friendly for 25 years in some cases.
We could see which improvements that were delivered in the updates as part of the maintenance contracts were suggested by which customers. Actually, everyone in the room had a turn.
And that is exactly the spirit of the user community that we have often invoked. They are all logisticians and basically have the same requirements for the functions of a sales tool
When one of our customers suggests an improvement, we often think to ourselves “great idea, we really could have thought of that ourselves”. And if the effort is not too high, we decide not to charge the idea giver for the customisation and then distribute the feature to everyone.
In the past, these small improvements were often implemented unnoticed, but for some time now, the super users have been receiving lists from our support team for each update, in which the so-called “features”, i.e. improvements without charge, are also listed.
In the second part of the workshop, the major new developments were presented. Some of them were designed by LOGO itself, but most of them were designed in cooperation with our customers and implemented using agile methods.
Almost all of the participants had already experienced that this is a lot of work on both sides. But agile software development with short sprints and quick feedback from the clients enables us to develop customised solutions at reasonable prices.
After the workshop, there were already quite a number of enquiries at LOGO – we are pleased that our community model works so well.
LOGO CRM Ideas Competition
The LOGO user community was called upon to submit suggestions for improvement. The next day, an idea champion was to be honoured.
For us at LOGO, however, the most interesting part of the workshop was the last part, where LOGO presented the development team’s designs for the new user interface of the next LOGO version.
We had discussed in the team that it would be best if it was not us LOGOs who decided what the new version should look like, but if we asked the people who work with it every day and who, above all, do the user training and know the feedback from their colleagues.
In fact, a lively discussion developed between the participants and LOGO. As beautiful as a modern interface may be, the requirements of the users must not be disregarded. The unanimous opinion was that there must still be list views with filters.
The design of the customer file itself was discussed rather controversially. Are the menu items in the customer file too much and too colourful? Are they not needed for navigation? Is it possible to streamline the overview of the customer file and summarise information?
We are already trying to incorporate some improvements from the discussion and the ideas competition into the current version.
We would like to thank all super-users for their active participation, which made the workshop a complete success.
The evening was then stormy in more ways than one – from the weather and from the football. But the atmosphere was great and the workshop participants were joined by some LOGO prospects and LOGO customers. In the Tutzing beer garden and in the Santorini by the lake, there were many conversations, good food and, above all, a good atmosphere. Despite the German team’s football defeat in the tournament. Together with our guests from Switzerland, we were able to watch another match that evening. The LOGO employees were always there and I, as a “dinosaur” in the company, was very pleased to see what a youthful super-user community we found there, which fits so well with our young LOGO team.
In the future, we are planning 1-2 LOGO User Community meetings per year, with changing venues. At the moment we are looking at the beginning of October in Münsterland. We hope that a location further north will give our super users from NRW, Lower Saxony, Hesse, Bremen and Hamburg the chance to be there.
The LOGO team would like to thank all participants for making the event a success and we hope to welcome even more members of the LOGO user community as our guests next time.
