DUBLIN, Calif.--June 2, 2006--International shipping giant COSCO Container Lines Americas (CCLA) faced a dilemma that most companies without a unified CRM system encounter: What happens to customer information when an employee leaves? The organization recognized that if it could find a way to stop that loss, it could add millions to the bottom line.
To address the issue, CCLA enlisted the help of FrontRange Solutions partner First Direct Corp. (1stdirect.com) to implement FrontRange(TM) GoldMine and iGoldMine for its entire North American sales team. In choosing GoldMine, CCLA Assistant Vice President of North America Sales Tim Marsh brought past experience using a range of other CRM solutions. "I've used them all," Marsh said. "GoldMine is very powerful and very easy for the salesperson to use."
CCLA reports the results so far have been outstanding. Salespeople have saved at least two hours per week in compiling reports. Managers now save 10 hours a week in reviewing them. In addition, new employee training is reduced by 90%, and chances of losing information when sales reps leave the company has greatly decreased.
CCLA, a division of CCLA Group Worldwide, serves 160 countries and regions with 600 shipping vessels at more than 100 ports with more than 90,000 people in all facets of the shipping industry. One of CCLA's biggest challenges in this initiative was keeping up with customer records and correspondence. Without CRM practices in place, important information was stored on scraps of paper with no documentation. The lack of a centralized system meant that regional managers were unable to access comprehensive sales information, and salespeople struggled to piece together required weekly sales reports. District and regional managers had no way to analyze those weekly sales reports quickly or readily share them with CCLA executives around the world.
With GoldMine, users can log every visit, phone call and client contact for future reference. GoldMine collects this data through a series of questions ensuring the sales force keeps comprehensive and standardized customer records for data such as call types, import/export, type of cargo and more. Because sales reps continuously update GoldMine after each call or visit, customer files remain current. At the end of the week, an automated GoldMine process generates team-wide sales reports showing a summarized breakdown of activities, time spent and results by individual, district, region and nation. Managers can examine specific fields to see lost business, opportunities to add more cargo to light routes, or understand the pipeline, allowing them to make strategic decisions.
Next, CCLA and First Direct Corp. will configure GoldMine to track cargo within COSCO's fleet of ships throughout the world in real time. Additionally, CCLA will soon pull U.S. Customs information, which shows competitors' cargo, into its GoldMine system to better understand the competition. Marsh said CCLA will eventually use GoldMine to forecast its shipments, as well as launch e-mail and other marketing campaigns in the future. According to Marsh, the company's ultimate plan is to expand GoldMine worldwide and refine its global processes further with help from 1stdirect.com.
"First Direct opens our eyes to what we are doing, and shows us how we can apply practical business models to our processes," Marsh said. "We are able to sit back and strategically understand a commodity market and then use GoldMine information from six different regions to make effective decisions."
About First Direct Corp.
Since its founding in 1992, 1stdirect.com has been a FrontRange Solutions partner supporting all FrontRange/GoldMine products. 1stdirect.com handles a full range services, including analysis/process design, installation and configuration, customization, training, automated processes, data conversion, reporting, as well as on-site and help desk support. For more information, call 800-935-4386 or visit www.1stdirect.com.
About FrontRange Solutions
FrontRange Solutions develops award-winning software and solutions used by more than 130,000 companies and over 1.2 million seats worldwide to manage a wide variety of business relationships and provide exceptional service. FrontRange product families, designed specifically for small-to-medium-enterprise (SME) and distributed enterprise organizations include: GoldMine(R) for business relationship management, team-based contact management and sales forces automation solutions; IT Service Management with HEAT(R) and ITIL(R) standards-based modules for complete service management; and Communication Management including IP Contact Center for reduced telephony costs and increased agent productivity, streamlined customer service and communications; and Infrastructure Management, which provides the ability to optimize the full lifecycle of a company's assets. Customers representing 44 percent of the Fortune 100 and 76 percent of the FTSE 100, include Coca-Cola, Shell Oil, Prudential Securities, Electricite de France, Mack Trucks, Campbell Soup, Avaya, Bechtel Corp, Bank of America, and Turner News Network. For more information, call 800-776-7889 or visit www.frontrange.com.
