ERP and CRM · Commercial operations

One platform from first contact to invoice, and the board number built from the same record

A commercial platform where the pipeline, the order, the invoice and the executive KPI read from one record, so that nobody reconciles two systems by hand to find out what was sold.

Client: B2B distributor, under NDA
Market: Brazil
Duration: 8 months
Year: 2024
Delivered by: The group's Brazilian engineering practice, in 2024, before Vigiles AI Ltd was incorporated.

Pipeline to invoice: One record; Lead, order, invoice and receivable as states of one entity rather than copies.
Executive indicators: Real time; Board KPIs read the operational record instead of a manual consolidation.
Re-keying between systems: Zero; The manual reconciliation between CRM and invoicing was removed, not reduced.
End to end: 8 months; Discovery, build, migration, acceptance and go-live.

Commercial, operational and finance functions ran on separate systems, so what the CRM said had been sold did not agree with what was invoiced. One platform was built covering pipeline, orders, invoicing and finance on a single data model, with the executive dashboard reading that same record rather than a monthly consolidation assembled by hand.

On arrival

Commercial and finance lived in separate systems. What the CRM recorded as sold did not agree with what was invoiced, which produced divergence and recurring manual reconciliation.
The sales pipeline was run in spreadsheets, with no revenue predictability and no view of the funnel for commercial leadership.
Invoicing and financial control depended on manual steps, carrying error risk across orders, invoices and both payables and receivables.
The board had no dependable dashboard. Indicators arrived late and consolidated by hand, which made fast decisions on evidence impossible.
Growth required a platform that would scale in order volume and users without degrading, rather than one that would need replacing again.

Approach

Discovery across commercial, operations and financeThe three functions were mapped together rather than separately, because the divergence lived in the handovers between them and not inside any one of them.
Data model and scalable architectureOne model was designed to carry lead, opportunity, order, invoice and receivable as the same entity through its lifecycle, instead of copies that drift apart.
CRM and sales pipelineLead and account management, a funnel by stage, activity tracking and revenue forecasting, replacing the spreadsheet that leadership could not see into.
ERP modules for orders, invoicing and financePurchase and sales orders, invoice issue and control, payables, receivables and cash flow, all consistent with stock and with the order that created them.
Executive dashboardRevenue, funnel, average order value, overdue receivables and margin read from the operational record, so the board sees the same number the sales team is working against.
Acceptance, data migration and go-liveLegacy data migrated and reconciled, the platform accepted against written criteria, and cutover run with the old systems available until sign-off.

Solution

What was built

The fault was not in either system. It was in the gap between them: a CRM that recorded intent and an invoicing system that recorded fact, with a person in the middle retyping. Discovery covered commercial, operations and finance together, because that handover is where the divergence was created.
One data model was then designed to carry a commercial record through its whole life. A lead becomes an opportunity, an opportunity becomes an order, an order becomes an invoice and a receivable, and each of those is the same entity in a new state rather than a new copy. Copies drift; states do not.
The CRM gave leadership the funnel they had never had in a form they could act on: stage, activity, forecast. The ERP modules covered orders, invoicing, payables, receivables and cash flow, with consistency enforced between stock, order and invoice instead of checked afterwards.
The executive dashboard was deliberately not a separate build. It reads the operational record directly, so revenue, funnel, average order value, overdue receivables and margin are the same numbers the sales and finance teams see. A board pack assembled separately is a board pack that will eventually disagree with the operation.
Role-based access was applied from the start rather than retrofitted, and the architecture was sized to grow in orders and users. After eight months the distributor ran commercial, operational and financial work on one record, and stopped spending the first week of each month deciding which system was right.

What mattered

What made the difference

CRM with a visual pipeline

Lead and account management, funnel by stage, activity tracking and revenue forecasting.

Purchase and sales order management

Operations integrated with consistency enforced between stock, order and invoice.

Invoicing connected to the pipeline

Invoice issue and control tied to the commercial record that produced them.

Financial control

Payables, receivables, cash flow and reconciliation on one base.

Executive KPI dashboard

Revenue, funnel, average order value, overdue receivables and margin, read from the operational record.

One source of truth

Commercial, operations and finance on the same record, with no re-keying between them.

Role-based access control

Granular permissions per commercial, operational and finance profile, applied from the start.

Architecture sized to grow

Containerised services with a caching layer, built to scale in orders and users.

Questions

Common questions

Usually you should buy. A build earns its place where the commercial process is itself part of how the business competes, and where forcing it into a package would mean changing the process to suit the software. Where the process is ordinary, a package is cheaper and faster, and we will say so.

By not having two records. A lead, an order, an invoice and a receivable are the same entity in different states rather than separate copies kept in step by integration. Integration between copies is a reconciliation problem deferred, not solved.

Not if you want it trusted. Here it reads the operational record directly, so the board sees the same number as the sales team. A dashboard built on its own consolidation will eventually disagree with the operation, and when it does the operation wins and the dashboard is abandoned.

It is migrated and reconciled before acceptance, with the previous systems kept available until sign-off. Accepting a platform against written criteria, rather than against a demonstration, is what makes the handover defensible afterwards.

Next step

Arrange a technical review

A 45-minute working session with an engineer rather than a sales call. You describe the problem; we set out what we would build, in what order, and what it is likely to cost.

Book a technical review Get a written estimate

Answered within one working day, by the engineer who would do the work