A Concrete Solution to Complex Sales: Skyrocketing Productivity in the Cloud
“The mobile aspect is huge. It’s saved me at least 10 hours a week on the computer. You want to be out in the field and in contact with customers as much as you can.”
Greg Bell
Sales Manager
Thomas Concrete
Thomas Concrete has been serving their customers for over 30 years, and is a leading supplier of high quality, ready-mixed concrete. By combining delivery of concrete with a wide range of services and mixes, they provide complete and effective solutions for construction projects to the residential, commercial and infrastructure markets with a wide-ranging level of complexity.
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Challenges
But the U.S. sales team had an asynchronous and manual processes, inaccessible data, and slow response rates to customers, on top of a dated customer relationship management system (Microsoft Dynamics On-Premise CRM 2013). Not to mention adoption of their CRM system was low, because sellers could not access it all the time, forcing them to batch their work and document notes and details after the fact. “A lot of paper, Excel spreadsheets, Word docs. Everyone was building their own thing,” said Jason Austin, an Inside Sales Manager for Thomas Concrete. “We had no central repository of information.”
Thomas Concrete knew they had to find a way to engage with customers real-time and with complete information if they were going to support their sales model to be in front of customers all the time, anywhere/everywhere, in this always-on economy. They needed to streamline their Sales and Business Development processes to enable an immediate response approach, both internally among their teams and externally with customers.
Solutions
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Dynamics 365 Sales
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On-Premises to Online Migration
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Integration to Industry Systems: Dodge, Quadrel, and SIMMA
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Mobile enablement
Greg Bell | Sales Manager
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“We're much more impactful and able to do so much more, so much quicker.”
Improved Sales Efficiency
15%
2X
User Adoption Rate
Seamless
Dynamics 365 On-Prem to Online Migration
A Platform that Enables Process Efficiency, Actionable Insights, & Business Continuity
The team at Thomas partnered with eLogic to help them establish a platform for improved sales processes and increased efficiency, enhanced reporting and insights, increased business continuity, and reduced hardware overhead through increased user adoption, mobility, productivity, and customer responsiveness.
To establish this platform for process efficiency, the eLogic team migrated Thomas’ on-premises CRM to Microsoft Dynamics 365 Online and upgraded to Microsoft’s Unified Interface. By going to the cloud, the Sales & Management teams at Thomas are skyrocketing productivity with:
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Immediate response capabilities through mobile enablement
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Constant availability of customer data through ERP integration
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Accurate & Fast quoting and approvals process through workflows
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Happy customers through a better sales experience
Key Stakeholders
Sales Leaders
Get actionable insights into business development by having key metrics readily available in Dynamics 365.
Sales Representatives
Deliver a more engaging customer experience with fast responses and accurate quotes.
Mobility as a Game-Changer to Respond to Customer Demands
Having their complete sales solution available on mobile devices & tablets is a game-changer for Thomas. User adoption has doubled, and sales leadership estimates a 15% time savings by having more functionality, improved workflows, and the solution at hand wherever they travel to meet with customers. Their team sees higher efficiency during meetings with the ability to make notes, move on approvals, edit quotes and opportunities, and check the status of contracts. Sales reps can quickly & accurately create quotes for customers by directly accessing pricing data from their ERP within Dynamics 365. This enables them to give real-time information and answers to their customers, enriching communications and relationships while improving productivity.
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“The mobile aspect is huge. It’s saved me at least ten hours a week on the computer,” said Greg Bell, a Sales Manager for Thomas Concrete. “You want to be out in the field and in contact with customers as much as you can.” And once a quote is approved and the customer places an order, Thomas Sales Reps are able to directly upload orders into Dynamics 365 for the Tech department to review, turning it around faster for customers. “And that’s been better for everyone,” Bell said. “It’s a much simpler process than it’s been in the past.”
Seamless Integrations to Industry Systems for a Streamlined Business Development Process
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The team at Thomas Concrete leverages data from multiple outside industry systems like Dodge, Quadrel, and SIMMA to help drive their Business Development process. Leveraging a combination of Microsoft Azure Logic Apps and Microsoft Dynamics 365 Virtual Entities through Azure Data Warehouse, we made core data readily accessible to the Thomas team directly within Dynamics 365. For example, Thomas Sales Reps see live data feed from Dodge in Dynamics 365 and in a single click, can create an opportunity based on the Dodge data feed. Sales reps now have the information and tools to help customers immediately, act on new opportunities, and drive business forward effectively.
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“Before, customers could say, ‘You don’t have the information, then I need to move on,” Bell said. “Now, you’re much more impactful as a sales rep… We’re able to do so much more, so much quicker, and with very little effort.”