At a glance
OpenMinded, a consultancy specialized in security and network, uses Jira to connect operational teams with support function teams. Using Elements Connect, the company can gather data from external ERP software as well as home-made databases, and then use the fetched data in Jira to enforce the qualification of opportunities and update of the external ERP source. Elements Connect makes OpenMinded’s processes more robust, strengthening business users adoption of Jira.
App used:
In sales, the fine line between success and failure is often measured by how well opportunities are qualified. Is the prospect likely to buy? Is your team likely to win? Is it really worth the long effort? Or should you fail fast before moving on to the next opportunity? These aren’t straightforward questions, so controlling the factors you can makes a turbulent sales journey a bit more predictable.
If you’re looking to learn from example, look no further than OpenMinded, one of the leading independent pure players in cybersecurity in France. OpenMinded needed a better way to manage opportunity qualification data and processes, adopting the leading Atlassian Marketplace app Elements Connect to gather data from an external ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) system inside Jira, and seamlessly connect people to the data and process.
The challenge: organizing the opportunity qualification process
Before adopting Jira and Elements Connect to manage opportunities, OpenMinded tracked these in its ERP system, Boond Manager, but struggled with the tool’s limitations. For starters, there was no way to set required fields, meaning that data critical to determining the prospect’s likelihood of moving forward on an opportunity might be missing from the system. The tool also didn’t provide a workflow to track progress, so it was difficult to see who was internally responsible for which prospect and the status of each opportunity.
Account managers and business developers sometimes failed to spot important information and the quality of data in the ERP wasn’t as good as it should be.
“We knew we would want to move away from Boond Manager at some point,” says Tsuyoshi Shimabukuro, CTO at OpenMinded. “We looked for a solution that would allow us to capitalize data so we can improve the quality of data in Boond Manager before migrating to another ERP.”
Rather than recreate the wheel, they turned to a tool they were already using to manage their processes’ workflows: Jira. The company had already deployed it to manage their ITSM processes and adoption of Jira by the team was solid. It seemed logical to extend the power of Jira to better manage the opportunity qualification process. That was where Elements Connect came into play.
Bringing data from the ERP into Jira with Elements Connect
After researching his options, Shimabukuro decided to use Elements Connect to enforce the opportunity qualification process and enrich the ERP database.
Here’s how it works: data from the ERP is made available in Jira via Elements Connect. To track opportunities a new process was configured in Jira and fields regarding prospects were pre-populated using Elements Connect. The whole process was built internally, with a Valiantys Atlassian certified consultant helping to configure Elements Connect.
For each opportunity, account managers select the customer and their requirements. Both are Elements Connect fields connected to the ERP database, with a dependency between the “Customer” field and the “Requirement” field.
Elements Connect fetches data about the customer
Then Elements Connect displays the client’s requirementsFrom here, several tabs displaying information about the account from the ERP are shown in read-only mode. This is made possible by customizing the display of Elements Connect’s custom fields via HTML and a scripting app.
Enriching the source database
If a required field is missing a value, Jira won’t let the user create the issue. The account manager will need to go into Boond Manager and add the missing data. Only then can they finalize the creation of the issue.
Using Jira and Elements Connect to manage the process and data availability allows OpenMinded to significantly improve the quality of data. Elements Connect avoids data duplication and saves end-users time by automatically populating the existing data in Jira.
Centralizing information in Jira to facilitate interactions between stakeholders
Once an opportunity ticket is created it becomes the single point of contact for business teams, who access both Boond Manager and Jira, and operational teams, who only use Jira in their day-to-day job.
All the required information is made available from within Jira thanks to Elements Connect. There’s no need to toggle between tools or different modules in the same tool.
“Elements Connect is a versatile app,” says Tsuyoshi Shimabukuro. “One of the product’s key strengths is it allows you to manipulate data from several data sources to enrich Jira issues. You can customize the way you display this information to your users, which is a real bonus as using industry jargon within issues strengthens the adoption of Jira overall.”
Leveraging Elements Connect even more
Elements Connect has helped to make OpenMinded’s processes more robust and strengthen adoption of Jira by business users.
Feedback from management and users has been very positive. Productivity has increased and ERP data quality has improved. This has encouraged Tsuyoshi Shimabukuro and his team to pursue a data quality improvement initiative in order to secure and simplify the future migration from the company’s legacy ERP to a new one.
OpenMinded has more planned for Elements Connect: They want to to enrich issue tracking for security incidents with information from in-house databases and indicators of compromise (IoC) data sources. Elements Connect has the versatility to do this.
Has this story sparked your interest? Try Elements Connect today