HERWE – chemisch-technische Erzeugnisse GmbH

Information is the backbone of sales work. The sales team must be able to access data from the ERP system used by Herwe, abas Business Software. Important was the establishment of an interface between SMARTCRM and abas-ERP. Sales analyses play an important role at HERWE. The figures should be therefore evaluated in detail at different levels in SMARTCRM.

At the end of 2001, Herwe – chem.-tech. Erzeugnisse GmbH introduced SMARTCRM in field service and back office. Via the pre-configured EDP interface between SMARTCRM and abas Business Software, SMARTCRM updates customer’s and supplier’s information, product data, open positions and sales figures. Herwe manages 21.000 addresses with SMARTCRM. The address file of SMARTCRM brings together all sales-relative information about customers and prospects including potential assessments and sales figures. The employees document in the address file all activities with customers – from phone calls, e-mails to visit reports. The employees reach by clicking an overview of quotations, sent samples, open positions and sales revenues with the customer. Each employee accesses the same data. The field service staff has all information and figures of his sales area offline on the notebook. Thus, when on a customer visit, they are up-to-date on the last activities, quotations and open invoices.

With several thousand offers and samples a year, proposal system and sample shipping have a special significance. The product prices of the traded goods are determined by the current raw material price and are then subject to daily variations. During the data synchronization, SMARTCRM imports the latest product data and prices via the interface from abas-ERP. The latest figures are always at hand. Back office and field service employees add in SMARTCRM for each quotation or sample a project containing all important information, e.g., project phase, project volume, probability, realization date, quotation / sample positions and activities / follow-ups. The quotation and sample preparations are written in Microsoft Word. SMARTCRM automatically fills in the quotation or sample templates  with all data and calculates partial and total sums.

Both business areas – cosmetic products (Herwe) and flooring products (Hercotec) – are treated as separate clients in SMARTCRM. Via the interface, the latest figures arrive daily in SMARTCRM from abas-ERP and can be analyzed. SMARTCRM displays the sales figures on the customer, employee and company levels. In each evaluation, SMARTCRM can depict the figures as a whole or filtered per client, e.g., yearly sales revenue per client over any number of years, product group sales revenue in quantity and value, customer hit lists, overview of sales areas, open positions per customer, quotation / order statistics or sample overview. The sales development is strongly influenced by new customers. Thanks to a special evaluation, Herwe has at a glance  the sales revenue and the number of new customers at any time. SMARTCRM displays the new customers’ evaluation in the monthly comparison: current month compared to the same month last year. In addition, SMARTCRM shows sales revenue and quantity sold for each product group in monthly comparison. Developments and trends are recognized early.

Conclusion
SMARTCRM gives all Herwe employees uniform basis knowledge, even available offline to the field staff on their notebooks. Due to the clear arrangement in the address file, activity history and in the sales revenue domain in SMARTCRM, all employees can quickly gain an idea of the customer. Even the employees who have no direct contact with the customer are able to take inquiries or to provide information. So the optimal customer service is guaranteed. SMARTCRM supports also the company by selecting the less demanded of the profitable products from the great packaging and product diversity in the cosmetics and trading goods areas.