Case Study - MRK Development

On the BC Platform…

What do your clients like about using BC?

Clients like the fact that the site has a lot of integrated tools.

The result is a website that allows for sales, support and client interaction to as well as email marketing and website analysis.

The platform has been reasonably easy for my clients to get to grip with as they all have a lot of online experience. This also made for a fast entry into their field and has lead to consistent sales.

How is developing on BC different from your previous development process?

To build the functionality we have as a custom PHP or Ruby App would have taken significantly longer and would have reduced the amount of time we had available to do design and optimization.

A custom software solution would have been better in that we could do more, however it would have blown the budget out and not made our team able to successfully get the job to start with.

As it is now we save approximately $15k by using BC.

This halves the budget for the customer and gives us better results.

BC are constantly improving their product and listening to their users. It is getting better all the time, and we as developers are getting more input into how the platform develops. I've learnt a lot from my most recent project and I was able to share that knowledge with the BC team to help grow the platform and make the solution better for my customers.

What are the strengths of BC compared to other systems?

I consider BC to have 3 main strengths over other platforms:

• It is an integrated secure application. Having CRM, eCommerce , Email Marketing and Content Management all in one is unique and each has the main features our clients need
• The ease of implementation from design to live site is fast. We get a lot of sites done within 2 days - from PSD to a site ready for content population. That is a massive time saving over Magento and Joomla which often take 4 or 5 days to get up to the design standard we require.
• It is a hosted application, and as a development and marketing firm that means I don’t have to worry about looking for security patches, doing server upgrades and doing support on servers that can burn a lot of time. When I hosted a lot of Joomla sites it would be a nightmare having to update a whole bunch websites with the latest patches and having to test them to make sure their weren't any problems. Often It would cost me money, not make me money. As a Business you don’t want that.

On Being a BC Partner…

What are your favorite aspects of the Partner Program, and why?

The training is without doubt a great feature. I can now get my staff trained and they can learn a whole bunch of things without taking up senior staff time. The guys that do the training are pretty good and have a depth of knowledge that matches most senior developers - meaning they often provide a good industry standard solution for problems found.

Second to that is the fact I can track and manage my clients via the Partner Portal. Its nice to see commissions coming in and knowing I'm making money all the time via the platform.

Looking back, how do you feel about your decision to become a BC Partner?

It is the best business decision I have made. Without doubt.

If I hadn’t gone with BC I’m not even sure I would have been able to get through the financial crisis we recently had, and I may have gone bankrupt.

Because of the platform we have sold more websites and delivered them at budgets people could afford.

How has BC helped you grow your design business?

Before I went with BC we rarely did more than one website a month and the budget that our clients had to spend was a lot larger to get the same result.

This last week I was able to get 7 websites of similar size and we will finish those in the next 2 months.

That just saves a lot of money and time for me and means I can serve more clients and get more business through the doors.

That provides more up selling and more opportunities.

For our design and marketing business, we grew by around 30% through this financial crisis and I took 2 months in holidays. Before the financial crisis I rarely took more that 2 weeks holidays from the business.

What a change. Now thanks to BC, I am able to go away from my business because I am not needed as much to get the same results.

Also, because I know focus on having one platform I can quickly pitch for the right jobs. When I did a lot of custom development I would pitch on a lot of different jobs and different projects. Now I pitch on what BC does best and it makes my pitching easier. I can pitch with more confidence and we are close to a 90% success rate on each.

Show Us Some of Your Work on BC…

• Easy OHS

  This was a site that needed to work really well and sell a software package.

  The job has come off looking fantastic. The client is making a lot from the business and we haven’t even started the advertising campaign yet.

• Vision Ministries

  This client needed an easy to use site that could be updated regularly and they currently get over 100 unique visitors per week. The events they have run recently are gaining more momentum and the communication with everyone related to the organization has been simplified as well as improved.

  It is a regular occurrence for comments to be made by visitors to the church that they found out about it via the website.

• Bark & Sqwark

  Bark and Sqwark are a premier pet shop in the central west of NSW. Their current site allows for specials and other content to be made available for their customers.

  The email marketing also allows them to grow their club and get more sales out of their membership database and ensure seasonal sales are promoted in a way that is able to be tracked and managed.

Thank you, Matthew! You can find out more about MRK Development and what their clients had to say about their work at mrkdevelopment.com.au