Let us tell you the story of how one of our clients grew up within a short period of time after implementing a CRM into their work.
The company we worked with is the official distributor of major foreign manufacturers of medical equipment. Top 10 suppliers of ophthalmic equipment. Their clients are every second clinic in the country.
The company has a strong team of employees: people are passionate about their work and take a responsible approach to it. But at a certain point, the personal qualities of the employees alone weren’t enough anymore. The more deals there were, the more customers the company began to lose. This was due to the lack of a systematic approach to work, “manual” transaction management in notebooks, and opaque sales processes. Then there was an understanding that without sales automation and service, the company would be unable to cope further.

The technical director of one trading company talks about the experience of implementing CRM: why there was a need, how the resistance of employees was overcome, and how it was possible to increase the number of successful transactions without expanding the staff.

There was no centralized customer base. As the flow of information grew, it was necessary to store data about:

• transactions;
  
• sold equipment and accessories to the equipment;
  
• sources of customer attraction;

Internal processes related to the increase in the volume of transactions: approval of commercial proposals, installation of equipment, shipments, receipt of spare parts from the warehouse, and so on.

Initially, such information was stored in notebooks, external files, Excel, and Word. But the company didn’t know how to process it correctly, systematize it, and use it for business. It was necessary to create a unified information system for all departments with the most detailed contact information.

Lack of transparency in sales processes and customer relationships. At what stage is the transaction, and whether everything is going well, was assessed on a whim. The company needed an end-to-end process of the full cycle of the transaction: to understand where the transaction is, which people to connect with, what is needed to direct the transaction in the right direction, sign a contract, and successfully execute it. There were no tools to control sales volumes. The employees themselves told the management what was going on inside the deal — it was their subjective view.

It was necessary to get a system for analyzing and monitoring the work of sales department employees. To do this, we needed tools that would allow us to track indicators and make adjustments. The company started losing deals and customers. Employees forgot to call, send a commercial offer, or issue an invoice. As a result, the company was losing profits. It was necessary to improve the speed and quality of customer service: respond to requests in a timely manner, send documents, and not forget about agreements.

The same number of employees — more deals

Prior to the introduction of CRM, the company concluded 1,600 transactions per year. After that – more than 1,800. The increase in the number of transactions occurred with the same staff size.

The cycle of transactions has become shorter. The company automated the processes of internal document management: they established a two-way exchange with the Accounting module, and part of the document management was transferred. We have fully integrated stationary and partially mobile telephony into the system. We have introduced services for e-mail newsletters, social networks, messengers and adjusted reporting on the work of employees.

Before the introduction of CRM, each employee made about four hundred interactions per year. Now there are more than one and a half thousand recorded interactions with the results within the system per employee. The growth is more than three times.
We have received the highest profit for the entire period of the company’s activity.

We have built end-to-end sales processes. Employees have moved away from notebooks, Word and Excel. The management always knows at what stage the transaction is and can promptly connect additional employees to the task if difficulties arise.

We have created reliable financial statements. The CRM data and the “manual” data did not seriously converge at the initial stage. We have debugged this moment, and now reporting is conducted in CRM — there are no such problems anymore.

Employees began to work on processes. The processes in the company existed before, but they were fixed on paper and had a formal character: no one executed them. When the internal processes of the enterprise were transferred to CRM, it became easier to track the implementation and correct problem areas.

Employees began to earn more. Sellers have a tool to make more transactions. The more the manager has made a profit, the higher the income. As the number of transactions increased, everybody benefited.

While the company was working with one insurance company and had 3 operators on staff making calls, it was possible to cope with the data flow using Excel tables. The manager divided the database between operators and collected the results at the end of the day. The fact that each operator recorded the results of calls in a convenient form was not a problem since he made about 80 calls in one day. However, the manager already had enough work to do: divide calls between operators, monitor the execution of tasks and then process the results. Following a phone call, it was often necessary to calculate the cost of insurance for the client, coordinate the offer with the client, and coordinate the time and place of the meeting for signing and paying for insurance. Sometimes the calculations made for the client were lost, and they had to be made anew. Sometimes it was necessary to clarify the information from the client several times, which was not the best way to characterize the smoothness of processes in the company. In general, the company coped with the tasks with the means that were available. And since the team worked together for six months, everyone worked together with each other, and eventually worked out all the internal processes, and brought the work almost to automatism.

Over time, the business developed, revenues increased, new partners appeared, supplying lists of potential customers. In order to carry out the increased volume of work, five additional operators were hired. After that, the problems began.

First, new employees needed to be trained. In addition to training in the technique of conducting telephone conversations, training in working with data was required. Each of the employees understood in his own way how, what, and when he needed to do, from which table to take a list for calling, and where to save the results of calls. In the end, the manager had to process gigantic data arrays daily and manually.

Against the background of growing customer dissatisfaction, employees also began to express dissatisfaction with wages. The company motivated employees with premiums, which were calculated as a percentage of insurance services sold, which required accurate calculations and taking into account which of the operators should receive a premium for the client. Conflicts began to arise since several operators could work with one client in turn, and as a result, it was not possible to understand exactly whose client it was.

All these problems piled up and resulted in a constant staff turnover in the company. Employees left because of conflicts, low wages, and the lack of transparency in the motivational scheme. Incoming new employees were immersed in the ongoing processes for a long time and with difficulty. Under these conditions, the problem with data duplication (the same customers were called several times on different lists) became practically invisible. And at the same time, one of the company’s employees took advantage of the fact that all the lists of potential customers were available to all employees, and when he quit, he copied these lists to himself and subsequently passed them on to competitors.

The company had had several options before it chose Bragona CRM. The choice was made in our favor, firstly, because the system met all the requirements, and secondly, because the system was organically integrated into the existing infrastructure of the organization. The last argument in favor of Bragona’s solution was the opportunity to study the system in detail before buying, using the consultation option and the opportunity to rent the system.

After choosing the platform, the integrator company was selected, which implemented the system. After studying the requirements and processes, the integrator adapted the system and developed instructions for its use. The adaptation was reduced to the fact that screen forms, reports, and user roles were configured.

After developing new work processes and implementing a CRM system that supports them, all employees of the company breathed a sigh of relief. If earlier training of new employees in the principles of work in the company took from 2 weeks to 1 month due to the lack of formal rules of work and many exceptions, then after the introduction of the CRM system, the course of a young fighter in the form of instructions on the system was read in 1 day. The very next day, the employee consolidated the acquired skills with practical exercises and, after another day of work under the guidance of senior colleagues, fully entered the working pace.

Due to the fact that each completed call was registered in the system, the productivity of each employee was calculated automatically by the system. On the main page of the CRM system, statistics on calls made for each operator for the current week were displayed. Every time, including the system, everyone saw their performance in comparison with the performance of colleagues, which caused a positive competitive spirit and increased productivity.