Nationwide Refrigeration Service

Implementation Strategy

NRS are renowned as the national suppliers, by Royal Warrant, of commercial refrigeration equipment and other cooling services. Chris Dillistone is the Systems Development Manager of NRS and was charged with responsibility for the implementation of a Computer Aided Sakes and Marketing (CASM) system.

He undertook responsibility for the project and enjoyed the full support of the directors, primarily because of his technical background and his clear views on the reasons for, and the business strategy behind, the implementation.

The initial purchase was a six user license which included a small field system, which used Pro-ACTION's remote access software, the 'Replicator'. Chris Dillistone was one of the remote users.

The system was then introduced to the Eastern Regional Sales Manager and some of his team.

The pilot was carried out in several stages. After each stage there was a formal analysis of the manner in which the requirements were addressed. The next stage of the 'roll out' would proceed after it had been agreed that the requirements of the preceding stage were satisfied.

After the successful pilot, the system was duly expanded to include 22 users in the field. Since then, the system has been further expanded to include 5 users on the office network and 33 users in the field (i.e the total national sales force).

The implementation was augmented by a link from the NRS mainframe system, written by the Pro-ACTION Development Team, which provided the field sales force with access to key financial details while visiting customers.

Benefits of Pro-ACTION

The following benefits of Pro-ACTION were acknowledged by the client:

• It was stated that significant benefits were gained by the ability of all field sales engineers to access information about customers at all times.
• The engineers' improved preparation for their calls, which presented an enhanced image of professionalism.
• The ability to review chains of activity (that is, related actions in the client history), which rendered it possible for the engineer to understand quickly the history of a client prior to the visits and for the Sales Manager to review relevant activities for each business opportunity.
• The format of the information, which was considered well-structured and therefore easy to interrogate, in comparison with manual reports.
• The removal of the need to visit a branch in order to obtain sales information.
• The standard action types within Pro-ACTION, which harmonise sales engineer activity reporting and enforce discipline in considering the next actions which are appropriate for the customer.
• The elimination of all paper flow between the Sales Engineer and the Sales Manager.
  

Lessons Learned

The client emphasised that many valuable lessons were learned from the use of Pro-ACTION.
Once the system was implemented, the users were motivated to abandon wasteful paper-based reports.
It was revealed that the system could be used for account planning in advance rather than merely recording visit histories.
Use of the system in one area inspired its pro-active use in others.

Customers Conclusion

The client concluded that Pro-ACTION conferred substantial benefits which justified a 'roll out' to the rest of the sales force and that:
"The use of the system will enhance the ability of all sales engineers to sell - which, in turn, will increase NRS sales."