My name is Jozef Krajčovič and I am one of the founders of the Bondly startup. In this article, I will briefly describe what Bondly is about, what kind of problems it solves, and how it can help you with your business.

What Bondly is and what kind of problem does it solve?

We live in a digital age where entrepreneurs are increasingly aware of the importance of having their business processes defined in advance, especially with automating as many routine operations as possible. This is possible thanks to digital tools, which provides savings. Day-to-day work is facilitated for companies by e.g. automatic invoicing, automatic document processing, automatic content publishing, and much more.

However, where we lag behind today is the pre-sales process. That is, the process that takes place before the real acquisition of the customer happens. It is the moment from the first contact to the actual sale of the product or service. In the vast majority of cases, this process also involves creating quotations, estimates, proposals for a potential customer (also often called a lead). And this is what we focused at Bondly – how to make this quotation process more efficient and automated.

How does the business quotation process work today?

From the customer’s point of view:

Imagine you are looking for an accounting company. The first thing you do is to look for companies providing this service in your area and with necessary experience. You will visit their website and if you like what you see or have any positive references, you contact them. You need a price estimate. Not only for your own financial planning, but you need to compare it to others. By default, the company will invite you to a meeting or give you a call, asking you details needed to create a preliminary price offer. Imagine you have to do this with 5 to 10 companies. It is time consuming for both the customer and the supplier and is still only at the stage of quote or price estimate. It’s a lot of time you have to invest just to compare offers.

From the entrepreneur’s point of view:

As I mentioned, suppliers need to get additional information from the customer or client in order to create a relevant quote / price offer. They also spend time in meetings, on phone calls and writing many emails back and forth. And for sure all this costs the company a considerable amount of money, time and staff capacity. This is where the inefficiency happens, when companies burn their resources onôy for a “potential client”. Most of them do not even close the deal and the conversion rate is low. E.g. the customer chooses another, usually cheaper offer.

According to our survey, the average conversion rate from lead (potential customer) to closed deal is 20% . (depending on the type of business and industry). Companies today do not have an effective tool that would allow them to easily automate quotations and thus could save them costs associated with it.

These are the problems that we solve at Bondly. We try to help entrepreneurs and customers in more effective cooperation in the process of creation, distribution and acceptance of price estimates.

How do current entrepreneurs deal with this problem?

Today, entrepreneurs solve this problem inefficiently, in the form of old-school price offers (estimates, quotes, proposals).They create them manually, according to the template e.g. in the form of a sheet. These offers are often created on pure emotionally basis (especially with new and small companies) or unsystematically only to satisfy the client and to win the contract, at any cost. Entrepreneurs face problems like these on a daily basis.

Each company has to calculate whether it makes sense to optimize this process. It is a very simple equation:

how many hours does it cost you on average to create one price offer for a client

(count in any introductory meetings, phone calls, emails and all other time spent on the offer)

x

average company hourly wage or cost associated with this process

x

the average number of bids you create in one month

x

12 number of months per year).

Then you will receive the average annual cost for your company for this process. Is this amount worth optimizing or not? If yes, Bondly is exactly for you.

How did the idea for the Bondly solution come about?

About 5 years ago, I began to feel from my experience that this is a real problem that most entrepreneurs face but also underestimate or do not solve at all. In my case, there were various collaborations, especially with digital and marketing agencies or software companies that struggle with this. However, since I had a lot of projects running at the time, I left the idea of ​​a solution to this.

However, as I started to build my own business, I became increasingly aware that this was a real problem that also affected my business and that it needed to be addressed. The real push came during the COVID-19 crisis. Companies have begun to think more and more about automating and digitizing processes. This was often the only way to stay efficient in addition to working from home and with limiting access to personal meetings.

Who is the tool for? What does your target group look like?

Bondly is suitable for business people who think ahead. Who are already thinking about their business processes, how to make them more efficient, faster, and how to scale them while maintaining the quality of output and of their services or products. All this while improving and simplifying the user experience for end clients, customers and partners. For us it is the so-called “frustration free” approach on both sides. And it is also our goal to provide entrepreneurs with a tool to increase efficiency, reduce costs and increase customer satisfaction.

It doesn’t matter if you are a large company or an individual. Bondly is for companies that provide services such as accounting, financial and tax consulting, sales products, or digital agencies, software houses and more. Bondly also can be used by freelancers, specialists, individuals and creatives who want to devote more time to their work while spending less with administration. In short, every entrepreneur or company who wants to work smart not hard.

What are the benefits of using your tool and why we should use it?

Benefits for the entrepreneur or company:

• A more efficient and systematic approach to the pre-sales process, including generation of new contacts in the lead-generation process.
• Reduce company cost – by reducing the time needed to create quotations by up to 91%*, you save not only time but also money. You no longer have to waste resourcing working on routine tasks. Instead you can fully invest in the growth of your business.
• Increase conversion rate – focus on customers who are willing to pay for your service or product. Get highly qualified leads.
• Reduce your price estimate error rate by up to 32%
• Lightweight CRM – all your estimates are in one place. Bondly allows you to easily and efficiently manage all business cases within the Sales pipeline. You can also import this data into your own CRM or any other internal system.
• Data & Analytics – you will get an overview of results in the form of various reports and charts, which will help you make better decisions about your business and improve your future estimates.
• and many others, which we will present to you on our soon.

Benefits for your customer:

• Transparency customers prefer to know how much a service or product will cost in advance. The rate ratio from the first contact to closed sale increases significantly if the customer has the opportunity to quickly and easily obtain an estimate or a price offer for the required service or product.
• Save time that the customer otherwise has to invest in emails, phone calls and face-to-face meetings.
• Speed ​​- customers will immediately receive a preliminary quote for your service or product, which is a competitive advantage.
• Easier planning – the customer does not have to wait and can immediately incorporate your service or product into their financial planning, which can eliminate competition that provides offers manually and often through lengthy process.

What is the current status of the Bondly project?

We are currently completing the first beta version of the product, the so-called MVP. At the same time, we are negotiating with the first users or “Early adopters” and we collect feedback from them to improve further product development. We adapt the functionality to the needs of our users. During the second quarter, we plan to start selling the product directly to the Slovak and Czech markets.

What are your plans for the future?

Want to offer a quality product that really helps businesses so we prefer to go slow now. However, after the validation of the product on the Slovak and Czech markets, we plan to expand to foreign markets as well. This will give us even more relevant feedback from different markets and business types, based on which we will add more additional functionality. We think globally in local conditions. It is a great challenge for us.

Last words

If you like our product and if it solves the problem of your business, please let us know. We will be more than happy to provide you with detailed information or a direct demo. You can also follow us on LinkedIn a Facebook.

* Bondly survey conducted among 47 corporate customers in 2021

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