Missed orders, social media flops and newsletter mishaps – it’s easy to lose sight of the bigger picture when running a small business. With fewer hands and fast growth often a priority, it can be difficult to build structure and process when roles are fluid and everything seemingly needs to be done all at once.
Turning the tables on this is EvantoDesk – the Bristol-based software startup that’s found an innovative way of combining the practical aspects of running a business to form an intuitive virtual helpdesk. It’s specially designed for the smallest of businesses where training staff to use complex enterprise software carries too great a cost in both time and cash.
“The market was crying out for some simple help desk software that could start small but scale into a powerful enterprise system as the customer’s business grew”
Check out how the software has helped local organic meat company, The Story Organic, in the video below:
Simon tells us: “Back in 2012, I was the co-founder of a small company, Clinic Appointments, with 18 employees and I wanted to improve the way we communicated with our existing and prospective customers. None of the traditional enterprise desks on the market fitted our needs – they were too complex to configure with macros and triggers and, in my opinion, over priced.
“That’s when the penny dropped. The market was crying out for some simple helpdesk software that could start small but scale into a powerful enterprise system as the customer’s business grew. With that gap spotted, EvantoDesk was conceived, developed and, after 2 years in the making, delivered to market in December 2016.”
Team tactics
One of the problems EvantoDesk solves is that of small businesses often sharing an email address between the team – i.e. emails to ‘info@mycompany.com’ get copied to some or all team members.
Often it’s confusing then who is dealing with messages, whether they have been actioned and if the relevant team members have been involved. For example, before using EvantoDesk, the Story Organic Box delivery company would miss or duplicate orders due to sharing an email inbox. The way EvantoDesk helps solve this problem is shown in more detail in the video below:
It’s no wonder then, that this simple software has gotten some great feedback from its beta tester startups across the UK. However, as Simon explains: “The best feedback has come from Andrews Moses. Andrews is a highly-respected player in the SaaS field and was part of the startup teams for both Zoho and Freshdesk. These apps have now grown between them with well over 150,000 customers globally. He has been tracking our progress over the past year or so and, after seeing EvantoDesk move out of beta recently, was keen to get involved.
“Having someone with his track-record believing that he can scale your app is a fantastic vote of confidence”
“He has just opened the Canada office for EvantoDesk and will be in charge of all North American sales and support for EvantoDesk. Having someone with his track-record believing that he can scale your app in a similar way to his previous projects is a fantastic vote of confidence in EvantoDesk and verifies our belief that we have a commercially-attractive and highly scalable product.”
Time of day: EvantoDesk also provides analysis of busy periods to help smaller businesses plan their working day
Growing out of beta
Already out of beta, the EvantoDesk now offer online demos and are planning future webinars as they grow.
“It feels like we’re now part of a South West club where everyone is willing and able to help each other”
Since building two businesses in the South West, Simon tells us: “I have really discovered the incredible amount of tech companies, start-ups, meet-ups, accelerators and investors in this region. It feels like we’re now part of a South West club where everyone is willing and able to help each other.
“As I’ve recently been finding out, there’s some mind-blowing stuff going on right here in the South West. It’s such an innovative hub across so many industries. I could list so many but recently I have been impressed by the innovative approach of YellowDog to harness cloud and crowdsourced processing power on demand for animation.”
- You may like: YellowDog’s virtual supercomputer wins the Oracle award for ‘Excellence in Innovation’
To his fellow entrepreneurs, he offers this advice: “You don’t need a new idea – you can jump into an existing market. An existing market shows there’s a problem that people need solving. That said, if you have a new idea, just be sure that it solves a common enough problem to become a market. And then just do it. Take action.”
Thanks to Simon for taking the time to chat to us. You can find out more about the EvantoDesk software by checking out the EvantoDesk website and stay up-to-date by following them on Twitter: @evantodesk.
