Gold Effects
Client Business
Since the early 1990’s, Gold Effects has pioneered the portable gold plating industry with their revolutionary, patented designs that are used by professionals in more than 42 countries. Gold Effects has created a system with many unique and advanced features. The “Deluxe and Smart Plater” models have earned 5 United States patents by integrating the seat, wheels, electronics, and solutions into the design creating a more comfortable, ergonomic and versatile system. Gold Effects is committed to the highest level of service and customer satisfaction from the design and development of the advanced chemical solutions to their guarantee of quality and unsurpassed reliability supporting their innovative systems.
Gold Effects has a second company, Spectra Chrome, which sells similar equipment for chrome plating as opposed to gold plating. Both companies needed to leverage common data, such as shared customers, vendors and so on, but the two companies needed to remain separate legal and corporate entities.
Business Challenge
Gold Effects had a FileMaker solution that was no longer sufficient for day-to-day operations. The legacy system did not allow for Gold Effects’ present growth. Users need to be able to quickly enter and retrieve data about customers, produce forms and reports and manage the flow of goods to the customers. The legacy solution did not provide a firm foundation on which to build new functionality. Data needed for forms used by Gold Effects on a regular basis were “hard coded,” making it difficult to incorporate new forms and items into the system.
Gold Effects’ solution was built in FileMaker 4, which is no longer a supported version, and did not include many advanced functions that have been added to FileMaker over the years. A former employee of Gold Effects had built the legacy system, and could not offer ongoing support and development.
Solution Provided
Extensitech created the Extensible Business Solution (EBS). EBS provides a foundation for Gold Effects anticipated growth, with the flexibility to accommodate future changes. EBS is a scalable, fully relational solution, with increased security and optimized reporting capabilities. Using this solution, Gold Effects unified its processes and data so that the company can now focus on the core competencies of sales and marketing, better recognize opportunities and make more informed management decisions.
Building on this foundation, Extensitech created tools and processes for entry and management of leads, mailing marketing information, order management, automatic creation of shipping forms (including those for hazardous materials). The EBS system provides an end-to-end solution to manage a customer from first contact through ongoing materials replenishment.
The solution also includes tools for automatic assignment of leads and customers to different members of the sales force, so that each salesperson can focus on his or her own prospects, and so that management can analyze and compare the performance of each member of its sales force.
