Real-time replaces lost time: On-demand document management system streamlines sales processs
MBT Special Report -- Manufacturing Business Technology, 9/19/2007 6:00:00 AM
Greg Owens, Webmaster for Quincy Compressor is on a mission to save time for the company and its distributors. In the past, Quincy distributors often had to wait many days before receiving literature they needed to make effective sales presentations. What’s more, the company had no effective way of capturing and reporting on who was requesting which materials.
That’s because a manual system was used where all literature was ordered by phone, fax and email, then packaged and mailed to the requesters. It took several employees many hours a week to handle all requests. The costs in person hours were very high. For distributors, print literature was soon outdated and useless—a waste. Plus, they lost valuable time sending in requests and describing what was needed.
Now, these same materials—over 900 items in the Quincy Compressor online marketing library—are available immediately, located in just seconds, and can be downloaded and printed on the spot if needed.
All materials—manuals, spec sheets, brochures, price sheets, flyers and product images—reside in an online database on Longwood Software’s TagTeam Web service. Because most of Quincy Compressor’s literature is now provided in electronic format, items are updated continuously—so materials like price sheets stay current. The Quincy Compressor library is easy to search and navigate, accessed by intuitive drop-down menus, and is available 7 days a week, 24 hours a day, with materials ordered via an online shopping cart.
A significant business benefit has been realized thanks to Quincy Compressor’s recent integration of TagTeam with the company’s custom CRM application. This integration has resulted in a lead management process whereby customer data captured by TagTeam during literature requests is automatically fed into their system. A reduction in the cost of lead processing has already occurred thanks to this integration.
Owens sees productivity increases as being another key benefit. “TagTeam has cut down significantly on our internal manpower requirements. It has greatly reduced the cost of managing and distributing our electronic marketing assets to our distributors. That includes reductions in staff time for managing, emailing and burning CDs sent to the field.
Since implementing TagTeam, the number of staff hours spent processing manual orders has been greatly reduced, and 80 percent fewer offline requests are made. The system also has allowed marketing to increase the support to its sales reps by 55 percent, thanks to the fact that its reps can log into the system to download and print PDF versions of literature.
As the primary administrator for the TagTeam library, Owens noted, “I especially like the fact that our distributors can download large files very quickly. When we upload a PDF file, the TagTeam solution automatically makes a thumbnail of the first page, so distributors can see what it looks like without opening the whole file.>
We also tie TagTeam into our quote and product ordering system,” he said. “When a quote is requested, we can attach the literature to the quote and send it as a complete package. This helps our distributors deliver a very professional-looking presentation to prospective customers.
According to Owens, “TagTeam is as easy as a Google search. It is user-friendly, scalable, and simple to administer. It is not a stock ‘one-size-fits-all’ solution, but a configurable and flexible solution. That’s important to me,
TagTeam has improved the accuracy, quality and timeliness of the information that the field receives,” he said. “It has increased our ability to serve multiple sales channels and support our sales executives and reps with the same or less staff than before. It has also greatly reduced our print budget and inventory, and significantly reduced print waste.
The new TagTeam Auto Reports feature allows me to create as many different reports as I want. I can set up reports that deliver, with the frequency I determine, just the information appropriate to each manager so they can quickly to get a handle on who’s ordering what in the field and what products are most in demand.
"TagTeam has become strategic to our business, and is critical to my job,” Owens said.
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