EA Ellison enhances customer care programme by linking CRM and ERP systems with SmartPoint

The company’s recent expansion programme has been driven by Geoff Morris.  As Managing Director, his initial focus was on developing the existing management team and introducing efficiencies into warehouse and back office processes.  “We needed an operation fit for purpose, before being able to convince our customers that we were a choice worth making” he recalls. “Our ERP partners, TIS Software, were instrumental in mapping efficient business processes, in particular ensuring our pick / pack / ship operations became as slick as possible, ready for the volume of orders that we wanted to generate.”

Improving customer facing systems

The next phase was to completely re-engineer the customer facing side of the business, starting with the website.  In parallel with a total rebranding programme, investment has been made with TIS to introduce the integrated OneOffice Connect web-trading solution.  Geoff outlines the strategy:  “This will replace the current legacy site in late summer 2011, providing a zero-touch order to pick process and with inbuilt customer self-service for account enquiries and other FAQ’s.  The site will also be proactive in pushing our sales promotions to our customers, in sync with promos available from the Cash & Carry and call centre sides of the business, meaning I only have one set of admin to push promotional business through all three channels.”

Investment in SmartPoint

As general economic conditions took a turn for the worse, Ellisons had already taken decisive steps to look after Ellisons prime assets – customers.  Tracking customer trading patterns, following up on lapsed customers by being proactive to re-generate interest, treating new leads and enquiries like gold dust, all became very important.  The business had already partly adopted ACT, a specialist CRM system.  As Helen Emmett, head of direct sales identified:  “Despite the name, this system was under-used and poorly adopted, mainly because it was operating as an island, with no visibility of business data, just a bunch of names and addresses really.  We suffered a lot of inefficiencies caused by needing to access both systems.  Also we were suffering from unseen duplication of records, as customers re-registered or made new enquiries – we looked disorganised, calling some customers twice, while not having time to call others at all.  My staff weren’t happy needing to move between CRM and ERP systems, and I definitely wasn’t happy because they weren’t achieving accepted call centre metrics.  We were never getting further than 75% down call lists – if your name came after R in the alphabet, the chances were you never heard from us!”

Geoff’s asked his partners at TIS Software to talk through the problems.  There was clearly already a significant investment in ACT, in terms of software, data, training and general familiarity.  So the recommendation was that all that was missing was a data bridge between the ERP and CRM systems.  As a proof of concept, the SmartPoint sidebar was implemented alongside ACT, detecting which accounts the user was viewing, and firing live ERP data to inform the call centre agent before making the call (open orders, recent returns, credit issues, last order date, last payment date and much more).  As well as using the account code to drive such ERP enquiries, SmartPoint was configured to use the postcode to alert of any duplicate records, both from within ERP and within ACT itself, this time showing date created and last contact date.  Helen’s team could use this there and then, within the call, to assist them in the dreaded de-dup process, which always needs careful manual intervention.

SmartPoint was then formally adopted, with the implementation taking just a couple of days, with further dashboard views being developed in-house, adding even more value through call centre efficiency.  Call lists can now be completed, and Ellisons customer care programme is now 100% effective, A to Z!

Even in challenging market conditions, May 2011 delivered the best trading month on record for Ellisons.  Geoff acknowledged this with a wry smile “Between us, we must be doing something right then!”