“Gold-Vision
delivered the team solution that Design Supply needed; it
represented an integrated solution for an organisation in
which effective use of marketing spend is fundamental to their
success.” Jon Telling,
Managing Director, Design Supply
Set up in 1991, Design Supply Limited
was originally dedicated to supplying drawing office products to
the Architectural and Design markets. The changing printing environment,
however, was seen as a major opportunity, and since 2001 the company
repositioned itself to specialise in the provision of wide format
printing solutions to a diverse customer base.
It has a customer base of 1700 and a turnover of £2.5 million.
Design Supply aim to respond to new sales enquiries
within 2 hours, they offer a total solution to customers to ensure
that they receive a product and service that best suits their personal
circumstances, from product selection through to install and follow-up
service. They recognised that a CRM system could play a fundamental
role in improving their responsiveness to new customer leads and
enable them to understand their business better, leading to improved
marketing spend and ultimately to increased turnover and profit.
Design Supply had clear
objectives for their new CRM system:
An integrated solution to allow individuals to
work as a team as well as enabling departments to work together,
from front to back
Effective measurement of the Sales team
Flexible system that could be customised to meet the needs
of their business
Provision of useful Lead data analysis
Improve method for Lead allocation
Increase effectiveness of Marketing spend
Create intelligent Campaigns to increase sales for sell-on
items
Ease of use
Design Supply also calculated the difference that a new CRM
system would need to generate a return on their investment.
Every day they receive in the region of 10 to 30 leads –
the successful conversion of one additional lead per week would
provide a clear case for the investment required.
Why did Design Supply
select Gold-Vision?
Gold-Vision represented a cost-effective solution with excellent
functionality that could be flexibly manipulated to Design Supply’s
needs. They felt very confident that they would be able to work
well with the Gold-Vision team, who had demonstrated a good understanding
of their business, how they wanted to operate and how they wanted
a CRM system to work for them. Furthermore Design Supply believed
that Gold-Vision would be easy to use due to its integration with
Microsoft Outlook® and clear user interface. This was key to
the success of adoption by their team as individuals across all
departments would be required to use the new CRM system.
Implementation
Design Supply wanted to implement quickly, to have the new Gold-Vision
CRM system up and running as soon as possible, to reap the benefits
and realise their investment.
- The Gold-Vision implementation was planned to ensure that the
speed of delivery met the objectives required by Design Supply:
- Intensive business process and system configuration day held at
the commencement of the project to ensure that Gold-Vision screen
layouts would match Design Supply’s needs.
- During test period internal meetings were held to demonstrate
Gold-Vision to all those who would be using the system. Users were
able to see what the system looked like, what the benefits could
be for their teams and for their own work. This received a very
positive response from users before go-live.
- Bespoke integration work was carried out to provide additional
functionality of the Gold-Vision system:
i) Front end to Design Supply Website – links were set up
to provide an automatic transfer of the web enquiry data received
into a Gold-Vision Opportunity including a follow-up Activity.
ii) Back end to Design Supply Finance system – synchronisation
of accounts information into Gold-Vision
- Two-stage process for user training was undertaken to provide
initial introduction training during the test period followed up
with more detailed training prior to go-live date.
Design Supply set clear objectives for the project and adopted
an internal strategy to ensure that achievement of goals was maximised.
The user team:
- were involved with the project at an early stage
- understood the project objectives and what was expected from them
- received appropriate training to enable effective use of the system
- experienced the benefits of the system quickly
Tracking, Analysis & Results The Gold-Vision system was successfully and quickly
implemented including application of additional functionality through
bespoke integration work.
Post implementation strategy by Design Supply has been aimed at
ensuring that users adopted the Gold-Vision system quickly and effectively.
In essence the Gold-Vision CRM system provided the opportunity to
develop their marketing function so that it became a seamless part
of the Design Supply business.
In summary the benefits experienced following Gold-Vision
implementation at Design Supply to date are:
Automatic Opportunity creation within Gold-Vision following receipt
of online web enquiries has saved a huge amount of time that was
previously required to manually input data. Now the focus is on
what are the leads and how should we best deal with them most effectively?
Jon Telling (Design Supply MD) states:“The
link from the web enquiry form into Gold-Vision has meant that there
is now no way that leads can fall down a hole! We are now 100% sure
that all leads are being correctly registered and that we can track
these all the way through.”
A unique feature of the Gold-Vision system is the automatic email
tracking that occurs for all accounts, contacts and mail domains
with no requirement for additional synchronisation. Design Supply
found that Gold-Vision Email Tracking has reaped significant advantages
for their business. Whether their team is dealing with a quote for
a colleague who is unavailable or tracking a support issue, it is
possible to gain a clear understanding of the history in relation
to a particular item.
Jon Telling (Design Supply MD) states: “Gold-Vision email
tracking has been ‘huge’ for our business; we easily
know who’s done what and where. If someone is out of the office
we know that the information is always there to enable us to quickly
understand the historical background and assist a customer efficiently.”
Team working across departments has improved significantly as individuals
can no longer store independent lead and sales data.
Charlie Shaw (Esteiro MD) states: “Gold-Vision delivered
the team solution that Design Supply needed; it represented an integrated
solution for an organisation in which effective use of marketing
spend is fundamental to their success.”
Prior to the introduction of Gold-Vision it was difficult to assess
lead sources and lead conversion information. This is now extremely
straight forward. Jon Telling (Design Supply MD) states: “We
are able to get to the information easily from Gold-Vision. On a
daily basis we analyse team and individual performance in terms
of how many events have taken place by user, their pipeline, value
of pipeline, how many leads and how many activities have been updated.
We understand how we are moving forward and how we can further improve
our marketing focus.”
Gold-Vision has vastly improved the understanding of what works
best for Design Supply in relation to their Marketing spend. They
are able to respond more quickly to market developments and plan
smarter campaigns to existing customers and new prospects.
Jon Telling (Design Supply MD) states: “We are always
looking for ways in which we can improve the efficiency of our marketing
spend. With Gold-Vision it is now much more traceable, enabling
us to focus on what is really important.”
The Design Supply management team were very clear and consistent
in their message to users that it was imperative that they used
the Gold-Vision system fully and properly. This has contributed
to the success of the implementation and the subsequent benefits
that Gold-Vision has delivered.
Jon Telling (Design Supply MD) states: “Even the ‘die-hards’
became interested in how they had won deals. Gold-Vision kept reminding
them of what leads they had and it meant that they had to do something
about it!”
At the beginning of the process Design Supply clearly set out their
objectives for a new CRM system including how much additional business
could be directly attributable to this. Return on investment was
calculated on the basis that one additional lead would be converted
per week and this objective has been achieved.
