# Case study: Sales & Field Operations Platform

> The portal and mobile app an international manufacturer runs its field workforce on: attendance, GPS-verified meetings, AI-scored debriefs, journeys and fleet, training, and performance report cards, all connected to the CRM. It recorded more than 67,000 client interactions in the last year.

- URL: https://www.happen.software/case-studies/field-sales-operations-platform
- Publisher: Happen Software (https://www.happen.software/)

## At a glance

- **Client**: International security manufacturer
- **Category**: Manufacturing · Platforms & portals
- **Running**: Since 2017 · 9 years
- **Users**: 1,000+ accounts for field reps, managers, executives, coordination, fleet, HR, and training teams
- **Engagement**: Build, run, and evolve, since 2017
- **Platforms**: Management portal and an iOS, Android, and web field app
- **Modules**: Sales, attendance, live location, journeys, fleet, training, people, and AI
- **Integrations**: Microsoft Dynamics CRM, with 47,000+ contacts across 22,000+ accounts, Active Directory, Google Maps
- **Reporting**: Real-time dashboards used throughout the day, a quarterly sales report card per rep and team, 17 on-demand reports, and scheduled daily, weekly, and quarterly packs

## Outcomes

- **67,000+**: Client interactions logged in the last year, more than 5,600 a month, with 13,000+ contacts
- **56,000+**: Working days of attendance recorded in the last year, across nearly 400 employees
- **47,000+**: CRM contacts across 22,000+ accounts, connected to the platform from Microsoft Dynamics
- **12-point**: AI coaching score on every recorded debrief, with the reason behind each score

## Context

Our client designs and manufactures high-security products for sites that can't afford a breach. They sell through a field sales force that meets customers on site and works long, technical sales cycles, backed by managers and executives across sales, marketing, operations, and finance.

Their CRM recorded what reps said they had done, but not the rest of the working day: attendance, journeys, vehicles, training, and performance. Management wanted one system for the whole field workforce, to see what actually happened, coach people on real evidence, and run the operation on that rather than on phone calls and spreadsheets.

## The challenge

- **No proof from the field**: Meetings were logged in the CRM after the fact. Managers couldn't tell whether a visit happened, whether the rep arrived on time, or what was discussed.
- **A working day the CRM couldn't see**: Attendance, journeys, vehicles, and training all needed managing, and none of it belonged in the CRM.
- **Performance pieced together by hand**: Scoring people fairly meant combining meetings, presentations, pipeline, and targets from different places at the end of every quarter.

## Before and after

| Area | Without it | With the platform |
|---|---|---|
| Attendance | Clock-ins and breaks taken on trust. | One-tap clock in, lunch, and break against each person's schedule, with a mood check-in. |
| Meetings | Logged in the CRM after the fact, on trust. | Arrival detected by GPS and stamped on time or late automatically. |
| Debriefs | Notes written up whenever there was time, in whatever format. | A structured debrief after every meeting, AI-scored audio, and a PDF to the manager. |
| Vehicles | Fuel, fines, inspections, and services tracked in separate places. | Every vehicle's drivers, fuel, inspections, maintenance, fines, and washes in one record. |
| Training | Who has completed what, tracked by hand. | Modules assigned by department, with assessments, recorded answers, and weekly progress for managers. |
| Sales data | Pipeline and contacts only as current as each rep chose to keep them. | Contacts and open deals worked each quarter count towards every rep's score, and overdue tasks escalate. |
| Quarterly reviews | Scores assembled by hand from several sources, with no way to compare a rep against their team. | A report card per rep or team: calculated scores, managers' ratings, targets, and the team median side by side. |

## A day in the field, end to end

1. **Clock in**: The rep clocks in with one tap against their schedule and says how they're feeling. Head office sees live attendance.
2. **Time to leave**: Yesterday at noon, the day's diary was checked for drive times that don't add up. Now a push notification says when to set off, based on live traffic.
3. **Arrival**: Background GPS detects arrival inside the meeting perimeter, tells the manager, and stamps the meeting on time or late. If the rep is late or offline, the manager hears 15 minutes before.
4. **Present & debrief**: The rep presents from the tablet presentation app, then captures a structured debrief. The audio is scored by AI and a PDF goes to the manager.
5. **On the road**: Journeys are snapped to roads with the distance calculated automatically, and geofences log time spent at key sites.
6. **End of day**: Managers get an 18:00 compliance report, and overdue CRM tasks escalate on their own: a reminder at 3 days, the manager at 7, and an executive digest at 14. The day's figures feed each person's quarterly report card.

## What we built

- **Attendance & people**: One-tap clock in, lunch, and break against versioned schedules, live attendance and history, mood check-ins, scheduled peer ratings with leaderboards, and messages to the app.
- **GPS-verified meetings**: CRM appointments sync to the app. Background location confirms arrival, lateness, or no-show against a perimeter around each meeting, with route maps and logged-versus-actual views for managers.
- **AI-scored debriefs**: Debrief audio is scored on 12 dimensions, from sector knowledge to listening and storytelling, with a summary, sentiment, action plan, and the reason behind every score.
- **Live location & journeys**: Live location on a map, geofences with compliance logs, a route planner, and journeys snapped to roads with automatic distance.
- **Fleet**: Vehicles and approved drivers, driver profiles and training, fuel logs, condition inspections, maintenance, traffic fines, and washes.
- **Training & development**: Modules assigned by department, with questions, assessments, recorded answers, follow-up on exceptions, and a weekly progress report for managers.
- **Real-time dashboards**: Live dashboards for sales activity, deals, attendance, location compliance, mood, and presentations, used all day, plus daily activity targets and 30/60/90-day forecast boards.
- **Sales report card**: A quarterly card per rep, or rolled up for a manager's team, scoring ten areas from sales and presentations to pipeline, route compliance, and evaluation. Each shows the calculated score, the manager's rating, the target, and the team median, on a radar and a gap-to-target view.
- **The evidence behind every score**: Each section opens up into its figures: sales against target and baseline over six quarters with 3- to 12-month averages, meetings in person and virtual, cancel rates, debriefs completed and read, contact ratings, the open pipeline by probability, and time spent at the office.
- **Targets & up-to-date sales data**: Monthly sales targets with a baseline, and weekly or monthly meeting targets, for every rep and the team below each manager. Scores reward working every contact and open deal each quarter, a deal only counts as won with its revenue recorded, and overdue CRM tasks escalate to the manager.
- **AI data assistant**: Executives ask questions like "Who submitted the most debriefs last month?" and get answers or branded Excel, PDF, and interactive reports, limited to the data they're allowed to see.

## What each team gets

### Field reps

- One-tap clock in, lunch, and break
- A "time to leave" alert based on live traffic
- Meetings, debriefs, training, and journeys in one app

### Sales managers

- Alerts when a rep arrives, is running late, or goes offline
- Debriefs to review and rate, with AI scoring alongside
- A quarterly report card for each rep and their whole team
- Each rep's sales and meetings tracked against their targets
- An 18:00 compliance report on their direct reports

### Executives

- Real-time dashboards across sales, attendance, and the field
- Report cards that roll up by manager, with a row per person
- Pipeline and 30/60/90-day forecast by territory
- Plain-English questions answered by the AI assistant

### Operations & coordination

- Next-day diary checks for impossible drive times
- Logged versus actual meetings, side by side
- Live location and geofence compliance

### Fleet

- Every vehicle with its approved drivers
- Inspections, maintenance, fines, and washes on record
- Fuel logs alongside journey distances

### HR & training

- Live attendance and schedule history
- Training modules, assessments, and weekly progress
- Mood trends and scheduled peer ratings

## How it was delivered

- **2017, First release**: Location logging and KPI dashboards on live CRM data, followed by a move to .NET Core within the first year.
- **2018–2020, Field visibility**: A mobile API and CRM bridge, route-map dashboards, geofences, activity tracking, and staff mood check-ins.
- **2024, Native app & AI**: A native iOS and Android app, CI/CD pipelines, AI scoring of debriefs, and AI photo checks.
- **2025–2026, Modernised in place**: A new management portal and field app, the AI data assistant, and the sales report card, all rolled out without a break in service.

## Engineering

- Background location limited to working hours that keeps running when the app is closed.
- Read-only, permission-aware AI: it can't change data, only sees what the user may see, and is tested against real business questions.
- Scorecard figures versioned at quarter close, so every rating can be explained later.
- Calculated scores and managers' ratings kept side by side rather than merged, so a manager overrides a figure with the evidence in front of them, and both stay on record.
- Team rollups say how many people their averages are made of, and a rep is compared with the median of the people they actually work alongside, never including themselves.
- Missing data is told apart from a genuine zero, so a blank score always says whether it's awaiting a rating or a calculation.
- Generated, typed API clients and more than 500 automated back-end and front-end tests.
- Modernised in place across every major .NET and Angular version since 2017.
- Kept current with regular technology, library, and framework updates, along with ongoing performance and security improvements.

Stack: .NET, ASP.NET Core, SQL Server, Angular, Capacitor, Microsoft Dynamics CRM, Active Directory, Google Maps, Firebase

## Get in touch

Running a field workforce on spreadsheets and CRM entries you can't verify? We'll show you how one platform for attendance, meetings, vehicles, training, and performance could give your managers the real picture. Book a free 30-minute call with one of our engineers.

Contact: https://www.happen.software/contact or sales@happen.software