Competition in this quiet market began heating up two years ago when overseas competitors entered the United States and alternative packaging methods began making inroads with Tipper Tie’s customer base. Executives sought to beat back that challenge by responding earlier and more often to their clients. To do that, the company needed to change the way its customer-facing staff worked, including the eight call center operators, 16-member field sales force and eight repair technicians.

Kendra Bender, Tipper Tie’s IT manager, says the company recognized that it needed to provide easy access to up-to-date customer data to its sales team, technicians and customer call center. The former setup left sales reps blind to customer concerns. "We didn’t have a way to get any complaints or special needs out to [the sales reps] in a timely way. They might spend three-quarters of their sales call dealing with old complaints instead of selling [new products]," Bender adds.

By linking its sales reps in the field and call center into the same continually updated customer data view, Tipper Tie could trim the time sales reps had to spend listening to customer complaints, for example. The reps would be able to prep themselves prior to their sales calls by reading up on technical service problems the customer had logged, machine repairs, parts sales histories and any gripes their call center had entered into the company’s centralized system.

Tipper Tie anticipated that providing sales reps with the same customer view as call center operators and service technicians would increase the time sales reps could actually sell products. Such a system could also trim the cost of generating sales leads and produce more sales from its best customers by providing better service and better communications between its service channels.

Last fall, Tipper Tie began implementing Siebel Systems’ standalone call center and sales-force CRM modules. Since December, when the system was put in place, Tipper Tie estimates that each sales rep has approximately 18 more days per year in face-time selling that they would have spent generating reports or dealing with peripheral issues. The company has also been able to increase its sales territory without increasing its number of sales reps and has trimmed a sales support IT job with the automated system in place. Bender estimates that Tipper Tie’s Siebel system will pay for itself in a little over two years (though she declines to cite the cost of the investment).

Even though Bender can project a real benefit for Tipper Tie’s project, she says that during the planning stages she made sure that she didn’t oversell what the CRM applications could do. "In our initial presentation to our executive board we said, ’No software package will increase our sales. What this [software] will do will allow us to understand our customers better, track things better and look more professional in front of customers,’" she says.