Implementation of Pendo (Information System) at Cin7 Pvt Ltd

2022MBAWE Group 1, Team 6

Y.A. Antonio, M.N.S.H. Dharmawardane, M.R.B.O. Jayaneththi, and G.G.S. Madushani

Faculty of Management & Finance, University of Colombo

MBA 5106 - Management Information Systems

Dr. Ajantha Atukorale, and Dr. Nuradhi K. Jayasiri

July 30, 2023
List of Team Members

Registration No. Name of the Student

01. 2022MBAWE04 Y.A. Antonio

02. 2022MBAWE13 M.N.S.H. Dharmawardane

03. 2022MBAWE29 M.R.B.O. Jayaneththi

04. 2022MBAWE40 G.G.S. Madushani

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Table of Contents

List of Team Members...............................................................................................................2

List of Figures............................................................................................................................4

Acknowledgement......................................................................................................................5

Executive Summary...................................................................................................................6

1.Organizational-Background....................................................................................................7

2. Implementation of an Information System at Cin7................................................................7

3. The need for implementing Pendo.........................................................................................8

4. Introduction to Pendo...........................................................................................................10

5. Process and Challenges of Implementing Pendo at Cin7.....................................................11

6. Benefits of Implementing Pendo at Cin7.............................................................................12

7. References............................................................................................................................13

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4
List of Figures

Figure-1Pendo-dashboard………………………………..………………………………… 10
Figure-2 Cin7 modules ………………………………………………………………………
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Acknowledgement

The completion of this assignment gives us great pleasure as well as vast experience.
However, it would not have been possible without the kind support and help of many
individuals. We had to take the support and guidance of them, who deserve our gratitude.

We would like to express our thankfulness to our lecturers Dr. Ajantha Atukorale, and Dr.
Nuradhi K. Jayasiri for delivering the lectures clearly in order to make sure that we
understand the course content and for giving us proper guidelines for our assignment through
numerous discussions.

We would also like to express our gratefulness to our batch mates who made valuable
suggestions on this which gave us inspiration to improve our assignment. We would like to
extend our heartfelt thanks to all the individuals who helped us directly and indirectly to
complete our assignment successfully as well as our teammates for their immense
commitment and dedication for the successful completion of this assignment.

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Executive Summary

This report comprises information of how the implementation of an information system

changed Cin7 Pvt Ltd, interacted with their customers and provide better services. We firstly
describe the organization and its field of work, then we explain the need of an information
system followed by introducing the system. Then, we break down the processes that took
place in order to implement the information system along with the challenges the company
faced. Finally, we listed the benefits of using the Information System at Cin7.

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1..Organizational-Background

Cin7 is a cloud-based inventory management software that is fully integrated and helps
product sellers to streamline their stock management process across multiple channels. Their
offices are based across the globe, including Auckland, Denver, Dubai, and Sri Lanka. The
company has over 400 employees and serves over 8500 businesses globally. Cin7 has three
products that cater to various inventory management needs. They are Omni, Core, and
Orderhive. Omni is a software meant for product sellers who need the ability to connect with
multiple third party softwares such as eCommerce platforms, ensuring stock management and
all fulfillment processes are handled properly. Core is a software for product sellers who need
everything in one place. It also provides best-in-class manufacturing features and the ability
to integrate with eCommerce platforms. Orderhive is for a business that focuses purely on
online retailing and has all the bells and whistles a product seller would need. Cin7 aims to be
the number one best inventory management tool in the small-to-medium enterprises using
these three amazing products.

The vision of Cin7: “Empowering product sellers to thrive”

Cin7’s mission statement: “Be the number one inventory management system along with a
world-class company culture”

Cin7 operates with five values which abbreviate “SPICI”. These are, Strive, Passionate,
Innovate, Collaborate, and Integrity. They aim to cultivate a world class culture using these
core values.

*Note: We were able to get accurate data on the implementation of an Information System at
Cin7 as one of our team members works at Cin7 as a Project Manager and was involved in
the implementation process of the relevant Information System we will be talking about.

2. Implementation of an Information System at Cin7

As stated in the organizational background, Cin7 is essentially a software company. Software

companies compete with other vendors to win customers and retain them for as long as
possible to make maximum profits. In business this is sometimes called “Customer

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Stickiness”. This term is essentially used to describe how much a customer would like to
stick to your brand. Customer Stickiness can be obtained through several ways which include
product quality, convenience, pricing, engagement experience, and other transactional factors
(Rethinking Retail: How to Increase Customer Stickiness, n.d.). We will now talk about an
information system which Cin7 implemented to improve the stickiness of its customers. This
software would give Cin7 the necessary data to proactively help their customers.

As a software company for inventory management, there are many competitors out there who
provide better features, pricing, and services. However, customers really care about
personalized experiences (10 Things Customers Want and Expect from Customer Service |
Fonolo, 2014). In other words, they want to be supported in a way that suits their business.
One of main factors to keep an eye on when running a software company is being customer
centric. We need to be able to build out features that are needed in businesses. We cannot
simply come up with a cool feature and expect customers to use it. Therefore, getting
feedback from customers is very important for Cin7 to have an edge in the game.

The management of Cin7, introduced a software/information system named “Pendo” in 2023

Quarter 01, to help the sales department, marketing department and product department in
getting the feedback that is needed to make the platform more customer centric. This report
will be focusing mainly on how the product department uses Pendo to know what customers
need to make their lives easier. This way the product team knows the areas to focus on
improving accordingly.

3. The need for implementing Pendo

The need to implement Pendo was raised by the management mainly to change how we
handle customers which are reactive and proactive. In a reactive mode, we respond only
when something happens. In proactive mode, we act before the need arises. This can be a
game changer in the industry that Cin7 is catering to.

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Before Pendo, the product team received feedback from customers through three main
methods, which are;

- Meetings with reselling partners

- Community forums
- Bug reports and feature requests submitted by customers

These are not exactly bad ways to get feedback, however, the feedback is received once the
problem has occurred. Cin7 still continues to use these methods but not as their primary.

One of the most reliable ways of receiving quality feedback from customers is through Cin7’s
reselling partners. As reselling partners, they deal with multiple customers daily which
exposes the partners to many requirements which the software can’t possibly meet. These are
then noted down and then shared with Cin7 during client-partner meetings. The points are
then taken into consideration by checking which features are highly demanded and which are
not. Since Cin7 is a customer centric company, highly demanded features are taken into
consideration.

When it comes to community forums, customers write down their requirements in a public
forum where every other customer has a way to upvote the feature if they think it’s important
for their business. Then, these upvoted features are gathered by Cin7 and taken into
consideration.

Finally, customers always email or live chat Cin7’s customer support team to ask questions
and clarify their requirements. When the system cannot meet the requirement even after the
support agent has assisted the customer, this is considered as either a default design or a bug.
If this is determined as a bug, it is recorded and taken into consideration as well.

Once all these points are recorded for consideration, the company product management team
sits down and discusses the possibility of implementing such features. Implementing a feature
is not an easy task as there are many assessments that need to be done to be able to determine
its probability of being a usable feature. After reviewing all technical factors and practicality,
if the feature is approved, this is then added to the roadmap of the product. Once the feature is
added to the roadmap, the project moves from one team to another until it is released for

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customers to use. This is how it was done at Cin7. One thing to point out here is that the most
difficult part is to collect reliable data. Once this stage is passed, Cin7 will be able to move
quickly and efficiently without causing too many delays. The old process of Cin7 takes a
minimum of 6 months to implement one feature. With Pendo, the management of Cin7 plans
to cut this time by 40% and proactively implement features that customers need.

4. Introduction to Pendo

Pendo is essentially a product analytics software that you can install to your own software.
This allows teams to analyze, record, and monitor how users interact with the business’s
application. It provides In-app guidance, customer usage mappings, feedback capabilities and
many more. Pendo also works on multiple platforms, whether your app is SaaS model,
mobile app, web, and other digital content. Below is an image which shows one of the
dashboards in Pendo.

With the introduction of Pendo, Cin7 can cut down the time it takes to get feedback and sort
those feedback according to what’s most feasible and usable for customers. Pendo is able to
get the feedback and show these in a dashboard by most demanded and so on and is also able
to showcase the most used parts of the software per user and this allows us to see the heavily
used parts of the system so that the Cin7 team can make those parts of the software more
attractive to the customer. This is essentially a user map.

Figure 1: Pendo dashboard

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Cloudinary.com (2023)

5. Process and Challenges of Implementing Pendo at Cin7

Pendo is essentially a plugin which Cin7 had to install on the code of their software. Once
this was installed, Cin7 was able to view the data taken from the system on a dashboard such
as the one shown in the previous page.

Once the installation to the code was done, it was then a matter of training a few responsible
staff members from each department on how to use Pendo for their relevant requirements.

Since Pendo is also a cloud-based platform, the only requirement was to have a stable internet
connection. As always, training someone on new software is extremely challenging.
However, since Cin7 wants to use Pendo for a greater cause, no expenses were spared in
getting the most qualified Pendo onboarding services in order to get Cin7 to start using Pendo
as soon as possible. Carefully selected staff members from each department were trained by
these professionals until they were proficient enough to perform their needed tasks.

Once the staff is trained, they will be able to start using the tools which Pendo offers. Cin7
mainly wanted to focus on building In-app guidance, customer usage mappings, and in-app
feedback methods, however, this was going to be a very time-consuming challenge, as these
tools have to be configured for every module in the system. Which means the person
implementing these tools will need to first draft it, then have a product expert check the flow
and give comments, make corrections based on comments from the product experts, and then
finally proofread and release it. On average this can take around 10 to 15 working days per
module and each module can have multiple features. Cin7 has 10 main modules, which will
roughly take the team of trained staff about 8 to 10 months which is a long period to wait.
However, Cin7 can slowly start rolling out bits and pieces of the tools in highly used areas of
the software using the data shown in Pendo for user usages.

Figure 2: Cin7 modules

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The other challenge Cin7 faced during this time is allocating dedicated employees to
configure Pendo. The rough timelines that were given in the previous paragraph were based
on the trained employee working full time on Pendo. However, in reality, there definitely will
be other important tasks to attend to and this can slow down the process.

6. Benefits of Implementing Pendo at Cin7

We discussed briefly on what benefits Pendo brings to Cin7 at the start of the report.
Essentially, even though the time taken to set up is quite large, the later benefits are much
greater. We will now list them out here;

● Each module can have a help guide in case the customer gets lost
o These guides will help the customer find exactly what they are looking for
o If what the customer is looking for is not found, there is a feedback box to
send a message and the team at Cin7 will be notified
● Feedback surveys can be automatically displayed within the software so that
customers could rate out software and provide a comment on why they gave the
rating
● Usage patterns can be observed and Cin7 will be able to pay more attention to those
areas in the software
● Data on which parts of the globe are Cin7’s customers based in
● If the software isn’t working due to technical reasons, Cin7 will be notified through
Pendo and then Cin7 can notify the customers as well

In conclusion, if we summarize all these points, Pendo gives Cin7 the ability to proactively
assist their customer base using Pendo’s tools. In this day and age, you can convince
customers to remain loyal to a product by providing exceptional customer services which is
the key to any business. Even if the product quality is not 100% perfect, through proactive
customer centricity, Cin7 is able to win the lot.

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7. References

Rethinking Retail: How to Increase Customer Stickiness. (n.d.). Bluecore. Retrieved July 27,
2023, from https://www.bluecore.com/blog/rethinking-retail-increase-customer-
stickiness/#:~:text=What%20is%20Customer%20Stickiness%3F

10 Things Customers Want and Expect from Customer Service | Fonolo. (2014, July 16).
Fonolo.com. https://fonolo.com/blog/2014/07/5-things-customers-want-and-expect-
when-it-comes-to-customer-service/#:~:text=Your%20customers%20crave%20a
%20personalized%20experience

(2023).Cloudinary.com. https://res.cloudinary.com/adaface/image/upload/v1635161705/Side
%20project-%20Marketing%20tools/expirable-direct-uploads_2Ff08169fc-157c-
4f0c-9b9d-6d9d2ef6968b_2Fpendo-dashboard.png

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