SMARTCRM in the construction engineering industry

Karl Bachl GmbH & Co KG located in Röhrnbach, Germany, can now look back on two years of usage of the CRM system SMARTCRM. The key reasons for choosing SMARTCRM were its user-friendly front-end as well as its personal information manager – PIM. Thanks to the latter, the primary goal of the CRM implementation was reached: the optimization of the internal communication, for instance between field service and back office, as well as the external communication, with architects, engineering offices and planners. The different company departments, such as the insulation, construction or construction material, are represented in SMARTCRM over a total of seven clients. This way, the employees of each department have access to the important data.

Moreover, an important decision factor was the interface to the ERP system proAlpha used by Bachl and which was easily adapted to the company’s needs. SMARTCRM imports, in consideration of the clients created in the ERP system, customer and product master data, relationships and hierarchies as well as special prices, turnover and order backlogs. This way, both field service and back office have a unified overview of all customer and planning related data, without having to switch to proAlpha. The CRM system thus guarantees that the employees can always adapt their customer’s activities to the current figures. SMARTCRM allows Bachl to early recognize planning deviations and to react accordingly.

Price agreements and price sheets are centrally stored for instance for the insulation material sales department. Thus, the sales staff can access the current price information with a few clicks and stay up to date at all times. The employees of the construction department control the dispatch of their price list by assigning features to categorize the addresses in the CRM system. This way, each customer always receives the correct price list.

In addition, complaints can be captured in SMARTCRM. Norbert Plettl, CRM project manager at Karl Bachl GmbH & Co KG, illustrates the process optimization provided by the assistance of the CRM system: “SMARTCRM simplifies our complaint process in the insulation material department, for instance with forms that are automatically filled out and comprehensive evaluation options of the complaints. Thanks to the 8D reports, a better complaint follow-up takes place.”

For optimal tracking, the CRM system provides all detailed information related to a complaint, such as the reason of the query, the duration of the complaint processing as well as any steps taken to solve the problem of the customer. The causes of recurring complaints can then be identified and so the quality and services can be kept on improving.

The acceptance for the CRM system is really high amongst the employees, especially in the insulation material department where SMARTCRM supports them in many processes – among others due to the usability of SMARTCRM. Through the unified mask structure, the employees are comfortable even with the newly added modules. In the near future, the use of SMARTCRM should increase in the construction material department.