SMARTCRM at Bluhm

Bluhm Systeme GmbH can look back on the past 18 years of experience with the CRM system SMARTCRM. At that time, it all started with the Sales Information System ivs, from which the current CRM software evolved. Since then, a change of ERP has been completed with SMARTCRM, which was implemented to the company’s full satisfaction. The acceptance of the CRM solution at the provider of marking solutions is correspondingly good, confirms Kurt Hoppen, Managing Director of Bluhm Systeme GmbH: “Over time SMARTCRM has adapted to our requirements, since the developers of SMARTCRM take our sales processes into consideration and implement their findings in product development.”

Meanwhile, about 380 employees at Bluhm work with SMARTCRM in Germany, Austria, Switzerland and the Netherlands. The first three subsidiaries are mapped via clients so that they all have access to a central system.

In sales, SMARTCRM supports employees in all processes related to customers and prospects. The CRM system enables the company to have a fast and well-organized information flow, ultimately ensuring high customer satisfaction. Seamless project tracking and a wide range of evaluation options are always guaranteed since the company maps its sales projects in SMARTCRM. Sales staff create quotations directly out of the CRM solution. This way, project steps, quotations, and relevant figures, e.g. on the project scope, are consultable at a glance in the electronic project file.

Field staff are also kept informed on all important data at all times. Using their notebooks, they can access all relevant CRM data offline. This means that even without an internet connection, the complete activity history, current turnover figures or the last service appointment for the devices used by the customer are accessible. As soon as online access is available again, the information entered into the CRM system by the field staff is also made available to the office staff in a timely manner. In this way, SMARTCRM guarantees optimal cross-departmental communication.

Whereas the CRM solution initially imported data from the ERP system Baan, an interface between SMARTCRM and SAP now ensures the central provision of important customer information and current ERP data. In the CRM system. Bluhm can analyze the figures from SAP which are needed for calculating advertising success, for instance, at different levels at the press of a button. Additionally, current evaluations of sales activities are also available at a glance.

The marketing staff at Bluhm take advantage of the numerous options to provide addresses stored in SMARTCRM for targeted advertisement campaigns. The appropriate target group for a marketing campaign is selected using features which employees assign to addresses and contacts. The company measures the value of their marketing actions using the project tracking thanks to the assignment of action numbers in SMARTCRM.