CTP

"From 2004 to 2008, we increased orders more than 30% across the business. The CTP has firmly established a growth momentum thanks to a coherent organisation and strategy, which includes our CRM."

The CTP (Centre Technique du Papier) scores with Selligent!

It’s hard to imagine all the technical expertise that goes into making a sheet of paper. The Centre Technique du Papier (CTP - Paper Technology Centre) was created in 1957 as a research body to promote the development of technologies for paper, pulp, cardboard and associated industries. Most of its activity is centred on industrial research and development aimed at transferring its knowledge and results to the industry, thereby creating added value for the sector. To underpin its customer-centric strategy, the CTP turned to CRM. The challenge was taken up by Selligent, in whom the CTP has placed its trust for the past 10 years.

A new strategy to prepare the future

As a public utility, the CTP fulfils a mission of interest to the paper industry as a whole. Back in 2000, it realised that to expand, it would have to focus more on its industrial clients and be more internationally minded. The idea was to strengthen the links of large industrial groups to the centre’s research effort and share financial resources to boost innovation. Gilles Lenon, CTP General Manager, explains: “of course, that implies listening more to the industry’s concerns. In this respect, good customer relationship management is a must. However, we did not have an overall view of our contacts; each CTP employee had his or her own file of contacts. It was this need for harmonisation and co-ordination that first lead us to our CRM project.”

Key factor: relationships

Alfredo Guembes-Dileo, today CIO of CTP, took on responsibility for the CRM project. “Above and beyond a centralised client database and simple contact management functions, we wanted a full CRM system that included all the functions needed for sales monitoring and marketing campaign management,” he explains. “The Selligent solution was perfectly attuned to our needs and based on tried and tested technologies. Selligent had already made its mark with a number of clients and offered the guarantee of long-term stability. Plus, we and Selligent’s people hit it off right from the start.”

This relational quality is confirmed by Martine Favi, applications manager and project leader: “both with Selligent, and more recently with Masao, who have taken over our integration project, the contact has always been good, even in the more stressful moments. Since the start of implementation in 2001, we have always had the same interface, who has shown considerable agility and pragmatism in managing our project. He has always listened attentively to our business needs.”

Brick by brick

When the CTP set sail on its CRM adventure, customer relationships were not as crucial as they are today. It was a completely new prospect for the CTP. To make the change-over smoothly, they leveraged the solution’s agility, as Favi testifies. “We approached the project with a great deal of pragmatism. After listing the required functionality by order of complexity, we opted for gradual implementation and deployment, function by function, profile by profile. In this way, we built up the tool, step by step, starting with the foundations – a single client database – and adding one brick after another until we achieved a prefect operational system.” Furthermore, Selligent’s ease of use, which the CTP found attractive right from the outset, meant that it was easy to integrate into the users’ daily routine.

A complex sales process

As time – and upgrades – went by, Selligent became increasingly indispensible in the eyes of the CTP users. It enables information sharing and co-ordination among the sales people in charge of prospect follow-up, the customer-facing business engineers and technical reps, and the research team leaders who contribute their specific expertise. This aspect is all the more important since each estimate is the outcome of close co-operation among these different stakeholders. “We sell grey matter,” Lenon insists. “We analyse each need and then either offer the client a bespoke service or encourage them to participate in one of our research programmes.”

Philippe Ritzenthaler, Director of Operations, Industrial Sites, adds, “all the monitoring of actions, internal or customer-related, upstream or downstream of the order, are orchestrated in Selligent. All exchanges are tracked, and we have complete visibility over our customer’s and activity. Even the researchers (engineers and technicians) use Selligent, because at the CTP, customer relations are everybody’s business.”

The Web (r)evolution

In 2008, keen to further strengthen the links with its partners and intensify technology transfer, the CTP started to migrate its system to a Web platform. For Lenon, the principle motivation was “to be able to give our partners managed access to our database to execute some very specific actions and, in so doing, co-ordinate our efforts and leverage synergies.”

“Today, the application is perfectly stable,” notes Favi. “The main network and hardware changes are behind us, and we can now envisage moving all our applications to the Web. Selligent enabled us to take that step.”

A new company culture

For the General Manager, CRM does not decide strategy, it supports it. “Acquiring a CRM system only makes sense if it is part of a company’s strategic positioning. It’s the organisation, when properly structured, that enables everyone to buy into the process.” And one thing is sure, the company has evolved with Selligent. The few hesitations at the outset have been replaced by a real CRM culture, and the CTP has become a truly customer-centric organization. “This success is the result of everyone’s engagement – that of management, of course, which was determined to lead the company forwards, but also that of the users, who played an active role in defining the needs,” says Favi. “And as far as we are concerned, in co-operation with Selligent and Masao, we are just as keen as ever to integrate all the expectations and needs, of each user individually and of the company in general.”

Personalisation – a must

Production and follow-up of mailings, e-mailings and press actions also go through Selligent. When Selligent was installed, the CTP chose to start from scratch, that is, they did not collect the data contained in the various files spread across the company. Over time, the database has grown. “The next step,” according to Sandrine Poncet-Pappini, Head of Communications, “is a more precise qualification of our contacts so as to personalise communications with each of them according to their centres of interest.”

To gain their loyalty, you have to know them

Today, the CTP can be proud of the distance covered since they started from scratch. Introducing Selligent helped to give them a new lease on life. Ritzenthaler and Lenon are united in their praise: “thanks to Selligent, our teams have a global view of the client. We even managed to get two people from the same company, though geographically far apart, to dialogue, because their issues were identical. Our clients appreciate our being so well informed. That enables us to be closer to the mark in our thinking and in our sales follow-up, which in turn helps us to further intensify our customer loyalty.”

Great expectations

With Selligent, the CTP is also able to calculate what the General Manager calls ‘expectations,’ “that is, the probability of converting an estimate into an order, which gives us a three-month’s visibility over our order book. That way, we can anticipate potential hurdles and re-focus the business if necessary.”

And the adventure continues. Of course, the Selligent solution is still evolving according to the users’ needs, and new functions are added on a regular basis. Better yet, the CTP does not hesitate to recommend Selligent to its partners, who are full of admiration for what the CTP has managed to do. A sign both of satisfaction and trust.