Shades Case Study - "The Power of Centralising Sales and Contact Information through iExtensions CRM"

Background

The Moores Furniture Group is a leading provider of quality kitchen, bedroom and bathroom furniture, and a market leader in the supply to both the public and private house building markets. Shades Furniture is a division of Moores Furniture and specialises in fitted bathroom fixtures, and supplies retail studios through a number of key distributors based nationwide around the UK.

The Moores Furniture Group is a subsidiary of the Masco Corporation, an American building products specialist. Masco have a number of divisions throughout Europe employing approximately 1,000 staff and are a Fortune 500 company.

The Challenge

Shades’ sales division comprises 15 employees concentrating on selling Shades’ hundreds of fitted bathroom fixtures to, and serving the needs of, 1200-1300 UK- based retail customers. The division’s goal was to provide superior customer care as well as increase sales. However as most representatives worked remotely, they found themselves facing an escalating challenge when it came to managing customer contact information. Most representatives tracked and stored customer and prospect information on their individual laptops via Excel spreadsheets. Therefore, they could not fully view or leverage their colleagues’ customer histories and other valuable insights which sales representatives had captured with each sales call or on site visit. As the company’s product inventory and customers’ needs grew, so did the need for a more centralised and stream lined contact management system. Furthermore, the company’s divisional managers, such as sales, operations and marketing, needed to analyse critical information to track profitability and pinpoint market trends.

Another pain point Shades’ sales representatives had was weekly reporting; it was laborious and time consuming. When weekly reports were due, each sales representative as well as the division manager was required to log their call reports and other activities. This took the entire division at least 16 hours per week, precious time that could be used for revenue-generating tasks.

The Solution

To tackle these challenges, in May 2007, Shades decided to deploy iEnterprises’ desktop CRM software, iExtensions CRM. As Shades was already operating on a Domino Lotus Notes-based platform, Shades were keen to adopt a CRM system that was also based on Lotus Notes, to ensure their sales representatives were comfortable with the new CRM system and to avoid a steep learning curve.

iExtensions proved to be very flexible, and the iEnterprises team provided assistance with configuring it and on site training to users. “It had all the elements we needed, and required very minor tweaks,” said Simon Mitchel, Shades’ National Sales Manager. The company adopted iExtensions CRM’s new Contacts, Leads, Call Reports, Activities and Custom databases.

The centralising and sharing of information has had tremendous benefits. With Web- based access, the remote sales representatives can access customer information anywhere they happen to be. All the information logged is available where it could be tapped by others within the organisation. “Whereas before,” said Simon, “If an employee dropped his laptop, we were in trouble.” The centralising and sharing of all customer information also meant less duplication and more accurate records. Other divisional managers can now drill down and analyse the progress of accounts and orders.

Weekly reports have become automated and are automatically distributed. Due to the new found visibility and sharing of information, Shades’ sales representatives now log more calls per day, and the division has already seen a near 50% increase in sales calls logged within a few months of deploying iExtensions CRM. “We’re on track for even more increases in sales calls over time,” commented Simon.

Another newly discovered benefit was that each bathroom product on display at a retailer site could be tracked in detail to each customer location. Whether it was a new colour, availability on a particular fixture or new door handle in a particular location, everything was easily accessible. This meant that when a customer inquired about a specific product, sales representatives could immediately view and relate customer activity to the product, as well as track the product from the company’s warehouse.

Needless to say, Shades have been very pleased with iExtensions CRM. The solution has helped provide a new level of efficiency and collaboration as well as created a centralised database rich with customer and product history. It is enabling the company to be proactive in relation to both sales and customer service. The software has been so well received that Shades is now contemplating rolling the iExtensions CRM solution to two other divisions within the company.