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Inseto is a specialist distributor supplying equipment, materials and services to the microelectronics and semiconductor manufacturing sector across the UK, Ireland and northern European regions.
With a highly technical sales process, long buying cycles and complex customer requirements, the business needed a better way to manage opportunities, forecast revenue and provide visibility across the customer lifecycle.
While SAP Business One successfully managed quotations, orders, stock and financial processes, earlier-stage sales activity relied on spreadsheets, manual processes and a legacy CRM.
Following a review of available solutions, Inseto selected Workbooks CRM to become a new central platform for sales opportunity management, customer engagement, forecasting, reporting and service visibility.
Today, Workbooks sits at the heart of the organization, integrating with SAP Business One and providing a single source of truth for customer relationships, opportunities, installed equipment and operational processes.
“The greatest value-add without doubt is the opportunities management.” – Jim Rhodes, Technical Director
Before implementing Workbooks, Jim Rhodes, Technical Director and the team at Inseto relied on a combination of SAP Business One, Goldmine CRM and spreadsheets to manage customer and sales information. They used Access Dimensions as an ERP system for accounts and stock management.
SAP Business One performed well for downstream commercial processes such as quotations, orders, stock management, and finance. But the business lacked an effective system for managing enquiries, opportunities, forecasting and customer engagement before the quotation stage.
As a result, sales information was fragmented across spreadsheets and individual salespeople.
“All of the sales forecasting and retention of data was within Excel. All of this sort of data was held within individual salespeople’s spreadsheets.”
The organization had previously attempted to use SAP’s CRM functionality but found it unsuitable for managing sales activities.
“It became very obvious very quickly that the opportunity and activity manager was not great in SAP. We were using it and we were no further forwards on the sales management side.”
Without a dedicated CRM platform, forecasting accuracy was limited, reporting was inconsistent and customer information was difficult to access.
“We were fighting our way through SAP to find people’s contact data and it was fraught with problems.”
Management wanted to move away from forecasting that existed in spreadsheets and people’s heads and establish a centralized system that could support both strategic planning and day-to-day sales execution.
“We realized we needed to look for a dedicated CRM.”
Inseto reviewed several CRM solutions before selecting Workbooks.
The business wanted a cloud-based platform that could integrate closely with SAP Business One, while providing strong opportunity management, flexibility and local support.
“As we’re a UK company, we thought it would be amazing to have a CRM provider that was local and offered UK-based support. So, we looked at Workbooks.”
“Another important factor was Workbooks’ willingness to work closely with Inseto and its SAP implementation partner, CodeStone, to develop an integrated solution. Workbooks were very willing to look at this and collaborate with the CodeStone team – which made it a great partnership.”
Workbooks implemented a solution that connected customer management, opportunity tracking, reporting, service activity and ERP integration within a single platform.
Workbooks became the central hub for:
The solution was configured for multiple teams across the business, including sales, administration, management, and customer service users.
One of the most important aspects of the project was the integration between Workbooks CRM and SAP Business One.
The integration created a seamless connection between customer-facing sales processes and operational fulfillment activities.
Workflows included:
The business also integrated:
The result was a connected environment that eliminated silos and significantly improved visibility throughout the customer lifecycle.
For Inseto, the biggest business impact has come from Workbooks’ opportunity management capabilities.
Every enquiry, quote, and sales opportunity is now managed through a structured process within CRM.
“Any inquiry, whether it’s £200 of consumables or it’s a £5 million machine, they all have opportunities generated. They all have activity management.
Salespeople now benefit from automated reminders, follow-up activities and complete visibility of active opportunities. It’s managing those sales opportunities; reminders come up to remind you to do things.
Everybody loves it.”
“You’ve got a lot of opportunities in your head. You can’t think of them all at the same time. You need some sort of aide-memoire. And spreadsheets and bits of paper are not enough.”
When asked what has delivered the greatest value to the organization, Jim’s answer was immediate:
“It’s without doubt opportunities management. For a sales company that is looking for an integrated CRM with opportunity management, the greatest value-add has been the sales opportunities management. It has been phenomenal. “
One of the key goals of the project was to replace fragmented spreadsheet reporting with accurate, real-time visibility.
Today, all sales opportunity data resides within Workbooks, providing management with immediate access to forecasting, pipeline analysis, and performance metrics.
“It’s fantastic. We can easily report on our data.”
Senior leadership teams now have access to live dashboards showing:
“Senior management have got a dashboard now dedicated that shows us a snapshot of exactly what the conversion rates are for the different divisions within the company. It’s just intuitive and instantly available.”
“The value of the reporting and the accuracy of the reporting is excellent.”
The result is significantly less time spent manipulating data and far greater confidence in business forecasting.
“We’ve saved 10s of man hours. We no longer have to produce spreadsheets, but it’s also a lot more accurate. Word and Excel are open to people, and they can easily make mistakes like copying the wrong information. Now we don’t gave to go back and do remedial work to fix problems. “It’s been really, really good and a massive time saving across the board.”
As a specialist distributor, Inseto has several operational requirements beyond standard CRM functionality.
Workbooks was configured to support:
The platform’s flexibility enabled the business to tailor CRM around its unique workflows.
“The out-of-the-box opportunity management and activity management in Workbooks is great. The ability to very much customize that setting and dynamically link fields and create records ourselves has been excellent. We love the open nature of the platform, where you can go in and add fields and customize – it is really good. I don’t think we’ve got any records that we haven’t customized in some way.”
Workbooks were also extended to manage customer-installed equipment across the field.
Custom equipment records were developed to provide visibility of assets, ownership, calibration schedules, and service history.
“We have quite a large database of equipment at customer sites. We were able to fully integrate that into Workbooks as a separate record. It’s brilliant. Now, we can now go to a customer, easily see what equipment they have, and drill into that. We can see when it’s out of calibration and who the equipment owner is.”
By linking service cases directly to installed equipment, Inseto has significantly improved post-sales visibility and customer support.
Following Brexit, Inseto established a European operation to support EU-to-EU trading.
Workbooks enabled both organizations to operate within a single CRM environment while maintaining separate operational structures.
“The ability to manage the two business entities within one CRM is really good.
When we left Europe, we weren’t able to make free trade transport between EU member states anymore. So, we set up this wholly owned subsidiary as two separate businesses. The opportunities have to be kept separate and we had to integrate it into SAP and Workbooks. I’m pleased with how it works. We work in multiple currencies and Workbooks has handled those very well.”
The combination of opportunity management, automation, and visibility has also improved customer responsiveness.
Sales teams can now follow up opportunities more effectively, respond faster to enquiries, and ensure customer requests do not fall through the cracks.
“Our response times are much improved. In some instances, we’ve got quotes out before other vendors have even replied. I definitely think that is down to Workbooks.”
The benefits extend beyond operational efficiency.
“It’s given us repeat business. And it’s improving our reputation in the markets we work in. We’ve even had compliments from our vendors as they’ve been very impressed with the reports.”
Inseto worked closely with Workbooks Professional Services throughout implementation and ongoing development.
“The consultancy was excellent. The professional services team were good during that initial ramp up phase. There’s been no problems helping us out, it’s been a really good experience.”
Jim also spoke about his experience with the service desk.
“The support team tell you how to fix a problem, rather than just doing it for you. This is actually really good because it encourages users to learn and solve their own problems. Very happy with support and the response times.”
Today, Workbooks provides the central platform for customer management, sales forecasting, opportunity management, reporting and service visibility across Inseto.
The business has transformed disconnected processes and spreadsheet-based reporting into a connected, insight-driven operation.
Most importantly, the platform has achieved widespread adoption across the organization.
“User adoption has been phenomenal. Everybody uses it, even some of the less computer literate members of the team. I don’t think we could be without Workbooks now.”
Jim’s final verdict on Workbooks is simple.
“I really like Workbooks, as you can tell. Honestly, of all the CRMs I’ve had experience with over the years, I’m really impressed with Workbooks- it has been a fantastic experience so far.”
And his advice to other specialist distributors considering Workbooks?
“Don’t hesitate.”
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