In the specialty equipment sector, the successful sales process requires a very technical conversation with a prospective customer that can easily span four or five months. In addition, it is not uncommon for this discussion to involve several iterations of proposals.

Each version of each proposal could easily involve several third party vendors and a single primary distributor. These are highly technical proposals that become valuable assets in and of themselves. By definition these proposals are a company asset and managers wanted to be able to quickly share these proposals with sales personnel throughout the company. In this way, sales and support personnel become better trained regarding what is working and how to better expedite the entire sales process.

Traditionally, this process had been managed via the fax machine and increasing complex Excel spreadsheets. Tracking versions of proposals against different versions of spreadsheets became very difficult. Highly skilled sales staff were spending too much time managing data and not interacting with customers. Clearly the sales process had to be better defined and staff needed to become knowledge workers, not merely information handlers.

To free up sales staff and better manage the relationship with customers and distributors the Specialty Equipment supplier turned to DataWeb. Using the DataWeb Builder, staff at DataWeb worked closely with the Specialty Equipment supplier to automate the entire process; from initial sales contact, thru several iterations of proposal, to the placement of the final order. The content of each account transaction now is a part of the company database and can be easily accessed by sales personnel throughout the company; whether that’s on the East Coast of the United States, Asia, Europe of South Africa. The company now has an environment for learning that supports everyone and allows for a more strategic use of their marketing and sales resources.

Customer Experience:

“The sales process has become much more disciplined. Reporting has become much easier and we all spend a lot less time preparing reports and much more time engaged with customers. We also have more confidence in the numbers that are being supplied by our distributors. This product has been a real plus and because it is a custom system that reflects the unique way we do business, very little training was involved. I can highly recommend DataWeb.”

Steve Bergstrom
Systems Analyst
MagnaDrive Corporation