profitoptics.com

The region’s boldest innovators come together with expert problem solvers from Virginia’s top universities to explore solutions to the challenges facing Virginia’s Small Businesses at SparkJam 2020. Join entrepreneurs, tech visionaries, business strategists, and Virginia’s community leaders as they collaborate to generate solutions for the business challenges submitted by the Commonwealth’s Main Street businesses— in real-time. Presented by the Rocket Factory and made possible by Activation Capital, the VCU da Vinci Center for Innovation, Elevation Advertising, and Profit Optics. Benefiting the VA30Day Fund and featuring talent from Virginia’s diverse music scene.

ProfitOptics is very excited to announce its inclusion in the Fantastic 50, a Virginia Chamber of Commerce award to the fastest growing small businesses in Virginia. About the Fantastic 50: Virginia’s FANTASTIC 50 award program is a signature event of the Virginia Chamber of Commerce. Now in its 25th year, the FANTASTIC 50 program is the only annual statewide award recognizing Virginia’s fastest growing business. The Fantastic 50 award program is sponsored by the Virginia Chamber of Commerce, Cox Communications, Inc., Hunton Andrews Kurth LLP, Dixon Hughes Goodman, J. P. Morgan Chase, Amazon, the Westfields Marriott, SunTrust now Truist , Virginia Business Magazine,

And then you have the other end of the spectrum: massive organizations who invest in giant toolsets and then leverage agencies to get some function out of the tools, but don’t invest in the manpower and technical infrastructure they need to really create a powerful eCommerce or demand management engine. Big or small, companies spend time and resources strategically, and the largest companies can have old ERP systems or disparate data strategies, while small companies can be ripe for advanced technology and really interesting marketing maneuvers—or vice versa. In truth, when I come in to assess a digital opportunity, I sometimes don’t recommend going forward with a complex eCommerce solution, even if it looks like I’m shooting myself in the foot from the outside. This allows our customers who can work with the base platform the ability to implement and configure at a lower cost and then leverage the heck (haha) out of the flexibility while our larger customers can take advantage of making the system into what they want and need, with all of the bells and whistles.

Based on their own infrastructure and IT limitations, in some cases they weren’t able to pivot and provide their sales teams with the intel they needed on order/item status, item substitutions and replacements–specifically around Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) items and other COVID-19-related supplies. Knowing how critical this information is to the sales force (not to mention the customer), we collaborated with the client to repurpose development hours to create new rules, restrictions, data elements, and guidelines around specific items and categories. We then worked to push those rules and restrictions into the sales order tools, so reps and support staff could help guide their customers to what was available and also be able to easily explain restrictions at time of order. Partnering with a good software development and consulting firm can actually help in this environment, so when you find a need, you can quickly hand it over, execute, and continue moving forward quickly.