Lighting the way

We’ve seen some dramatic improvements over the past year since implementing the [CRM] software. It’s enabled us to get a more complete view of our customers and our business activity by creating centralised project information,” says Douglas Stang, information services manager at lighting manufacturer Holophane. He continues: “It allows us to pull information about customers, products and projects into our central office. All departments now work off the same database. The software can also push information out to our field sales force and to our customers on the diversity of products that we can build.” And after one year using CRM software vendor Pivotal’s Relationship software and product configurator, Stang claims the company has already seen benefits. He says change orders have been reduced by 18%, while so-called ‘dirty orders’ – those awaiting order clarification – have been cut by 44%. “The software allows us all to work off the same page and identify areas where we can improve customer service and our order processing, so we can get the product out the door faster. With these improvements, the quantity of orders processed through our systems has increased by 25% with no additional staffing in the support departments,” he boasts. Holophane manufactures lighting products and is headquartered in Ohio, USA, with production plants and sales offices across Europe. It’s a $200m annual turnover company with a large direct sales team which has to work closely with clients to provide customised lighting solutions. Until 2001, although the firm’s strength had always been in its ability to mass customise its products, Stang says, “Complexity and time consuming bottlenecks in the order entry cycle contributed to manufacturing errors, re-scheduling, expediting and excessive handling of information and paperwork.” He continues: “This resulted in a third of all orders being sent back for clarification and 52% of orders needed changes. It was expensive, time consuming and frustrating for our clients. “As a ‘just in time’ manufacturer, we need to process orders quickly and accurately through the company. Any delays here can lead to late deliveries. And information about new product variations wasn’t always communicated effectively to our sales reps.” Work up front was required before the software implementation began. Stang says the company started by mapping out its existing and ideal order processing steps before concluding that some kind of flexible CRM software and product configurator were necessary. A phased implementation then began in early 2001 to 250 mobile and LAN (local area network) users. He points to a number of success factors in the project: “Product education is a critical factor to generate technical sales of new product offerings quickly. Sales training on an extensive and expanding product line is time consuming and requires better tools and technical information to ensure products are configured correctly. We determined that accuracy early in the process would speed order acceptance, product manufacturing and order fulfillment.” Integration issues Integration between the sales configurator and the company’s own back-end systems was also essential: “Pivotal’s solution was integrated with our existing [Enact Selector] sales configurator software so that we can now pass configured quotation line items between customer quotations and our manufacturing databases.” Although he chooses not to reveal the cost of the software or the associated integration work, he does state: “We’ve saved money simply by reducing the total number of orders expedited through manufacturing by 6%. Our sales staff can now spend more time with customers building long term business relationships. “Changes to product structure, pricing and options can be implemented in real time as product changes are made in manufacturing. And the software has in-built workflow technology that automatically routes special product engineering and pricing requests between the field and factory support departments.” And he adds: “Quotation information and project history are also automatically distributed to other sales staff subscribed to the project team which has helped reduce admin time too.”