coop-dev · 2026-09-24 · 4m31s
09-24 Reasoning Note: Scaling a CRM Replacement Dashboard and Addressing Unbudgeted Compute Costs
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Core Synopsis
The engineering lead has successfully developed a prototype dashboard that fully replicates the core data-mining functionality of the dealership's former CRM, Mastermind. This new tool integrates the entire customer portfolio from the DMS, allowing salespeople to filter by metrics like contract maturity dates, which immediately provides a list of actionable sales leads. While the initial feedback from the sales team is overwhelmingly positive, confirming the tool could replace Mastermind and save that expense, the primary strategic bottleneck is now cost-scaling. The lead developer is concerned that expanding from a single-instance pilot to individual dashboards for every salesperson will incur significant, unbudgeted compute costs, potentially several hundred dollars per month. This transforms the project from a personal development initiative into a formal product with financial implications that need to be addressed before a full rollout.
The Pilot Program: A "Mastermind" Replacement
1. The Problem Gap
- Status Quo: The dealership cancelled its subscription to the Mastermind CRM, leaving salespeople without a tool to mine the existing customer base for new opportunities (e.g., upcoming lease maturities).
- The Pain: Salespeople expressed frustration over losing this capability and requested that management bring Mastermind back.
- The Critical Need: A simple, effective way for the sales team to identify and engage high-potential customers within the dealership's portfolio without incurring the cost of a full-featured CRM.
2. The Solution: An Integrated Dashboard
- Core Functionality: The new tool is a standalone dashboard, not a full CRM. It has ingested the entire customer portfolio from the DMS, creating a complete analog of the dealership's business history.
- Key Feature: A "Portfolio Mode" allows users to apply dynamic filters, such as "maturities in the next month," to instantly generate lists of customers with upcoming service or purchasing needs. This directly replicates the "mining" function that salespeople valued in Mastermind.
- Data Integrity: The dashboard includes historical sales data, such as which salesperson originally sold the car, but it intentionally excludes new vehicle notes, as that feature was deemed low-value "silliness" by the developer.
The Strategic Crossroads: Scaling and Cost
1. The Scaling Request
The immediate user request is to provide each salesperson with their own personalized dashboard view, pre-filtered to their specific customer list. This would allow them to see their maturing contracts and other opportunities without having to manually select their name.
2. The Bottleneck: Unbudgeted Compute Costs
- Thesis (The Pilot): In its current state, the tool is a low-cost personal project developed by the lead.
- Antithesis (The Rollout): Deploying individualized dashboards for the entire sales team would dramatically increase server activity ("compute"). This would shift the project from a negligible expense to a significant operational cost, estimated at a potential $400-$600 per month.
- Synthesis (The Decision Point): The developer believes creating individual dashboards is technically "doable" since it uses the same underlying data. However, a decision must be made on whether the business is willing to fund these new operational costs to fully replace Mastermind.
No device highlights on this take.
0:03
So say this week, if you want, say today plus the future. Yeah, okay. Also, good. I think there's a lot of help. So there's a lot of people in there, and here's why. You now have our entire portfolio dumped into this file, which is really fucking cool. It's it's kind of a big deal actually. So it means this thing is a complete analog for what most people use Mastermind for now. You see, you have a giant. I click out of here. I'm going to show you another little feature. So you have a big button that says Portfolio Mode.
0:35
It's probably better if you drive. Okay, here we go. You can drive. Just click it. Yep. Boop. Click it one time and just give it a second. It's like a big file; it has to build. There you go. Now you can choose maturities, pay types. You see how you have like different drop downs now? Yep. So now you can choose. This this not the report. This actually. This an acquired dashboard, so it's service business. It's all of our portfolio. It's kind of a lot. So, like, you can choose maturities. Like, here's kind of a cool thing: choose maturities and say, say, one month, next one month. Now, this everyone who's got something that's maturing in the next month, give or take. Awesome. Okay. And right now, I think it's going to be showing you like leases and cashes, and finances. You know, but you can choose one type if you want. Okay.
1:29
Have questions about this with all the salespeople. Yeah. So all those people were supposed to be nuked in everything. So why is there still stuff under there? Because these are what I did. You got to imagine this giant DMS sales file. Okay. So what I did was I wanted it to give me the names that were attached to any customer, even if they don't have a lead. Okay. Even if they bought a car for most five years ago or four years ago, but they're in for service. Okay. Or they're just in our portfolio of business. Okay. So I exported that file, and so it tells us who sold them. So that's why that's there. It's just telling you who sold them a car. Got it. Okay. And then, how hard would it be? This is really awesome. How hard would this be to give a person their dashboard? It starts at one point. It starts costing me money, and I end up having to bill you guys. Because what we're doing is, this thing is, right now, it's not costing me much money.
2:25
And and I'm doing it because I want to develop it into a product that I can I'll eventually sell it. But at one point it does start costing compute, and we're talking about a few you know extra like four five six hundred bucks a month it could be. So if I have it building, that building building that many dashboards, it might end up being costly. I don't know. But I honestly think it's doable. Um, because it's all the same data. It's just hey, let's parse this into.
2:55
Well, you can't get into Vind Solutions. No, Vind Solutions is a CRM. It's like a whole different. This is not a CRM. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, so here's what's funny: is with enough time, I could build a CRM. What I'm saying is, this will eventually be. I'm not trying to build a CRM. It's like I never set out to do that. Where you're going with it? Yeah, sort of. But this would be really nice if they could work there because then they can go in there. Say I'm a salesperson. I can go pick my name. I can see all my stuff maturing. I can see all of my. What ends up being is a replacement for Mastermind, and we don't have Mastermind anymore. Right. You know, and like Adam doesn't have Mastermind. They canned Mastermind, and the salesmen were complaining about getting it back. Which I didn't know that, but I showed him this this week, and the salesmen are like, "Well, shit, I could just use this. We don't need to get Mastermind back." Correct.
3:44
And I remember when I was selling, I used to use Mastermind, and I used to go in there and mine Mastermind. Yeah, and the thing about Mastermind is it does a lot more. Like it does this whole thing. Like, here's, well, I have this. This is now pulling all of the old notes, so this shows what the customer paid. All that stuff's there, right? I just don't have this working. No, I don't want this. I didn't think that I wanted this to like show you notes on the new vehicles because that's just sort of silliness, right? And I never used that out of Mastermind, right? Like I didn't need Mastermind to work with Carnot for me. Correct. I just needed to find a fish to to catch, and then I can call them and welcome and you know. Um. Welcome.