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Staffco, an international manufacturing sales agency based in Cleveland, offers end-to-end sales and management support focused on designing highly ngineered products for highvolume manufacturers. Providing a market-focused team approach for manufacturers in OEM Automotive, Major Appliance, Medical and Telecom industries, Staffco employs nearly 20 high level sales engineers - from Detroit to Mexico City - who manage projects from inception through production, including design, tooling, pilot runs and quality approval.
With a two-to-three year average sales cycle involving lengthy design and test processing and heavy reporting requirements during each phase, Staffco sought-out a customer relationship management (CRM) solution to streamline its practices and ease staff burden from manual processes. Up until that point, the team was using Excel spreadsheets and disjointed address books to manage customer contacts and reporting.
After thoroughly reviewing several CRM products including ACT! and GoldMine, Staffco choose Maximizer CRM in mid-1990 to create a company database, sales forecasting, and project management system to present a unified system for its sales force.
“We were highly impressed with Maximizer CRM’s customization capabilities for our customer and project reporting needs,” said Larry McHale, CEO, Staffco. “Maximizer CRM offered a far superior product, even in the mid ‘90s.”
Challenge
After nearly 10 years, Staffco knew it needed to re-evaluate and upgrade its CRM solution as the company’s
sales and customer support needs had grown significantly. They needed the ability to accurately and
efficiently track sales progress and opportunities as well as provide reports to both manufacturers and
management.
“In early 2006, we had one full-time employee dedicated to manually generating sales call reports to share
information with management and manufacturers,” said Steven Barnes, accounting and finance manager,
Staffco. “We realized it was time for a more sophisticated CRM solution that could provide greater visibility
through better project management, automated reporting and workflow, and ultimately help shorten our
sales cycle.”
With the help and suggestion of trusted business technology partner Intech Corporation, a Hartford, WI.,
systems integrator and Maximizer CRM Certification Solution Provider, Staffco migrated to a complete CRM
system offered by Maximizer Software, confident that the latest version of Maximizer CRM would help build
a stronger sales infrastructure. Added Tom Tietgen, owner, Intech Corporation, “Our customers see a rapid
return on investment with Maximizer CRM, due to its ease of implementation, powerful functionality, low
cost of ownership and Maximizer Software’s commitment to customer satisfaction.”
Solution
In addition to Staffco’s previous experience with Maximizer, Staffco and Intech selected Maximizer’s full-featured
CRM solution for the following reasons:
- Installation is simpler and faster than competing products
- Use of standard Customer Service module to log call details for specific products, categories, etc., which
significantly reduced customization requirements
- Creation of customized automated reporting using Crystal Reports® and drill-down visibility into sales
calls
- Management needed a comprehensive and flexible opportunity and project management system to stay
on top of accounts and sales progress, including the ability to update manufacturers on a weekly basis
- Integration of Workflow Automation, powered by KnowledgeSync, to gain competitive advantage by
automating and monitoring critical business processes
“Utilizing Maximizer CRM elevates our level of professionalism when presenting to clients and places us a
step above our competitors. The key is timeliness and accuracy of reporting through one integrated system,”
added McHale.
Results
After an easy upgrade to the new version of Maximizer CRM, which took less than 10 days to implement
and train the entire sales force, McHale reports that Staffco has reduced its manual labor required to run
reports by 30 hours per week – a significant cost savings for the company. Now, sales and management
alike can ensure each phase of a project is on target and can automatically email 50 – 100 weekly update
reports to internal employees as well as manufacturer clients
“Maximizer CRM is a huge time-saver for our organization. Through Workflow Automation, we don’t need
to baby-sit or manually monitor our sales, marketing, and service processes and daily operations – the
system simply does it for us.”
With the recent availability of MaxMobile mobile CRM access via BlackBerry® devices, Staffco is preparing
for its next CRM phase to provide up-to-date access and synchronization of customer information for 22
members of its remote sales force. With customer records stored directly on their mobile devices, sales
representative will be able to work on the road just as efficiently as they would at their desks.
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