Armstrong Shock Absorbers, a local subsidiary of Tenneco Automotive - an American-based international company that is the world`s largest manufacturer of ride control products - uses the customer relationship management application, GoldMine, from FrontRange Solutions to improve sales.
Armstrong provides the shock absorbers for 80% of all locally manufactured vehicles.
"Shock absorbers are technically quite complex and they`re constantly being improved with the use of new technology," says Armstrong product manager, Phillip Lutz. "So our nine regional consultants have to ensure that the distributors and wholesalers whom we supply are kept up to date on the latest developments in shock absorber technology and how those developments have been incorporated into our products. That impacts directly on stock rotation at distributors and wholesalers.
"Also, most of our customers work with a multitude of different suppliers and vendors, so it`s important for our consultants to keep focusing them back on to our products. By tracking trends in GoldMine, we can see that regular visits by our consultants do have a positive effect - in that the consultants will invariably come away with an order for more or different products.
"We have to ensure, therefore, that customer visits are scheduled and prioritised and that records are kept of each customer interaction - so that a consultant`s follow-up is relevant and moves the relationship on.
"Also, because our consultants have such large areas to cover, we need to optimise their routes so that they can touch as many customers as possible in a single journey.
"GoldMine enables us to do all that easily."
Armstrong`s international parent has an in-house contact management solution that Armstrong chose not to use because "it`s a lot less flexible than GoldMine," Lutz says. "Because we`ve been able to adapt GoldMine`s reporting functionality to suit our needs, it has gone a long way towards shaping the way we operate - by making us more efficient and effective in the field.
"It also brings us back to basics. It keeps us focused on the value of personal contact with our customers."
Initially, Armstrong`s regional consultants were trained to input their own contact records and appointments on GoldMine. "But they`re on the road a great deal, so typing up their handwritten records at the end of a business day effectively meant doing the job twice," Lutz says.
"To make things easier for them and also to ensure that no customers fell through the cracks, we took on a commercial assistant to whom the consultants fax all their reports. The assistant then inputs all the customer information and GoldMine schedules customer calls according to rules we defined."
Armstrong also uses GoldMine to facilitate bulk faxing - and e-mailing, where applicable - of information and marketing campaigns to its customers. "We used to use a separate fax package, but GoldMine is the repository of all our customer contact information, so it makes sense to use it instead," Lutz says. "And, of course, we can tailor the information we send out based on what GoldMine tells us our customers need or want to know."
FrontRange Solutions (SA) product manager for Africa, Paul Bornhutter, says that because customer relationship management means different things to different organisations, GoldMine has been designed with process rather than specific functionality in mind. "The processes of making contact with customers and the actions that flow from such contact are usually the same from one organisation to another. It`s only the content that is really organisation-specific.
"So GoldMine doesn`t lock you into a particular way of dealing with your customers - or using the software. It doesn`t matter how you apply GoldMine. You will see a financially rewarding step-change in your customer relationships."
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