There’s no secret to CRM success. But to take the most value from your CRM project, you’ll need to start by defining what this very ‘success’ looks like to your organization. From here, you can validate the why, the how and the what of your CRM initiative.
- Why are you investing in CRM?
- How will you achieve the desired outcomes?
- What features and resources will you require?
Many organizations focus heavily on the what, spending hours working on feature requirements and speaking to CRM vendors to learn about their product capabilities. And while features are important, what is most integral to the success of your project is to understand the reasoning behind your organization’s investment in CRM, and the process that will go into achieving your objectives.
So, what positive business outcomes can you expect from a CRM implementation? Well, exactly what you can achieve will be unique to your company and the customers you serve. However, the benefits can be broadly categorized into four business-critical areas. These are as follows:
- Revenue growth
- Streamlined processes
- Improved customer experience
- Informed insights
Following this classification will help you to gain visibility of what you want to achieve by looking at measurable project outcomes.
To help you understand the prospective benefits of your CRM implementation, let’s take a closer look at each of these benefits and some project outcome examples from companies like yours that have implemented Workbooks as their CRM solution.
1. Revenue growth
The majority of the time, companies asked why they chose to implement a CRM initiative will say that they wanted to drive increased revenue and higher profits.
Within the average organization, there are countless untapped opportunities to improve the end-to-end sales process and enable higher productivity. Workbooks provides the necessary framework and systems to ensure that strong leads are generated, prime sales opportunities are converted, and of course, profit margins are increased. Effective CRM implementation can drive business outcomes such as:
- Increased market share
- Higher rates of customer acquisition
- Improved forecasting
- Aligned sales and marketing efforts
- Maximized lead generation
For example, revenue might be gained by introducing efficient new systems to prevent revenue leakage, if there have been costly delays in closing sales or even failures to bill for products and services that leave money on the table.
The Workbooks platform also acts as an accurate data resource to assist with the administrative component of sales. It’s estimated that the average salesperson loses nearly half of their work day to non-revenue-generating activities, but with Workbooks, your team can automate repetitive tasks and remove administrative burdens.
This frees up your salespeople to concentrate on building customer relationships, increasing lifetime customer value, and achieving higher sales targets, providing the necessary edge over your competitors.
“Revenue growth can be attained by identifying new clients as well as cross-selling and upselling to existing clients. Workbooks gives you the tools to target clients with precision.”
John Cheney
CEO, Workbooks
Case studies
Workbooks has helped businesses in many sectors achieve revenue growth and record profits. Take a look at some of our work in collaboration with select clients and examples of project outcomes they have achieved.
TCMM Shutter Group
TCMM Shutter Group is one of the UK’s leading providers of interior window shutters. Based in Brighton, UK, the company has achieved global reach and features five brands: Shutterly Fabulous, California Shutters, DIY Shutters, The Shutter Store and Carter & Clark.
Before collaborating with Workbooks, the TCMM team had been running their business between multiple systems and various spreadsheets. There was an evident lack of control and poor data coordination holding the firm back.
Workbooks undertook a thorough examination and appraisal of their business systems. Our helpful consultants gave TCMM the guidance and confidence to go ahead and implement our CRM platform. Within the first year of our support, TCMM’s revenue grew by £1 million, with no increase in the firm’s headcount.
“We may not have started on our CRM journey expecting Workbooks to become the platform we’d run the business on, but that’s where we’ve got to, and the efficiencies and insights that it’s generated have been transformational.”
Sam Tamlyn
Operations Director, TCMM Shutter Group
Business Services Company
This business services client sought to increase revenue from existing clients by 10%, which would deliver a boost of £3.2 million to their yearly turnover.
The company also wanted to improve the overall performance of its sales team by 10%, looking to gain an additional £200k in annual revenue. Our tailored Workbooks solution enabled them to achieve both these desired goals by:
- Focusing on the prospects who were most likely to convert
- Implementing an intelligent and informed cross-selling and upselling strategy
“We showed this business services company how to use our Workbooks CRM platform to capture and apply further details of prospects and existing customers. This greater insight and control of data enabled them to close more deals and attain their increased revenue goals.”
James Kay
CTO, Workbooks
Healthcare Firm
We helped this healthcare client benefit from additional annual revenue opportunities valued at £2.8 million — representing an increase of 10% over previous figures.
This valuable growth in revenue was achieved by:
- Accelerating the sales cycle, whereby the time to close deals was reduced by over 60%
- Enhancing cross-selling and upselling and improving decision-making processes
These improvements combined to give the firm unparalleled insight into their customer base, achieving a 10% boost in revenue and adding nearly £3 million to their turnover.
“Our introduction of Workbooks CRM into this healthcare company resulted in better lead-generation systems, reduced the time spent managing client engagements and enhanced their reporting capabilities — all of which led to increased sales, lower costs and greater profits.”
Dan Roche
CMO, Workbooks
Interior Design Company
When a company specializing in interior office design wanted to improve the performance of its sales team, they reached out to Workbooks.
Through the application of our CRM platform, the firm experienced a major uplift in productivity, together with a 25% improvement in conversion rates from the same pipeline. This jump in conversion success translated into extra annual revenue of £7 million.
Further successes were attained by improving the company’s marketing focus and generating a superior quality of leads for the sales team. These measures alone improved annual revenue by £500k and helped contribute to the overall increase in sales performance.
“Thanks to our involvement, this office design business achieved a marked improvement in the effectiveness of their marketing, while the quality of leads being passed on to the sales team was greatly enhanced with a 20% increase in qualified sales opportunities.”
John Cheney
CEO, Workbooks
2. Streamlined processes
As well as improving your top line, CRM implementation can help to trim your overhead costs by making internal processes more efficient. Inefficient processes might be hard to spot at first, as they can take many forms within your organization’s structure. For example, you might have non-compatible sales and marketing systems on your books, or you may be using outdated databases and Excel spreadsheets.
A CRM process will encourage your business to review its processes and implement valuable adjustments. These may include:
- Automating repetitive or manual tasks
- Enabling system scaling as the business expands
- Reducing customer service costs
- Expediting the sales cycle
These are all areas in which Workbooks CRM can help to streamline your processes and decrease costs. And when you succeed in reducing your costs, you increase your profits.
Workbooks also helps companies to eradicate duplication of effort, remove data inconsistencies, and meet regulatory requirements to avoid costly fines and reputational damage. For instance, we’ve worked with many businesses to make their operational processes fully GDPR-compliant.
Case studies
The following companies have all benefited from process improvements thanks to Workbooks CRM. By streamlining practices and simplifying admin systems, costs have been reduced and profits boosted, among other examples of business outcomes.
LLW Repository
The Low Level Waste Repository (LLWR) is the UK’s primary disposal facility for low-level radioactive waste. It collects this from nuclear power stations, hospitals and other handlers, before securely disposing of it or implementing suitable recycling methods.
LLWR needed instant access to accurate information on where every consignment was, so that when customers called and asked, team members could provide fast assistance. Information needed to be brought out of individual employees’ heads and the many spreadsheets the team was previously using, and into one central location.
So, the LLWR IT team started the procurement process, comparing a selection of CRM vendors including Salesforce. They soon came to the unanimous decision that Workbooks was the most user-friendly option.
All the relevant logistics information has now been added into the system, so that LLWR can manage and track the transport, packaging, and safety checks of each consignment.
“Workbooks has had a more positive impact on our organization than we ever hoped for. It’s now the platform on which we’re running most of our business, and we continue to find new uses for it.”
Jenny Prince
Business Change Manager, LLWR
Software Firm
When this technology company first approached Workbooks, it had a veritable ‘spaghetti highway’ of confused processes in place, and lacked effective integration between its diverse systems. For example, sales and marketing were not joined to the finance department, with the result that vital invoices were often inaccurate.
Before the Workbooks platform was adopted and shaped to meet the company’s needs, all data was stored in multiple locations, using a variety of systems that were difficult to access.
Centralizing this data resource with Workbooks reduced the time users spent looking for information or dealing with out-of-date data. By creating a single data repository, Workbooks has freed up four hours a day for the finance function alone, thereby saving this software firm both time and money.
“By taking the time to analyze and fix this problem of revenue leaks due to inefficient processes, Workbooks delivered a significant boost to this software company’s turnover and removed a major source of frustration for its employees.”
James Kay
CTO, Workbooks
Accountancy Practice
This full-service accountancy practice was struggling with a lack of automation and a general failure to engage in integrated and consistent processes. The firm had accumulated 28,000 static sets of data while having only 9,000 active clients — and the details relating to those live clients were hidden among almost 20,000 legacy records.
This data confusion made it very difficult for staff to find important information, such as emails and client correspondence. The firm’s management estimated that each employee wasted 10 minutes per day searching for the right information, with the accumulated delays resulting in a loss of £500k per annum.
The introduction of Workbooks CRM — with its ability to centralize data and avoid duplication and inaccuracy — has solved this frustrating and expensive waste of time by streamlining processes.
“Important data needs careful handling. By introducing an easily accessible centralized data management system, Workbooks has given control back to this accountancy firm and freed up valuable time that can now be devoted to profitable activities.”
Dan Roche
CMO, Workbooks
XPS Pensions Group
XPS Pensions is the UK’s largest dedicated pensions consultancy firm. In 2016, the company decided that its Salesforce CRM system simply wasn’t working well enough.
The Workbooks team offered suggestions for how XPS could achieve the results they were looking for, then tested and reviewed the recommended processes to ensure the best solution was in place for each requirement.
Workbooks quickly enabled XPS to integrate its sales and marketing functions, allowing the company to make its processes more efficient and generate a high number of revenue opportunities while benefiting from substantial cost savings.
“We chose Workbooks as it was able to provide the CRM best suited to our needs — and we’re very glad we did. It’s a highly customizable product and the Workbooks team provide excellent support.”
Charlotte West
XPS Pensions Group
3. Improved customer experience
On average, it costs five times more to acquire a new customer than it does to retain an existing one. This is why companies need to ensure that they keep their existing customer base satisfied and providing repeat custom.
Workbooks CRM helps companies to improve customer retention rates through enhanced communications, targeted marketing, and efficient account management. And this has real benefits — according to a Harvard Business Review report, an increase of just 5% in customer loyalty can increase profits by up to 95%.
Workbooks can improve quality of service through the following means:
- Helping to create a single view of the customer
- Enabling improved customer support, project delivery, and order fulfillment
- Supporting effective case management
- Accurately measuring SLAs
- Offering multi-channel support
- Providing knowledge management for customer service agents
The Workbooks platform can even inform your customer success managers of when specific customers are in the danger zone and at risk of leaving. This helps you to focus your efforts on retaining at-risk business.
Improved customer service also makes it easier to cross-sell and upsell your services and products. But to make that happen, you need to understand what your customer buys from you, what they may be searching for, and what they might not even realize that they need yet.
Workbooks gives you the ability to get under the skin of your customers and ensure you’re on hand when needed. This way, you can deliver exceptional customer experiences and target your marketing efforts for maximum efficacy. Get these details right, and your customers will never want to leave.
Case studies
Below, you can read several examples of the Workbooks platform helping our clients to deliver best-in-class customer experiences, improving their retention rates and increasing sales.
Wholesale and Retail Business
This Wholesale and Retail company applied Workbooks CRM to revolutionize how it approached customer service and intuitive account management.
Using the platform, the team implemented measures such as automatic prompts to follow up after first orders, which proved to be extremely useful for their account managers, while timely ‘new account’ follow-ups encouraged customers to start spending sooner.
The CRM initiative also enabled this business to respond to customer queries more quickly, something that enhanced communication, improved customer satisfaction levels, and boosted retention rates. As a direct result, the business managed to grow revenue from existing clients by 12.5% — an increase of £300k.
“The more you know about your customers, the better you can serve them. Workbooks provides easily accessible systems that encourage client communication. The results in terms of customer satisfaction and increased revenue for this client speak for themselves!”
John Cheney
CEO, Workbooks
Distribution Business
This client in the distribution industry was suffering from a high degree of customer churn. They calculated that if they were able to improve their customer retention, not only would they save £750k a year in lost revenue, but they would also grow the revenue from their existing client base by 10%. Their calculations put the potential accrual at £3.2 million a year.
Thanks to the introduction of Workbooks CRM, the team succeeded in achieving these ambitious goals. Once onboarded, they were able to measure customer satisfaction and improve the quality of their customer services, producing targeted marketing campaigns and driving higher levels of customer satisfaction.
The business can also now identify customers who are at risk of leaving and put suitable client-care plans into action to retain them.
“Workbooks provides companies with a powerful set of tools — as our work for this distribution firm clearly demonstrates. Customer satisfaction is essential for repeat business and by focusing on your clients’ needs, we can help you achieve great results.”
Dan Roche
CMO, Workbooks
Coeliac UK
This UK charity supports people who suffer from coeliac disease and those who follow a gluten-free diet. Workbooks CRM enabled Coeliac UK to provide its 65,000 members with a more intuitive and personalized experience, allowing easy online registration, purchase and renewal management, and supporting access to tailored and relevant membership information.
As part of a total IT overhaul, the Director of ICT at Coeliac UK, Brendan Harris, reviewed 26 different CRM systems alongside his team. After inviting 10 to tender for the project, Workbooks was ultimately selected as it allowed the organization to better segment its member records, store information in a more agile way, and flexibly adapt to market changes.
The introduction of our CRM platform has been the foundation of Coeliac UK’s continued success. Now, virtually everyone in the business, from the chief executive to the membership manager, uses Workbooks every day. Every department — including the fundraising, marketing and finance teams — has benefited enormously from its use.
“Workbooks was the only solution that could handle the complexity of managing relationships with members, customers and suppliers, while presenting a simple logical interface to the users in each team. Not all solutions were as easy to use as Workbooks, so we ran tests across the different departments and it became clear that Workbooks was the one that our people actually preferred.
The database handles over a quarter of a million contacts with 270 fields on a person record, 300 fields on an activity record and 15 types of person view, and more than 100,000 transactions per year. Workbooks allows Coeliac UK to punch far above its weight!”
Brendan Harris
Director of ICT, Coeliac UK
Environmental Services Company
By partnering with Workbooks, this Environmental Services firm was able to create a 360-degree view of their customers. CRM implementation enabled them to maintain and view all client interactions in a simple yet comprehensive system.
This provided the team with a much better understanding of how their customers were using each particular service, and also indicated which additional environmental services might appeal to those same customers.
The Workbooks CRM platform also allowed them to track customer feedback and recognize both ‘happy’ and ‘not so happy’ customers, who they could then focus on to enhance their experience.
“The carefully planned introduction of our Workbooks CRM platform enabled this client to achieve higher customer retention levels while also promoting complementary services that enhanced their customers’ levels of satisfaction.”
John Cheney
CEO, Workbooks
4. Informed insights
One foundational benefit of operating a CRM platform — which links sales, marketing, finance, and many other functions across your business — is that all of your essential data is stored in one central location. Thanks to the intuitive Workbooks interface, informative dashboard, and accurate reporting, this centralized data is made highly accessible for insight extraction and analysis.
And this is more important than ever. With the business environment growing increasingly focused on data management, organizations are relying more on insights drawn from quantitative data to inform their business decisions, according to a report from Forrester. To address this, CRM implementation can help businesses to:
- Improve information management and get intel to the right people at the right time
- Increase customer and market understanding based on analytics
- Identify customer profitability
- Calculate the ROI of marketing activities
- Manage staff workload
- Track performance across teams
With Workbooks, there is no duplicated data, no anomalies, and your information is updated in real time. This means your data is always accurate. Plus, your salespeople can keep pipeline data up-to-date, so you can see all hot and cold leads at a glance. Your marketing team can send out an email campaign and you can instantly see the level of engagement, while your sales team performance can be analyzed to see who is performing and who isn’t. All in, CRM systems help you to gain detailed insights into campaign performance.
From this vantage point, you can take action. You might choose to offer extra training or resources to a sales exec, or conduct split testing for a campaign that didn’t perform as expected.
Case studies
When Workbooks has been used to centralize a company’s essential data, our clients have gained rapid insights to engage in quicker, smarter business decisions. Read about some of the organizations that have benefited and the outcomes of the projects here.
Aspin
Since 1984, software firm Aspin has been helping its clients make the most of their sales opportunities. It does this by developing, implementing, and supporting sales order processing apps for distributors. Most notably, its PixSell iOS app allows sales reps to take field-based orders, and its InterSell B2B e-commerce websites let retailers place orders 24/7.
Prior to the introduction of Workbooks in 2014, Aspin stored information across several systems. These databases harnessed all the information Aspin needed but were maintained by different departments. As a result, data access was often delayed or severely limited in application.
Aspin wanted a system that could provide a holistic view of all interactions with a customer, including notes, activities, meetings, marketing, quotes, orders and invoicing. They wanted a web-based solution so that staff could access these insights whether they were in the office or on the road. Workbooks delivered on all counts.
“My business has become more predictable. I make informed decisions and I prioritize better. I am back in control.”
Nathan Aspin
Managing Director, Aspin
Carpet Business
This wholesale and retail carpet company needed to improve communication between its head office, carpet fitters, and customers. It also wanted better integration of its processes and data. Being able to track this intelligence enabled the company to improve its decision making and provide more accurate quoting estimations for jobs.
Additionally, the ability to link the brand’s website and online retail business to the Workbooks CRM platform led the team to increase carpet order conversions from 30% to 50%. This was due to improved management information and the ability to act on the intelligence that the system gathered and presented so clearly.
“Once you have Workbooks working for you and you have access to all the right data at the right time, the business of conveying accurate information and making rapid and effective sales and marketing decisions becomes so much easier.”
James Kay
CTO, Workbooks
Ultima Media
Ultima Media is a global B2B publishing and events business that serves the automotive industry. Through magazines, websites, and events it aims to inform every part of the auto industry from vehicle makers to parts suppliers, service centers, software developers and equipment providers.
After researching some CRM solutions, Ultima Media chose Workbooks because of our industry-leading return on investment. The platform was customized to Ultima’s specific business needs, and the Workbooks team were able to help and advise on the best business practices to suit the firm.
Prior to the implementation, Ultima Media had no clear visibility of their data, and were simply unable to leverage it during decision making. As the team couldn’t clean or organize their data, it was difficult to extract meaningful reports, while building marketing campaigns proved time and labor-intensive.
Thanks to Workbooks, this frustrating situation has been successfully reversed. Ultima Media can now mine their data and use it as a powerful marketing and sales resource.
“CRM formed a core part of our business transformation and our investment in Workbooks has proved timely and valuable. It’s enabled us to put customers and data at the heart of our business, to help us build, engage and grow our audiences.”
Gavin Miller
Managing Director, Ultima Media
Knowledge Transfer Network
KTN is the Knowledge Transfer Network, a body working closely with the UK government to promote innovation. Through its Innovation Exchange program, the organization matches real industry challenges to companies and specialists working on solutions.
Success at KTN is based on its unique cross-sector approach, tapping into a wide network of expertise and connecting individuals to help solve problems. KTN works across numerous sectors from defense and energy to agriculture and health.
However, KTN was struggling to manage its huge and critical network of relationships, insights and data. The team urgently needed a CRM system that was easy to use, tailored to their own processes, and able to provide the deep insights that would lead to the successful sharing of information. That’s why they chose the Workbooks CRM platform to support their activities.
“We’re very happy with the way it’s worked. It’s about bringing the right people together to deliver outcomes that benefit the UK economy and we know we can do things better as a consequence of the implementation of Workbooks.
The capturing of who people are and what they do is key, you can’t really do that unless you have a CRM system like Workbooks.”
Iain McGregor
Director, Knowledge Transfer Network
Datasound Laboratories
Datasound Laboratories (DSL) designs and manufactures printed circuit board (PCB) products including touch screen and toughened panel solutions. These products are used across a wide range of industrial environments, including food, pharmaceuticals and packaging production, which require computing solutions that meet rigorous demands.
When Rory Dear joined DSL as Managing Director, he quickly identified several areas for improvement, including the need for an effective CRM platform. He had previously found it extremely restrictive having to rely on Excel spreadsheets and then make important decisions based on incomplete and outdated data. Then, he discovered how Workbooks offered the ideal combination of data depth and easy accessibility.
Today, DSL has instant access to a level of data the team hadn’t thought possible.
“You could tell me any product in this company and I could tell you what percentage failure rate we’ve had over the past two years. You could tell me a serial number and I can tell you which order it came from, which invoice it came from, who it was sold to, how it got there. I can see that from anywhere in the world. I can understand who’s performing well and who isn’t performing well perhaps, I can understand which quotations are out of expiry, I get a full picture of the business.
What we have today is instant access to all of the data we could ever dream of. We had our most successful year ever by a factor of 30% but we weren’t any busier as a result, which is really interesting. The fact we’d streamlined our processes so much actually meant there was no noticeable change to the amount of resource required to fulfill 30% more orders!”
Rory Dear
Managing Director, Datasound Laboratories
Take part in our Shared Success Workshop
Many of the companies that have achieved great results with Workbooks have taken part in our two-day Shared Success Workshop.
This is a low-cost exploration of what your company needs, and what can be achieved when you partner with our team of specialists.
The Shared Success Workshop involves an in-depth analysis of your current working practices plus tailored recommendations as to how Workbooks CRM can be successfully incorporated into your sales, marketing and support activities.
Find out more about how we can help your business to achieve its goals today.
Unlock your CRM potential with Workbooks
Workbooks is so much more than a powerful and adaptable CRM platform: we’re also a strong team of highly experienced CRM consultants, who work alongside your business to ensure you take maximum value from the CRM solution.
We offer long-term collaboration opportunities, from initial analysis through to full implementation. Our role includes any necessary adaptation of the Workbooks CRM platform to meet your specific needs, together with practical training and ongoing consultancy.
But we don’t allow our clients to become complacent. We continue to challenge them to make even greater use of Workbooks to drive their future marketing and sales success. Whether it’s your goal to grow revenue, increase leads, retain customers, or achieve greater upselling and cross-selling, we can train you and your staff in leveraging a CRM platform to achieve your ambitions.
To get started and learn more about how Workbooks could help your business, book a demo with a member of our team today.
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