Implementation process
Customer engagement
Existing customers
Commercial Director:
Conducts a high-level discovery with the customer to determine business needs and required outcomes.
Consults with the business (both the Customer Team Lead and Integrations & Solutions Manager for FMS customers, and the latter for SaaS and supported customers).
Meets with the customer along with the relevant Affinity representatives.
Asks the Integrations & Solutions Manager to prepare the work estimate by emailing helpdesk@affinityteam.com. This automatically creates a Zoho ticket.
Continues to track the request (opportunity) in Salesforce.
Integrations & Solutions Manager:
Prepares the work estimate.
Asks the Commercial Director to review it and give feedback.
Refines the estimate based on feedback. This may be influenced by our relationship with the customer, and other factors.
Commerical Director:
Finalises the work estimate and sends it to the customer.
Creates a Hive card on the Customer Pipeline board.
Once signed off, assigns the card to the Integrations & Solutions Manager to start development.
New customer
For new customers, integrations are managed within the onboarding project if in scope, and if out of scope they are managed via the change management process. The Affinity Lead Consultant for the project will engage the Integrations & Solutions Manager via a Hive card and assign the ticket to them signalling that development can begin.
Web API implementation steps
These steps are for customers wishing to utilise our API.
The customer requests API keys and authentication credentials from us.
If the customer requires web hooks to notify changes to employee objects in the Affinity Payroll Admin system, we will provide them with a target URL (to send messages to), along with an HMAC secret (for message security).
The customer does the required setup on their end, using our API docs as a guide.
The customer audits their data (if relevant) based on data extracts provided by us.
The customer performs unit and end-to-end testing.
The customer is satisfied with their API integration and is now 'live'.
Once live, the customer monitors transaction volumes to ensure they comply with our fair use policy.
File-based transfer implementation steps
These steps are for customer wishing to transfer data via secure files.
The customer obtains SFTP credentials and standard file format information from us.
The customer works with us to configure secure file exchange processes.
The customer audits their data (if relevant) based on data extracts provided by us.
The customer tests data flows using production-like environments.
The file is used in production and the integration is deemed 'live'.