Case Study: HSS Hire
Highlights
- Gained a complete customer view across sales territories through an integrated CRM solution.
- Automated reporting improved sales team efficiency and territory management.
- Drove revenue growth through targeted customer programs based on data insights.
- Transformed to a customer-centric organisation with CRM alignment across sales, marketing, and management.
- Tight integration between CRM and back-office system enabled detailed financial analysis of sales activities.
About HSS
HSS Hire had ambitious plans for growth, including doubling their sales team and improving their ability to serve customer needs. To achieve this, they decided to implement a new CRM solution that would allow for more targeted account management and better direction across the organization. This new system would also introduce new ways of working and help HSS Hire achieve their revenue goals.
The branch network structure was the main driver for managing customers but made it difficult for the management team to get a global view of customer accounts.
The high volume and complexity of accounts, coupled with prioritising customer activities, tracking new trends, and identifying emerging customer needs, made it challenging.
Additionally, the local and national impact of marketing initiatives was difficult to evaluate. The use of manual customer records made it tough to assess the performance of sales managers or implement a comprehensive knowledge management infrastructure.
Mike Kemp, Sales Director at HSS Hire Services explains further, “Our objective was to improve the visibility of customer interactions across the company and enable improved territory management. We wanted to give our salespeople a clearer vision of their individual sales universes, and by giving Area Managers better quality and depth of information about their customers and prospects, we hoped to enable them to achieve against new, highly defined key performance indicators. Longer term, this would help us to identify and respond faster to customer opportunities.”
A further advantage of a new system would be access to data-rich customised reports, as Mike continues:
“Implementing a CRM system would give us ease of access to consistent, accurate reporting. We wanted the new system to automatically generate activity reporting for Area Sales and National Account managers; removing the burden of administration that’s traditionally associated with manual reporting, our sales personnel were able to reinvest this energy and time into proactive account and territory development activities.”
Although HSS recognised it had a deficiency in CRM, its existing investment in operational systems had to be incorporated into the solution it selected.
“SPANNER is very much the heartbeat of our business we had to ensure that the CRM system we chose offered full and comprehensive integration with this crucial operational and financial platform,” says Mike.
Selecting the Solution
After undertaking an initial outline of system requirements, Mike Kemp and his team began the search for potential solution providers.
The selection process was extensive. Potential solution providers were assessed against a 15-point key requirements matrix devised by HSS Hire Services. Of the contenders, ServerSys ultimately met all required criteria.
“You only implement CRM once,” explains Mike Kemp. “To give salespeople clarity, in terms of territory management objectives, we needed to work with a solution provider that not only recommended the right CRM system in terms of functionality but also offered the ability to support us at the highest level throughout the implementation process and beyond.”
Building consistency
Key to this process would be ensuring that CRM data was inter-changeable with the SPANNER system.
Relevant financial data had to be made available to users to enable financial performance monitoring while customer details, including group relationships, had to be available in CRM.
It was agreed that an automated integration process would be the best approach to ensure SPANNER operated as the master data source. To ensure data integrity between the two systems, ServerSys would develop data sync processes in consultation with the team at HSS Hire Services.
“We wanted to work with a supplier that didn’t simply recommend a solution and then walked away. Instead, we wanted a partner that had the ability to help us achieve our stated objectives.Our ultimate goal was to fulfil a long-term CRM strategic vision, and ServerSys played a significant role in helping us transform into a CRM-centric organisation.”
– Mike Kemp, Sales Director, HSS Hire Services
Initiating a new way of working
The design of the new CRM system had to incorporate four functional areas: sales, telesales, marketing and management.
Competitor activity and spend in customer accounts would also be tracked and reported. Additional reporting structures would enable HSS to capitalise on another objective the exploitation of market trends and new opportunities.
“We recognised that implementing CRM would be a significant culture change for personnel and we needed to ease that transition,” explains Mike.
“We hoped that by automating many onerous administrative tasks, including reporting, our field sales personnel would welcome the system. And because we’d ensured CRM was designed to be easy to use and administer when we went live, we quickly won hearts and minds.”
The Results
With the implementation and configuration of the system completed, the transition to the new CRM system was completed over a three-month period. Today, field sales and sales administration personnel utilise the system, along with marketing and product directors.
“We are now clearly able to identify where we should focus our sales and customer development resources,” confirms Mike Kemp.
“We have accurate data to mine, and we are able to easily access and review operational data, extracted from SPANNER. All this has helped us to get closer to customers and better understand their needs. Ultimately, we are closer to achieving our strategic goal of driving shareholder value for our business.”
Full accountability of sales personnel has been successfully implemented, and HSS Hire Services is now able to monitor the impact of programmes on the business. The new ability to undertake specific customer targeting has already given HSS Hire Services an edge over competitors.
“We are now evolving the system, interfacing it with our email system,” says Mike. “We will also continue to refine our visibility of customers, so we can direct resources to where they generate the greatest return. We are well on the way to achieving our customer-centric vision.”
Next Steps
If you’re looking to get closer to your customers, gain actionable intelligence, and outpace competitors, contact us today to learn how ServerSys can help you achieve CRM success.