Founded in 1960, ACME Truck Line Inc. is a
flatbed trucking service with a fleet of 1,300 trucks. It
handles 4,000 loads weekly, each weighing 50-50,000 pounds.
Specializing in short hauls of 100-180 miles within the Gulf
Coast states, the company maintains 70 offices throughout
the South and wanted to link these offices with Webbased
applications and streamline its entire business
infrastructure.“We had been relying
on separate LANs in each of our offices to facilitate local
operations,” explains Mike Coatney, president of ACME Truck
Line, “but were unable to leverage information across
offices. As the price of broadband links decreased, however,
we realized that we could create a Web-based WAN between all
of our offices so that every individual in our company could
leverage common data to improve internal operations as well
as the customer experience.”
CRM ... and Then Some
To facilitate the company’s operational
improvements, Coatney searched for a Webbased CRM solution
capable of delivering a consolidated view of customer
activities to every staff member involved with clients,
including sales staff, dispatchers, and the
credit/collections department. In addition, the solution had
to support sales force automation tasks; for example,
delivering— through a wireless PDA device—critical
information used by field sales staff to convert prospects
to customers and ensure customer satisfaction.
Coatney also wanted management tools to
allow regional sales managers the ability to track and
analyze each phase of the field sales effort and share data
with national account management staff. In order to
accommodate such broad utilization of customer and sales
account data, the system needed a robust security capability
that would limit “read” and/or “write” access features to
specific individuals. Finally, the entire solution had to be
easy to use.
“This is a trucking business: we pick up
something at point A and bring it to point B,” Coatney says.
“There is virtually no consultative selling or complex
technical customer support. Our processes are simple and
straightforward and we needed a solution that was equally
simple.”
SageCRM Meets Every Requirement
After a lengthy market search and detailed
proposals from five vendors, ACME Truck Line turned to the
only solution that met each of its requirements—SageCRM.
“The solution was easy to implement,” Coatney says. “With
the help of the Sage Software Professional Services Group,
we were up and running and fully integrated with our
existing IBM AS /400 back-office applications over the
course of a few months.”
ACME Truck Line’s SageCRM solution
enhances the all-important client-customer relationship by
providing an integrated framework for applying value-added
services and support to new and existing customers. Using
its new system, the company was able to simplify many of its
procedures.,/p>
Once a sales rep meets with a new
customer, he completes electronic forms provided by SageCRM
on his wireless PDA. In addition to standardized fields such
as name, address, and industry, the rep is prompted for
information about the potential business opportunity and
competing trucking services being used by the prospect. If
this form is not completed within a pre-specified interval,
the system automatically alerts the sales rep for further
action.
All of this data, along with information
about subsequent customer activities, is centrally stored in
the SageCRM database where it can be leveraged by authorized
users. Before a national accounts manager visits a customer,
for example, he can obtain up-to-the-minute information
about issues that may have occurred at any of the customer’s
multiple sites serviced by ACME Truck Line, and can address
them directly with the customer.
“We have built our business for more than
40 years by offering the best possible customer service
consistent with available technologies,” Coatney says, “and
SageCRM is empowering us to continue that commitment. By
giving our managers, sales staff, and dispatchers the
information they need to address all customer issues, this
solution is letting us streamline operational overhead and
strengthen customer relationships with outstanding service.”
Asbestway
Abatement Corporation
Asbestway Cleans Up
Their Customer-facing Processes With SageCRM
Major improvements in customer
service, intra-department communication, and
day-to-day processes have enabled Asbestway to grow
40-50% in revenues, in the last 12-24 months,
without dramatically increasing their workforce.
Since 1992, Asbestway Abatement
Corporation has provided environmental consulting
services, focusing on asbestos removal, lead paint
testing, and mold abatement. High quality service earned
them a reputation for excellence, so the company was
able to thrive for more than twelve years using manual
customer relationship management methods.
By 2004, however, Asbestway was beginning
to see the signs of having outgrown their manual
processes. With only a document management application
in place to store key documents, the company struggled
to give employees centralized access to customer
information, which in turn made it very labor-intensive
for them to provide thorough customer service. Also,
communication across departments was becoming
increasingly difficult because other than the data kept
in the document management application, each group
maintained separate records. Sharing information meant
sending emails, giving verbal updates, or exchanging
paper records.
Thanks to a prior relationship with a
SageCRM business partner who had helped them implement
document management and an accounting application,
Asbestway got their first introduction to CRM. According
to Mendy Gorodetsky, president of Asbestway, “Within 15
minutes, we were convinced that we needed CRM.”
Working side-by-side with their
partner, Asbestway evaluated four leading solutions.
Fortunately, the decision-making process was incredibly
fast and direct. “SageCRM made everything else go out
the window,” said Gorodetsky. “It wasn’t what we wanted;
it was what we needed.”
Integrating SageCRM into All
Areas of Business
Today, SageCRM sits at the center of
Asbestway’s business, along with KnowledgeSync, both of
which were expertly implemented by their business
partner. The solution not only enables advanced customer
relationship management, but also automates critical
processes, particularly time-sensitive ones. Now, when
Asbestway is working on a project with a city-mandated
deadline, key players receive email reminders to meet
due dates throughout the project. Similarly, if
salespeople don’t receive a response to a proposal
within a predetermined period, they receive email
instructions to follow-up with the account.
Asbestway takes advantage of SageCRM
in every functional area of business. For example, when
a new contract closes, a member of the sales staff scans
or downloads the information directly into SageCRM,
which then sends automated emails to the job-scheduling
staff. Once scheduled, an Asbestway technician receives
the job order, which was printed out of SageCRM.
On-site, the technician scans the job order’s barcode to
transmit a date and time stamp back into SageCRM.
It’s a full-circle solution that
enables management to track every aspect of every
project, even field work. End-users also appreciate the
conveniences that SageCRM affords. Gorodetsky explained,
“At first, they were skeptical of using a software
solution, but now they’re giving praises. It makes
everyone’s job easier because they’re not chasing paper.
Everything is right in front of them on their desktops.”
Experiencing Immediate and
Long-term Benefits
Since the implementation, Asbestway’s
customer service has dramatically improved because
representatives can access any account in SageCRM and
provide to-the-minute status on projects. Previously,
the rep would have had to search through filing cabinets
to piece together an answer for a customer.
Asbestway leveraged SageCRM reporting
to further improve customer service. Some clients
require weekly or even daily job-status reports, often
in a format particular to that customer. Asbestway’s
staff used to manually create each report. Now, SageCRM
automatically generates the reports according to the
customer’s specific requirements. The time savings from
this activity alone has rippled through the
organization, enabling employees to focus on customer
interaction, instead of laboriously compiling data.
The solution has also helped to
expedite payment collection. Now, when an invoice is
processed, the Accounting system sends an automated
notice into SageCRM. If the status of that invoice
doesn’t change from outstanding to paid within the
appropriate timeframe, the sales person for that account
receives an alert to contact the customer.
With one centralized SageCRM database,
Asbestway has resolved their intra-department
communication challenges. Teams can easily access shared
information, each contributing to their particular area.
Projects flow from sale to invoice with fewer
incidents—internal and external.
All of Asbestway’s achievements with
SageCRM have enabled the company to grow 40-50% in
revenues, in the last 12-24 months, without dramatically
increasing their workforce. “We’re able to hire less,
even though we’re doing more business because of SageCRM,”
said Gorodetsky.
Asbestway plans to generate additional
benefits going forward by adding five more SageCRM
licenses and implementing SageCRM Web Self Service to
give customers online access to project status and other
related information.