Russell Finex: From Salesforce to Workbooks 

US operation Sales & Marketing, Director Rob O’Connell wanted to give the sales team the tools their need to improve forecasting, better understand customer behaviour and free up their time.

“The goal was to really start understanding our business better by tracking data. Impro ve on sales team’s performance by helping them to understand where their priorities are. And then also help management keep track of where salespeople were in the process – where opportunities might lie and where training is needed.”

The decision to adopt a new CRM solution was prompted by a system that was difficult to customize and unreliable support. The team at XPS started looking at different solutions to help them get better results.

“The service and support shortcomings of our previous CRM system were particularly frustrating. If we had an issue, we’d have to email the support team and wait for a response. Because they were based on the US west coast, we’d usually get a reply in the middle of the night, which really slowed things down.

When you did eventually get through to someone on the phone, because their support function was overseas, it often resulted in difficult conversations where no one really understood what was being said. This made it incredibly challenging to move things forward.”

With a big project coming up, Rob wanted to find the right solution to help the sales team. When it came down to the comparison, Workbooks won them over with support like no other.

“We thought it would be good to look at the market again. Salesforce was working ok for us, but this was a much bigger project, so we wanted to be certain we had the best solution. We went out to the market and looked at various comparison sites and reviews. We called vendors in. And we narrowed it down to Salesforce, a Microsoft product and Workbooks. What we found is that the support at that stage and the interest we were getting from Workbooks and the process of deciding what was best for us was a different experience with Workbooks. It was much better.”

Choosing a CRM: Comparing Salesforce, Microsoft and Workbooks

With a big project coming up, Rob wanted to find the right solution to help the sales team. When it came down to the comparison, Workbooks won them over with support like no other.

“We thought it would be good to look at the market again. Salesforce was working ok for us, but this was a much bigger project, so we wanted to be certain we had the best solution. We went out to the market and looked at various comparison sites and reviews. We called vendors in. And we narrowed it down to Salesforce, a Microsoft product and Workbooks. What we found is that the support at that stage and the interest we were getting from Workbooks and the process of deciding what was best for us was a different experience with Workbooks. It was much better.”

Understanding the business and its customers

Workbooks helped the team at Russell Finex better understand their business and customers it was much easier to deliver exactly what customers were looking for.

Analyzing customer data for better communications:

“We use it for analyzing our markets. So, we can have much more access to who we’re selling to. What countries, what markets, what size business – all these things can be segmented so we can understand better. Post sale – we also use Workbooks for keeping contact with customers about additional products and additional services we can offer”.

Uncovering and responding to business challenges:

“You can spot possible issues if you haven’t got much business arriving in some areas. You can start to understand why that is and make changes. Or if you see a big increase in business then you might need to add extra resources to it. It gives you more predictability.”

Helping the sales team achieve their goals faster

There are three ways that Workbooks has saved valuable time for the sales teams at Russell Finex.

• Lead management: “It handles any lead that comes through the company. Whether it’s on our website, through a phone call, through an onsite visit from one of our salespeople who would go out and create that lead themself.”
• Forecasting: “Forecasting is massive change for us. A salesperson can look at their forecast in real-time and say ‘yes these are my projects that are most important right now. That’s made a huge difference.”
• Automated emails: “Some of its automated. Our website emails come straight through to Workbooks. They’re prefilled and then allocated out to the right salesperson. It helps salespeople track and manage leads all the way to an opportunity through to an order.”

Ensuring marketing teams can track costs

While Rob wanted to improve the efficiency of the sales team, Workbooks was also able to help the marketing teams run campaigns more effectively with clear cost tracking.

 “Our marketing can run campaigns included things like trade shows and the obvious things like email shots. They go as far as tracking costs and looking at the return on investment for each one. So that’s good”

Thinking about the future: Connecting ERP and CRM

For most manufacturers, the best way to manage every step of your supply chain is to integrate your ERP and CRM. This way you can manage the front and back end of your business in one clear way.

“We are in the very final stages of connecting Workbooks to our ERP system. This means that the data will flow between the two systems very well and we won’t be keying any data twice. Once that’s done, it will save a lot of people, a lot of time. Giving better visibility to the group, from salespeople right the way through to board level as to where our business is coming from, historical business, and will hopefully lead to more sales.”