Schools United- From Start-Up to Scale Up

16. 5. 2023

“The Schools United organization was created after a year of studying at a high school in the USA, where we learned what it’s like when students are proud of their school and feel good about it. We often lack this positive attitude towards school in Czech schools, which is why we decided to bring inspiration from foreign schools to support Czech education and bring people together in schools”.

The School United team reached out to us when their business started to grow. They had an idea, the market validated that idea, they were getting new customers each week, and everything worked fantastic for them, except for one thing: their tech stack.

Their story is similar to thousands of other small businesses that grow overnight: their tech stack and processes cannot support continued growth, creating bottlenecks that can jeopardize everything built until that moment. These technical bottlenecks are slowing down growth, impacting the ability to scale up.

Our experts here at Marketing BI interviewed the company owner to understand the company’s vision and growth plans. They also spoke with people from sales, operations, IT, and Purchasing to identify those areas that represent a potential bottleneck for future growth plans. These interviews, combined with an in-depth assessment of their current software solutions, allowed us to build a Transformational Plan that would enable Schools United to scale its business efficiently.

Step 1.

Design and Implement their tech stack

Like all the small businesses out there, School United didn’t want to burn a lot of cash for their tech stack. And it made sense, as the tech stack is not generating new revenue but sustains the processes needed to run. We had the difficult mission of finding those solutions that could cover their needs without breaking the bank.

So, our team selected and recommended several solutions that could cover their needs: CRM, Warehouse Management, Invoicing, etc. On top of those, we also built for them two other apps to cover those needs where we didn’t have an out-of-the-box solution. More details about these two apps can be found in the following paragraphs. 

Step 2.

Application Integration and Setting Up a Data Warehouse

The biggest problem we found in most of the companies we worked with, especially in the enterprise space, is that they have a dozen different software that serves different purposes across all the departments: Marketing, Sales, Purchasing, etc. The problem comes from the inability of that software to communicate correctly with other systems in a bidirectional manner, creating siloed data that is used only by a single department.

For School United, we addressed this problem in the Implementation Stage when we built integrations between used software, allowing data to flow bidirectionally from one application to another and serve different purposes.

A data warehouse became mandatory, as soon as School United became a data-driven company. Data is cleaned, enriched, transformed, used across different apps, and finally used in the analytics process. All these operations required a scalable environment able to grow at the same pace as the company.

Step 3.

Application Development- Graphic Design

School United’s business model is unique as the company targets only schools, high schools, or small sports clubs. The challenge came when the company started to acquire more and more customers and also grew its portfolio of items that could be branded.

Imagine creating a logo that should be placed on ten different clothing objects, each having at least five different colors. And all these fifty options should be available on the website so the customer sees and purchases them.

We integrated with the client’s internal application that took the logo/design and automatically applied it to all the items, no matter the size or color. In the next second, all the new combinations are automatically published on the website, ready to be viewed and purchased by the customer.

As we speak, School United uses only a graphic designer to create new designs, as the application will make all the variations and publish the new items on the website.

Step 4.

Application Development- Warehouse and Purchasing

As soon as the company expanded the number of products that could be customized and printed, it had to figure out how to keep inventory management under control. Having each day, products in and out of the warehouse can give you some headaches as you are one step away from needing more inventory for a product or overstocking for a different one.

We developed an application that considers previous selling patterns( For Example- In September always, there is a Peak in Sales) and automatically places orders to suppliers so the optimum inventory level is permanently kept.

To improve their operational margin, we also build a Vendor Pricing App that collects via API, in real-time, information about stocks and pricing from different suppliers. Having this information, we configured a script that automatically picks the best vendor, considering product price, transport fee, product availability, or how many days are needed to fulfill the order. The system also automatically places the order, so there is no need for additional input from a human operator.

By automating the processes around Procurement, we are helping Schools United save a lot of money, as the warehouse application is fully automated, working 24/7, 365 days a year. Let’s add to that also the benefits of having an optimized stock that is filled at the best possible price. Optimizing your stock is essential as you will not block money and warehouse space with items that sell very slowly and focus on those items that sell fast, allowing you always to fulfill orders for the high-demand items.

Step 5.

Application Integration- Order Status

To increase the level of Customer Satisfaction, the School United team asked us to create an integration for the applications they were using so the customers would know their order status in real-time. Considering that all the processes are tracked and recorded, it was a walk in the park to collect data from each stage and send notifications to the customer, letting them know when their order is in production or on its way to the delivery company.

Conclusion

We feel fabulous each time we get to speak about the projects we delivered for this customer. We know that everything we did and built for them represents the backbone of their business, as our work positively impacted different departments such as Sales, Warehouse, Procurement, and Finance.

We finished building the apps and automatizing their workflows a long time ago, but we provide them ongoing support respecting enterprise-level SLA. It’s essential to give continuity to what we started and find new ways to help our customers further improve their efficiency by leveraging our expertise.

We witness their business growing month after month and year after year. What better reward than knowing that your expertise acted as a fuel rocket for your customer, helping them grow their business at a fantastic pace?

If you want to reduce costs, automate processes and tasks, take things to another level by leveraging AI technology, or get enterprise-level integration of business-critical systems that you can rely on, contact us!