Anton Teller
Laying the Foundation of Sales Excellence
Lennart Björnström
“This system performs exceptionally well. It is integrated into our ERP systems, and we see a 100% usage and adoption rate – higher than we ever anticipated.”
Anton Teller
Project Manager
Thomas Betong
Antiquated sales tools were weighing down a leading concrete supplier.
Thomas Concrete Group has supplied high quality, ready-mixed and precast concrete for almost 70 years. As an industry leader, they deliver concrete and a wide range of products and services, providing complete and effective solutions for construction projects, residential, commercial, and infrastructure markets with a wide-ranging level of complexity to reach their markets in Sweden, Norway, Germany, Poland and the United States. The company operates a total of 170 plants and is the largest independent supplier of ready-mixed concrete in its markets.
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The European sales team was facing the challenge of an outdated CRM, forcing them to circumvent the company’s standardized business practices to make deals. They had very low CRM user adoption to an on-premises, older CRM – and often no use at all. Agents weren’t seeing the point of it, or the benefits. With a manual process and no mobile access, Reps were limited to only enter sales data when they were in the office. Their CRM was disconnected from the multiple ERPs the company used, which meant sales reps had to use them separately to make calculations and pricing for offers. The CRM also did not provide insights for Sales leaders to inform business decisions and have accurate forecasting.
The Solution
“The technology behind the old system was a disaster,” said Staffan Larsson, Sales Manager for Thomas Betong, Sweden. “For the last year and a half, I don’t think anyone has gone into the CRM.”
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Team Thomas partnered with eLogic to improve the sales processes, service, and sales operations through enhanced reporting and insights with Advantage Sales™, a digital selling solution for manufacturers built on the Microsoft platform from eLogic. Tailoring Advantage Sales™, along with integrations to two separate ERPs, gave Thomas Concrete Group pipeline visibility, allowing Sales Leaders to coach their sales team better and have clearer sales forecasts.
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Thomas also improved in handling customer complaints. Quality Management had the lowest score in a global customer survey conducted before they launched Advantage Sales™. To address lags in response time and accuracy of customer follow-up, eLogic integrated their Quality Management system with Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Service. They now have a streamlined process to receive complaints, route them through an approval process, and give customers credit – all while having a powerful tool to track analytics into trending issues and complaints.
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“When you look at the scoreboard, that is the area we are most satisfied with now,” said Lennart Björnström, CIO and Head of Business Development at Thomas Concrete Group. “Now with the complaints management, finding the root cause and having the approval for the credit in one system that is now accessible to all, and it's mobile, is taking us from our weakest point to a super strong area.”
Solutions
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Advantage Sales ™ for Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales
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Industry-Specific ERP Integration
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Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Service
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Microsoft Office 365 Integration
Reduction of
Admin Time
25%
80%
Increase in
Follow-Up Rate
100%
User Adoption
The Results
Thomas Concrete Group is now using Advantage™ to optimize sales performance through analytical insights, improve customer communication with reminders of key activities and opportunities to close, and prepare for the future with accurate forecasting – all with vastly improved user adoption from a sales team seeing the benefits of a modern sales platform.
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“Our weekly meetings have improved a lot based on data,” said Anton Teller, a Project Manager at Thomas Betong, Sweden. “Before, we would go back perhaps two or three months and look at the offers we had sent out and try to figure out which ones could be interesting in the future. But now we have a clear view. We just say we’d like to focus on March of next year, for example, and which quotes do we have outstanding in that timeframe and create a strategy to focus on those accounts.” ​
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Sales reps have immediate access to communication and account records, giving them more time to send quotes
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Sales reps get reminders on when to follow-up with customers, going to 80% from 50%
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User adoption went from zero to every sales rep shortly after launch
Key Stakeholders
Sales Leaders
Get actionable insights into business development by having key metrics readily available in Dynamics 365.
Sales Representatives
Have better insights into customers most likely to close, improved communication with customers, and a mobile sales solution they can access at any time, any place.
Insight-Driven Sales Excellence
Overall, sales analytics have driven an 80% increase in follow-up rates, leveraging insights that are easy to obtain and process. Since launch, Thomas Concreate Group has also realized a 25% reduction in admin time with immediate access to communication and account records, giving them more time to send quotes.
​“We’ve generated a lot of control,” Teller said. “We have a better understanding of outstanding quotes, and our hit rate is better managed. We now have 9 months of reliable forecasting, which is more than we could ever have with our old CRM. Before Advantage, we knew how much we quoted, how much we brought in with an order, but we didn’t know what timeframe opportunities were based and when projects were supposed to be started. Now we can see more into the future.”