Sage CRM Customer Success
ATEC Security delivers industry-leading client service with Sage CRM
Customer ATEC Security Industry Security Solutions Location UK Solution Sage CRM
Since 1985, ATEC Security Limited has been steadily building its reputation as a leading specialist security and communications systems integrator. The company designs and installs sophisticated CCTV schemes, access control systems and integrated security solutions, as well as providing the underlying communications infrastructure. Client profile The Birmingham-based business has extended its reach beyond the greater Midlands area, so that there are now ATEC installations from Leeds to Penzance. Through its commitment to understanding and serving clients’ requirements, ATEC has acquired an impressive client base, including Westminster City Council, The Science Museum, First Great Western, The National Physical Laboratory and the airports for London City and Birmingham.
“The Sage solution helped us to define, drive and optimize our processes to ensure consistency and efficiency.” Simon Adcock, Managing Director, ATEC Security Limited
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Challenge As their business grew in size and complexity, ATEC recognized the need for a solution that had greater flexibility and control. It was looking for a solution that helped improve management reporting, view key information and manage cases and opportunities. Solution ATEC were impressed with Sage CRMs intuitive look and feel and the opportunity to adapt it to their business needs. The solution helped them to define, drive and optimize business processes ensuring consistency and efficiency. It fit their requirement for
The challenge Until around five years ago, ATEC used a module within its account package to run its support operations, but as the business grew in size and complexity, the need for greater functionality and control increased accordingly. ATEC started to look for a solution that would help in viewing key information, such as on compliance with service level agreements (SLAs), and in improving management reporting. The main driver, in the first instance, was to find a customer relationship management system to help ATEC to manage cases and opportunities; for example to check whether planned maintenance is completed on time and view the availability of staff resources.
detailed reporting and helped to manage their client’s expectations. Results Sage CRM has allowed ATEC to progress cases in real-time and report back promptly to their clients with up-to-date information through detailed reporting. The use of smartphones has increased productivity amongst staff and given instant visibility on whether a case has been reported. Sage CRM has helped drive the collection of information and allowed transparency with ATECs clients.
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“We believe that we’re now one of the leaders in the industry in providing critical information to clients, instantly accessible whenever they want it. This helps us to win new business and enhance our service to existing clients.” Simon Adcock, Managing Director, ATEC Security Limited
The solution Recalling the detailed exercise that ATEC undertook before selecting Sage CRM, Managing Director Simon Adcock notes, “We researched the market and considered a number of possibilities, such as Salesforce and GoldMine, and Sage’s own Sage ACT!. But two major factors influenced our decision in favour of Sage CRM: its intuitive look and feel, and the many opportunities to configure it to our business.” Sage CRM is an internet-based customer relationship management system, accessed through a web browser, which can be deployed as either an on-premise or on-demand solution. ATEC initially chose Sage CRM, the pay monthly, on-demand option. ATEC started using Sage CRM Cloud in 2006, primarily to manage leads and opportunities. The system supported ATEC’s consultative approach to sales. Rather than going for the hard sell, the company’s design and bid team explore prospects’ requirements to assess whether ATEC can meet them. Simon says, “With Sage CRM, we gained a really good view of our pipeline and were very pleased that we weren’t forced to radically alter our way of working. In fact, the Sage solution helped us to define, drive and optimize our processes to ensure consistency and efficiency.” ATEC’s use of the solution soon expanded: “It quickly became clear that our technology investment could be used to advantage by helping to make the support helpdesk more professional in logging and tracking support issues.” Over time, ATEC required more complex functional requirements and detailed reporting for major public sector clients. Sage Business Partner Marketing Answers and Solutions Ltd. recommended a migration to Sage CRM installed on ATEC’s own server. Originally a ten-user system, there are now over twenty users of Sage CRM across the business. ATEC has been using the Sage software to track cases and notify its engineers for the past five years and this amply demonstrates its stability. Marketing Answers and Solutions modified the software to reflect and manage the complex cases that arise from the
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nature of ATEC client base, such as in monitoring public areas and thoroughfares. There may be restrictions on the hours that engineers can access faulty equipment and this must be reflected in the SLA management to help manage clients’ expectations. The benefits With the involvement of Marketing Answers and Solutions, the migration of the existing customisation and business data to Sage CRM on ATEC’s servers was quite straightforward. The move took only a few days and has enabled two major developments. First came the ability to allocate cases quickly and easily to ATEC engineers on their BlackBerry smartphones, which they can then accept or reject according to their capacity to respond. If an engineer does not acknowledge receipt of a case within a specified time, the system applies escalation procedures. Equipping engineers with remote access in this way means no time is lost in sending the most appropriate engineer to fix the problem. Engineers can then concentrate on resolving issues rather than having to continually telephone the office. They can progress the case with ‘solution identified’ and ‘solution implemented’ messages via their BlackBerry. As Simon points out, “We offer a twenty-four hour service, so being able to communicate instantly with our engineers means that we can progress cases in real-time and report back promptly to our clients with up-to-date information. The solution does not just assist with one-off calls: we’re able to track our performance against the service level agreement for time to attend and time to fix. Our Sage solution drives the collection of this information and helps us to be open and transparent with our clients.” Importantly, ATEC can identify trends over the longer term – if a particular device is prone to failure, for example: “We can also provide the client with very detailed reports on system availability. If a CCTV recorder is out of action, for example, we can pinpoint the associated cameras that will not be able to operate. In this way, we can be more evidence-based and proactive in our approach.”
Sage CRM Customer Success
The second major benefit has been the improved level of information that the system provides. Marketing Answers and Solutions has customized the self-serve capabilities within Sage CRM to meet ATEC’s requirements. Through a web portal, clients can log their own cases, and then view their own case information whenever they wish without having to contact the ATEC office. Information can be filtered and exported to Microsoft Excel for clients’ own internal reporting, to complement ATEC’s own client-based standard reports. Simon is clear that this innovation is a great differentiator in the highly competitive security market: “Our clients love the web portal. They all remark on how good it is and it soon becomes their preferred mechanism for reporting faults calls. The information available helps them to measure our performance against their SLA, with detailed activity reports. It also improves the clients’ processes. For example, it ensures continuity during a shift change by giving instant visibility of whether a case has been reported, without clients needing to maintain their own records.” Simon adds, “We believe that we’re now one of the leaders in the industry in providing critical information to clients, accessible instantly when they want it. This helps us to win new business and enhance our service to existing clients. Whenever we want to differentiate ourselves in the sales process, we talk about our professional support service and the benefits of the self-service web portal. We demonstrate this capability, along with our customized reports, and it never fails to impress. Once clients have become used to the level of reporting now provided through our Sage CRM web portal, they do not want to lose the facility.”
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The future Self-service via the web portal is still relatively new for ATEC and is currently being rolled out to more clients. ATEC is also considering an upgrade to the latest version of Sage CRM, which would provide closer integration with Microsoft Exchange. Advanced marketing communications and integrated e-marketing modules will also be part of the upgrade. Marketing Answers and Solutions continues to work with ATEC to help Simon and his team to find new ways to use their Sage software to enhance client service and improve internal efficiency. Simon concludes, “We have been impressed over the years by Marketing Answers and Solutions’ highly personalized approach to understanding our needs. We aren’t just a number to them. They bring the same level of attention and solution creativity to our business that we provide to our own clients.”
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