Cape Town-based Galetti Commercial and Industrial Property Brokers have implemented GoldMine, the mid-market customer relationship management (CRM) application from FrontRange Solutions, to help manage their growth.
Established in 2006, with two members of staff (its founder directors), Galetti grew very rapidly to include eight additional brokers and an administrative team. The company plans to open offices in Johannesburg in May and Durban at the end of 2008 and required a CRM application that could support an expanding national sales force.
"We handle a vast amount of information - buyers, what they're buying, sellers, what they're selling, how much for, leasing details, long-term contractual information, and research that backs up our consultancy - across a large number of different members of staff," says Galetti director, Francois Staples. "So, we needed software that could sensibly capture all the detail as well as give us a management bird's eye view at the touch of a button.
"Specifically, we needed each broker to be able to see what had been discussed with and promised to clients by the others so they could provide continuity of service to customers if the original broker was not in or had left the company.
"I had used GoldMine before and knew some of what it was capable of - so it made sense for us to start out with it. We've since discovered that there is much more to it than simply tracking customer contacts - and we're working with Dale Jordaan at Wyred, our implementation partner, to continuously get more and more benefit out of the way we use the software."
Jordaan says there is "so much functionality in GoldMine for the price you pay for it that we take an incremental approach with our customers. We give them the basic functionality they ask for upfront and then allow them to grow organically into more functionality as their confidence in the solution grows and as they realise just how feature-rich it is."
"We've got some great new ideas about how to do what we've always done, including sales targeting and forecasting - and recording of phone calls, attaching them as files to our customer fields," Staples says.
"All of which is going to reinforce the growth we expect from opening offices in Johannesburg and Durban. By extending GoldMine to those branches, the business we do across all three offices is going to be that much greater than if each operated independently in its own region. With GoldMine, each branch can see and sell properties in the other regions, making it possible for us to put buyers all over the country in touch with property all over the country."
Jordaan says GoldMine will also enable Galetti to better control a team of brokers that is spread over three different regions. "Because the solution is designed to facilitate the sharing of information, but still keep the central database secure, if a broker in Durban leaves, say, anyone else at Galetti can pick up the threads of what that broker has been selling and continue to run with the deals. Galetti's intellectual property can't be stolen. And management can monitor and refine the sales pipeline at will."
FrontRange Solutions (SA) product manager for Africa, Paul Bornhutter, says Galetti's effective use of GoldMine demonstrates that the software is a growth tool in the hands of even the smallest business. "The principles of doing business don't differ from company to company, only the content does. So a start-up business, such as Galetti was two years ago, will benefit as much from the discipline GoldMine brings to their CRM processes as a corporate. It's simply a question of starting with the basics and allowing you to be guided from there by the experience of your implementation partner."
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