Empowering Sales Teams to Increase Service Level

The company

A leading company in the metal industry with six industrial units and over 1,000 employees. With a turnover of €147M, 30 agents and presence in 12 countries, this company is well-known within the area in which it operates, producing structures and products for different application areas, ranging from renewable energy, lighting and railways to telecommunications.

The challenge

The company has a network of sales representatives, agents and resellers of its products. The choice of the product to be sold is not solely determined by aesthetic criteria, but also requires structural engineering calculations in order to select the product to be presented to customers.

The sales representatives and agents had a catalogue that allowed them to obtain solutions for pre-defined locations and base configurations. When a customer requested a quote, the sales representative used the catalogue to prepare a commercial proposal. Most of the time, the catalogue did not allow the team to find the solution, and it was necessary for the salesperson to contact the technical department of the company to request the appropriate solution, making the workload in the technical department high and causing delays in sending the quotes.

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The high number of study requests to the technical department made it imperative to find an agile and efficient way of empowering the sales teams and agents to obtain, autonomously, the most appropriate solutions to meet customer needs quickly.
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The project's goals were:

• Increase the speed and agility in the preparation of quote requests.
• Increase the customer service level.
• Decrease the workload assigned to the technical department.
• Automate the connection between existing information systems in the company.

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The approach

To understand the existing processes in the company and the interactions between the commercial and technical departments, a detailed study of the processes and information systems used was carried out.

As a solution, a customised web platform with a user-friendly interface was designed. This was integrated with the existing systems, allowing users to obtain, in a simple and expedite way, structural solutions for any type of configuration, by displaying the product stock and relevant commercial information.

Structural calculation algorithms have been implemented and automated, allowing the calculation of any configuration in order to customise all the solution parameters. The platform also generates the technical supporting document for the suggested solution.

The application created allows the team:

• To obtain the solution in real-time for any geographical location and structural configuration.
• To generate a note explaining the calculation.
• To check stock in real-time.

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Achievements

The tool developed has streamlined the commercial process with the support of the web platform that facilitates the interconnection and accessibility of the multiple systems and adapts to the company's needs.

The proposed implementation made it possible to:

• Reduce the workload assigned to the technical department.
• Streamline the business process.
• Shorten the response time to the customer.
• Increase the customisation of the structures to meet the customer's needs.
• Increase responsiveness.