Sage CRM Success Story ELCO

Sage CRM Customer Success

ELCO builds lasting relationships with clients and suppliers thanks to Sage CRM Customer ELCO Industry Electrical Distributer Location Spain Solution Sage CRM

‘Now we have all the information we need in one screenshot and we are able to know the precise status of each sale opportunity’ Jordi Grau Chief of Quality Assurance ELCO

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Background Electronic Components ELCO, founded in 1988, deals with the sale of components and electronic materials, with one special distinction: 90% of its products are customized according to the needs of each client. It has been awarded the ISO 9001:2008 Certificate of Quality Management System, which guarantees that their products and services are of a very high standard.

Choosing the best The majority of products marketed by ELCO are customized by the client. This means that the company must ask suppliers to analyze “the product that our client needs, so that they can come up with a number of proposals”, from which the most suitable can be chosen. “It is from here that the need to implement a CRM solution arose”, explains Jordi Grau, Sales Engineer and Chief of Quality Assurance at ELCO.

Challenge The majority of products developed by ELCO are customized by the client.

Therefore, a close relationship between the company and the supplier is vital to success. ELCO need a reliable solution that would store all this important information and was available to everyone in the business.

Results Thanks to Sage CRM, ELCO now have one integrated database, which provides them access to the important client and supplier information, eliminating multiple sources of inaccurate data. This quick access to data has proved invaluable and enabled greater visibility across the business with the ability to share data between different sections of the organisation.

Solution ELCO choose Sage CRM to improve the management of their trusted suppliers and growing client base, as well as the link all parties, through one integrated solution.

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‘Through client opportunity reports, we can also keep track of the actions of the suppliers, which provides us with a complete picture of the supply chain: the client and the supplier’ Jordi Grau Chief of Quality Assurance ELCO

As Jordi Grau explains, “despite the fact that ELCO is a small company, it works with a large number of suppliers, making it crucial that they are managed effectively,” especially given that the company is run from two offices. This challenge has been met with the aid of Sage CRM and the support of the business partner Excelius Europa. Jordi Grau describes that Excelius Europa has been fundamental in increasing the potential the solution through the management of both clients and suppliers. “We not only use Sage CRM in the commercial sphere, and for the management of our client’s contracts, but also to match the client’s opportunities to suppliers”. In fact, this was one of the essential requirements that ELCO put forward to Excelius Europa when it came to using a CRM. A business vision ELCO uses Sage CRM to control client opportunities as well as to record the paperwork generated by the supplier in order to satisfy that opportunity. “We do this via links” explains Grau. This was an important factor in the decision by Excelius, Sage CRM’s partner in charge of implementation, to adapt Sage CRM very quickly and, in that way, be able to control the prices of buying and selling.

“Through client opportunity reports, we can also keep track of the actions of the suppliers, which provides us with a complete picture of the supply chain: the client and the supplier”.

Jordi Grau admits that this CRM vision was not commonly available in the marketplace in 2011. They discussed the need for such a system with the business partner and “Carles Amadó, from Excelius, was sure that our needs could be satisfied by using Sage CRM”, says Grau. Amadó explained that each client opportunity could be linked to one or more suppliers and that they could then select the best option and offer it to their clients.

Sharing information Before the implementation of CRM, ELCO based its operations on the use of spreadsheets and email to generate files that were grouped either by the client or project. This meant that many of the tasks had to be performed manually. “It was Excelius, our IT supplier, who introduced us to Sage CRM. We didn’t even know what CRM was”.

ELCO has two offices: one in Barcelona and one in Madrid, staffed by a total of

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five sales officers. Thanks to Sage CRM, “We can manage all the information about suppliers, particularly about new ones, from both offices. Communication between the two offices has improved greatly because we can access information more quickly”.

In the middle of 2011, Sage CRM was installed. All the data about clients and suppliers, which, in the past, ELCO had in a number of different applications, was uploaded and adjustments in the system made so that sales opportunities could be matched to suppliers. “Thanks to these adjustments, we can now obtain reports either by client, by date or by project status”. By end of summer, in September of 2011, thanks to Excelius Europa, Sage CRM was totally operative and ready to be rolled out for use in both Barcelona and Madrid.

Integration with Outlook As Jordi Grau explains, Sage CRM is very simple to use. Sales officers can now manage opportunities for both the client and the supplier. In this way, we can establish links and generate printouts containing a more comprehensive overview of the actions undertaken on behalf of each client”.

The merging of Sage CRM with Outlook is another factor contributing to the project’s success. “We had a lot of data in email form, which could only be seen by one person at a time. Now, thanks to CRM’s integration with Outlook, we are able to link emails with client opportunities, with no need to forward them to other people because all of a client’s records, all the data and opportunity, is in the CRM solution”, explains Jordi Grau.

CRM at a glance Among the improvements since the implementation of Sage CRM, is the ability to see, at a glance, all the information about a client in each of its projects.

“Previously, we had to rely on our memory and had to rummage for data through files, archives and emails. Now we have all the information we need in one screenshot and we are able to know the precise status of each sale opportunity” Jordi Grau points out.

Furthermore, Jordi Grau explains that for ELCO, it is extremely important to be able to file away every email from both the client and the provider together with its opportunity. It’s not by accident that 90% of emails received by our sales officers are related to a sales opportunity. All that data

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‘Previously, we had to rely on our memory and had to rummage for data through files, archives and emails.

Now we have all the information we need in one screenshot and we are able to know the precise status of each sale opportunity.’

Jordi Grau Chief of Quality Assurance ELCO

is now stored in Sage CRM with a level of integration which has been very smooth.

Outstanding benefits The changeover to Sage CRM in an organisation that relied on spreadsheets for the management of its clients and suppliers, was an easy one. This has been largely because the very system that has been able to solve ELCO’s administrative problems also happens to be easy to use by the very people who are able to take advantage of it most: the sales representatives.

The Head of Quality Control at ELCO highlights the fact that one of the utilities most used in the company is that of the client summary sheet. This feature allows one to see all the data regarding the organisation, as well as the contact details of each company it deals with (“there are some clients who have up to 15 different contacts”) and a history of all communication kept with that company.

He is also impressed by the design of Sage CRM, which, as well as being a very powerful tool, is a system that everyone in the company finds very user-friendly.

Moreover, Jordi Grau would recommend the use of Sage CRM for the control of the offers and opportunities with the clients that it provides. “Personally, I might have between 30 or 40 opportunities open, but my colleague may have 200. When one has so many, it’s very difficult to know the status of each one, if you do not have a tool such as Sage CRM at your disposal.” With Sage CRM, the management of sales opportunities becomes much more efficient.

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About Sage CRM Over 15,000 small and medium sized companies across the globe use Sage CRM every day to accelerate sales, drive business productivity and make every customer interaction count. It is used by enterprising, growing companies seeking new ways to interact with customers, leverage the power of social media and take advantage of the latest mobile developments to further grow their business. When combined with Sage ERP, our customers enjoy better business insight, increased efficiencies and productivity, and gain a single, customer-centric view across their entire business. So whether you’re just starting out or have already grown to several hundred employees, Sage CRM can help accelerate your business success.

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