EngNet Develops Global Sales Tracking System

Thursday, 1 February, 2007

EngNet has three offices on three different continents, coordinating the sales teams and manage the sales efforts over the 3 continents was becoming more and more of a problem and affecting our growth. Michael Cooney says " In 1999 I developed a Microsoft Access database which really worked well for an office with a handful of sales people in one location, but as we began to grow we noticed that company information was becoming outdated, sales people where stepping on each others toes and we were not able to monitor remote sales people in our other locations."

After looking at the various CRM software product on the market, EngNet realized it needed a customized solution for it's needs. Adrian Cooney, Managing Director of EngNet South Africa says "Ensuring that our database of over 15,000 companies remains current is a challege and off the shelf software was just not going to be able to allow us to do that effectively. We made the decision to develop our own solution, where could effectively keep company information up to date and allow our sales people to keep track of individual companies. As management we also wanted better monitoring of our sales process."

EngNet has now been running with it's first version of the software for a number of month, Adrian Cooney comments "Wow, this project ended up taking a lot longer than we first anticipated. We set out to develop a system that would be really really simple to use so that our sales team can focus on their job of selling, instead of trying to figure out the software works. The benefit is that our sales people really use the system and realize the benefits to them in helping them reach their targets. From a management point of view it has been fantastic, I have quick and easy access to data from our sales teams around the world."

Michael Cooney Adds "What is interesting is that we have noticed additional benefits to the system. I can now see what sales are being made by our company around the world in real time, I can see how many calls are made per person, if I want I can also see what each sales person is saying to each and every customer. When we first implemented the system our sales people were making around 20 calls a day on average, but soon they were able to see what the other sales people were doing and subconsciously all the sales people began increasing their call rate and now our average call rate per day is sitting at 35 a day, a 75% increase! Sales levels have picked up too. There have been numerous other benefits, such as, when we notice a sales person is performing really well, we can research what they are doing and then communicate that to the sales team."

Adrian announced "EngNet is now spinning out the sales system and will be offering a commerical version for companies to use. We were finding a lot of interest from companies who saw the system and were interested in using it for their company. We want to offer a powerful system that in uncomplicated and really simple to use, we don't want to get caught up in adding every imaginable function, this is a system that enable that sales person to keep track of it's customer and for management to monitor its sales people."

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