South African-owned freight and logistics company, Sabila, is using GoldMine from FrontRange Solutions to achieve greater transparency and efficiency in the management of its more than 500 local and international clients and its 60 international agents.
Established in 1982, Sabila handles freight forwarding, customs clearing, warehousing and distribution for companies with import and export requirements. Its clients include Motorola, Kimberley Clark, Avnet and Firestone. Its 43 employees operate from offices in Johannesburg, Cape Town, Port Elizabeth and Durban.
The company went from having no contact management solution straight to GoldMine in order to be able to monitor the performance of its distributed sales force and gain continuously updated insight into the status of individual clients.
Says Yolande Uys, Sabila`s GoldMine administrator: "GoldMine allows us to keep all the proposals, quotes and invoices for a given client in one, easily accessible database - and enables us to link that data to detailed information from our sales executives regarding any appointments or telephone or e-mail discussions they have with our clients.
"We can therefore see at a glance what further business opportunities we can drive out of current client circumstances and in what ways we should refine our approaches to potential clients. In other words, GoldMine is a strategic business driver for Sabila."
FrontRange created an interface between GoldMine and Sabila`s accounting solution, enabling an easy exchange of data between the two programs.
"This gives us both immediate and cumulative insight into what impact our sales efforts are having on the bottom line - and we can be very accurate and objective in awarding performance and incentive bonuses to our sales people," Uys says. "Management precision is increased further by the fact that GoldMine allows us to log all new clients per sales person, so there`s never any confusion about who brought in which client."
In addition, employees who are not authorised for access to the accounting package are able to draw from GoldMine client reports that include a level of financial information that enables them to offer clients more relevant, targeted service. As Uys says: "We`ve been able to increase the level of client knowledge in the company - and therefore our overall effectiveness in service delivery - without compromising financial confidentiality or security, either for our clients or Sabila.
"And, best of all, GoldMine is so easy to install and use that it took no more than two weeks from the time we ordered it to going live. All of which makes strategic change relatively easy to achieve."
FrontRange Solutions (SA) managing director, Tracey Newman, says the whole point of modern technology should be to facilitate organisational adaptability. "The days of the customer organisation having to bend itself out of shape in order to accommodate the inflexibility of its systems are over. Business process re-engineering should only be necessary if the way you`re running your business makes no sense in terms of your market or your long-term goals, and never because your technology is intractable.
"In other words, your technology should give you the power to actualise your strategies - in the most efficient, affordable way."
Uys agrees. "We chose GoldMine out of a range of competing products not because of its price but because it gave us business options the others couldn`t."
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