Everyone wants and needs productivity. A business needs its systems, processes, and employees to be productive and provide the most value at the least cost. A customer needs their interactions with your company to be seamless and efficient, taking the least amount of time and hassle while purchasing your products and services. An individual person wants personal productivity to feel a sense of accomplishment and pride in what they do. We are ambassadors of productivity and apply this to everything we do. We apply best practices in software development, project management, and technology to ensure that we are as productive as possible when optimizing your system. Our goal is to increase productivity and engagement for employees, customers, and partners.

Integrity is a required fundamental trait for well-functioning business systems and people. If you do the right thing in a reliable way, you build trust and gain momentum. If a business system errors and misbehaves, you might question its integrity. Business systems can have integrity when they function well and provide a high level of performance, quality, and output. People have integrity when they do what they say when they say. We refuse to compromise on the pursuit of quality, truth, and reliability.

In a managed services relationship, you need clarity on the effort, timing, and cost of system enhancements, improvements, and optimizations. And, when challenges or issues arise, you need to quickly identify the root cause and determine a clear path to make corrections. As a client, you will be accountable for establishing business metrics, setting priorities, clarifying system requirements and user functionality, and staying engaged to provide useful feedback. Optrua is accountable to deliver enhancements and system optimizations according to the priorities that you have set. We are accountable for the quality and timely delivery of our work. We drive the process with your input and guidance.

Customer expectations continuously grow as the world becomes more dependent on digital services. Technology changes quickly, which can lead to fragmentation across your business system landscape. Competition requires that you constantly innovate products and services to provide more value to your customers. You need to develop an effective way to grow lifelong relationships with your customers across platforms that include CRM, social media, text, email and various other apps. At the same time, you need productive employees that are engaged, productive, and happy at work. Good news! You have already selected Microsoft Dynamics and Power Platform as your cutting-edge customer engagement platform. With ongoing innovation and proper optimization, it can be your single point of truth for prospects and customers. To deliver innovation, we embrace low-code/no-code tools wherever possible to efficiently develop and deploy solutions faster and cheaper than ever before. People like comfort and predictability, and don’t naturally embrace change without help and guidance. We understand this and include change management practices in our deployment strategies, and help drive training to end users.

Our commitment extends beyond system implementation. We believe in robust change management, thorough training, and deep adoption strategies to ensure that our solutions not only meet but exceed your expectations. We work closely with your team to ensure our solutions are well integrated and embraced.

Technology isn’t typically thought of as “fun”. We believe that “fun” impacts our relationships, work output and team’s wellbeing. Benefits of incorporating fun include decreased stress, improved creativity, and enhanced productivity. Furthermore, by incorporating a fun mindset you will improve relations with your customers and employees. Could you imagine what it would look like to bring fun to your customers, employees, and partners? Fun can be seen as an enjoyable experience, ease of use, or just some new-found efficiencies. We are not jokesters; however, we enjoy working with our clients and like to smile and have fun while building great systems. We enjoy what we do and get a thrill when we see our clients’ eyes light up with excitement when we deliver functionality that will save time and improve customer engagement.

DevOps is a term that combines the two words Development and Operations and describes a cultural philosophy, a set of tools, and software engineering best practices. It brings together everyone in the software development life cycle including developers, IT Operations, end users and stakeholders to increase delivery speed, quality and overall value of software.

An iteration is a time box for development activities, typically 2 to 4 weeks in length. In development circles, this pre-determined amount of time. For Optrua, we have found that our clients prefer the repeatability and accountability of having monthly iterations. Our iterations are always one (1) month long. This monthly consistency helps develop confidence in the process and will build momentum and excitement with end users.

People may think of an Environment as a Database, but it is much more than that. An Environment is a container that may store, manage, and share business data, apps, chatbots and flows. For Dynamics 365 CRM it is a best practice to have 1 dedicated environment for Production and 1 or more other environments for testing and development.

A feature is a function of the product that will enhance customer engagement or improve user experience. Features are a collection of user stories and may take 1 -3 iterations to complete. Examples of Features are: Salespeople can quickly update their forecast on a weekly basis Sales managers can easily identify top opportunities Address validation automatically happens when an address is entered

There are many different names for modern development practices such as Agile, Scrum, Rapid, Kanban, Lean or Extreme Programming to name a few. To simplify the jargon, we have adopted the term “Rapid Development” which is not any single approach but a combination of best practices applied and tuned to what works best for Optrua clients.

Oxford dictionary defines backlog as an accumulation of something, especially uncompleted work or matters that need to be dealt with. For a Rapid Development project, your backlog is a list of all the Epics, Features and User Stories (“work items”) that could be completed. Backlog items may include enhancements, requirements or fixes that will be clearly documented, prioritized, and estimated. With Optrua, backlog items are also pegged against your business metrics. This allows us to pick a metric and then see a list of items that could be developed to improve that metric.

Is the smallest piece of work that can be completed within an iteration, typically no more than about 8-12 hours of work. The user story is written from the end users perspective and may be further broken down into individual tasks. Each user story contains acceptance criteria, so it is clear to everyone (developer, tester, end user) when the story is complete. Examples of User Stories are: As a Sales person, I can add or remove line items to a quote that contain the line item number, Product SLU, Quantity, and a note per line. Each line item clearly represents something that the customer may purchase. As a sales person, I can update the delivery address for all line items on the quote from the quote header. This will allow the products to be shipped to a location designated by the customer. As a marketing specialist, I can update notes on a lead after I’ve connected with the prospect. The notes will flow forward to the Sales person so they can better understand the customer’s needs.

A very simple approach is to select the backlog item with the highest priority and lowest effort, however there may be foundational items or dependencies that need to be completed first. Overall backlog items are selected by the client in the monthly Iteration Planning meeting.

Initially end users and stakeholders are interviewed to get ideas to add to the backlog. These ideas are classified as Epics, Features, or User Stories and are grouped accordingly. User Stories are related to Features, and Features are related to Epics. We then get clarification to better understand the business reason for the item, the value this item will contribute, and further specify the item as needed. Some items will be detailed less (Epics) and some will require detailed design and acceptance criteria (User Story). Once each backlog item is correctly structured, it is evaluated for effort and brought to the team and project stakeholders for prioritization. Once prioritized, the backlog item is queued up until it is assigned to an iteration for development.

Some common problems in implementing and developing software systems are: Scope Creep Working on low priority items Lack of detailed requirements Incorrect time estimates Poor communication Working with Optrua’s DevOps culture, tools, and practices including a properly maintained backlog will help reduce these issues, and allow us to deliver enhancements and optimizations to your apps and systems faster.

The Iteration Review meeting is a monthly meeting between the technical team, end users and project stakeholders to review and approve the completed User Stories. In keeping with our principles of continuous optimization and improvement, feedback on the iteration is discussed to determine what went well and what issues need adjustments. This meeting is typically 60 to 90 minutes long.

An Epic, is a large chunks of development work that may capture an abstract idea. It can be broken down into smaller chunks called features. Epics are a collection of features and may take 3 or more iterations to complete. Epics provide the team with an efficient way to categorize larger chunks of functionality without getting lost in the weeds. Examples of Epics are: Create Quotes from CRM Manage Opportunity Pipeline from CRM Have a central place to store all leads

There are always more backlog items than there is time or resources to do them. Backlog items are prioritized by looking at three (3) factors. First look at business value. For example, if a company is focusing on Sales Automation as a major investment for an upcoming quarter, backlog items related to Sales Automation may be prioritized higher than an item related to Operations. Second look at user and customer impact. How is this feature going to benefit the end users and customer? Will it save users time (reducing operational cost) or will it improve customer engagement (increase revenue), if so it should be prioritized higher. Third look at development & deployment effort. If one item takes 5 hours and the other takes 20 hours, but those two item are prioritize roughly the same for business value or user impact, do the 5 hour back log item first.

The Iteration Planning meeting is a monthly meeting between the Technical Team and project stakeholders to determine which backlog items should go into the next iteration. This meeting is typically 2 to 4 hours long.

Epics, Features and User Stories are all chunks of development work ranging in size from largest to smallest, and in detail from the most abstract to the most complete. The relationship between Epics, Features and User Stories are shown in the graphic below. <Insert Graphic>

The backlog is a fluid and living document. As time goes on, the backlog will grow and shrink. New backlog items could identify great enhancements or ones that are just wishful thinking. Some backlog items will be completed, and others may stay on the backlog for months (or years), and others may be removed entirely. As the backlog is used to drive each iteration, it is important to be up to date with the latest priorities and estimations. As items near selection into the next iteration, additional design notes and requirements may be added for clarification. A well-maintained backlog will make iteration planning efficient and effective.

Generically, a Tenant is a collection of cloud computing resources that are purchased by a customer or organization. For Microsoft 365 and Dynamics 365, the Tenant is the container for the Organization that contains users, domains, and software subscriptions. Microsoft also describes the tenant as the set of services assigned to your organization.

By focusing on correct DevOps processes and practices, we shorten development cycles and bring meaningful innovation to CRM projects faster and at less cost than other approaches. Overall we use DevOps to: 1. Document and prioritize work items 2. Improve Communication 3. Increased Efficiency 4. Reduce Cost 5. Reduce mistakes 6. And … innovate faster We use Microsoft Azure DevOps Services with all of our clients to track work items and improve collaboration and productivity between end users, developers, quality, IT, and operations. DevOps is at the center of our rapid development culture. Let us share it with you!

We recognize the paramount importance of data security. Our guarantee ensures that we handle all client data with the utmost care and security, strictly adhering to relevant regulations. In the unlikely event of a data breach caused by our actions, we will take full responsibility for the incident and work diligently to mitigate its impact. Furthermore, we will implement enhanced measures to prevent similar incidents in the future.

At Optrua, we take pride in our commitment to delivering high-quality services and ensuring our customers' satisfaction. We have an "Astonishing" Guarantee that reflects our dedication to excellence. Here are the guarantees we offer, demonstrating our commitment to providing exceptional service and meeting our clients' needs.

We provide ongoing support and maintenance services to ensure our clients' CRM systems function optimally, maximizing the benefits of their investment. If, for any reason, we fail to deliver adequate support and maintenance, we will work closely with our clients to understand the issue and take prompt corrective actions.

We understand the importance of meeting deadlines. That's why we guarantee timely delivery of all projects, enabling our clients to meet their own deadlines. In the rare event that we fail to deliver a project on time, we will work closely with our clients to identify the cause of the delay and develop a plan to complete the project as quickly as possible.

Our team follows a rigorous quality assurance process to ensure that all our work meets the highest standards. We guarantee that all deliverables will be of superior quality. In the unlikely event that our work falls short of our clients' expectations or our own quality standards, we will work collaboratively with our clients to understand the issue and take corrective actions promptly.

We guarantee that our clients will experience a substantial return on their investment in CRM implementation. To measure the ROI and track progress, we provide effective tools and metrics. If, despite our efforts, our clients do not realize a significant ROI, we will work collaboratively with them to identify the underlying issues and take appropriate measures to rectify the situation.

We stand behind the quality of our work and have confidence that our clients will be satisfied with our services. In the rare event that they are not fully satisfied, we will work closely with them to address any concerns and ensure their ultimate satisfaction. Our priority is to maintain open and honest communication with our clients, finding mutually agreeable solutions to resolve any issues.