IBS practises what it preaches
Recognising a need to improve their sales and marketing activities, IBS decided to implement a CRM system. Selligent proved to be the best solution to meet its requirements. IBS has now integrated the Selligent solution into the product offering that it proposes to its own clients
marc vancaeneghemGeneral Manager Logistics
“Selligent enables us to manage the sales and marketing tasks in an integrated way”
“IBS thought Selligent was the best CRM solution on the market to deal with their issues”
IBS, International Business Systems is one of the world’s top 10 suppliers of software and professional services for medium to large companies. Their main area of expertise is e-business, Customer Relationship Management (CRM), Supply Chain Management and Demand-Driven Manufacturing and Warehouse Management. Recognising a need to improve the management of their sales & marketing activities, IBS decided to equip their own Sales and Marketing department with a CRM system. After consulting Gartner and Meta Group reports and looking at other CRM suppliers, they chose Selligent.
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A reliable tool offering a plethora of possibilities
The decision to implement Selligent as their in-house CRM solution was based on a number of important business requirements. Firstly, they recognised the need for a better tool to manage their own sales & marketing departments. Secondly, IBS has a complicated corporate structure with companies not only in different countries but also in different sectors, and thought Selligent was the best CRM solution on the market to deal with this. Thirdly, IBS wanted to add a CRM tool to their product offering. They were looking for a reliable, state-of-the-art CRM tool that was easy to configure and implement and would address the diverse needs of their clients.
Eliminating islands of information
IBS had become aware of a need for a better system to manage their sales & marketing department. They recognised that their customer and prospect information was kept separately in different databases, leaving them open to duplication and inefficiency. If they could consolidate these islands of information into one central database, they could gain control and improve the performance of the sales & marketing teams: > the marketing department needed a better marketing tool to follow up leads and marketing campaigns; > and the sales people needed a more efficient method of logging their daily activity and keeping track of their sales leads while providing management with accurate sales and activity reports.
Integrated sales and marketing management within a complex organisation
Selligent was implemented at IBS in April 2001, and the islands of information were consolidated into one company database for all sales and marketing related issues. Customer and prospect information is entered into the system only once, duplications and inconsistencies are avoided. IBS’ sales and marketing methodology - called the Sales Control Process (SCP) - is managed by the Selligent solution. According to Marc Vancaeneghem, General Manager Logistics at IBS, Selligent enables us to manage the sales and marketing tasks in an integrated way. In the past, the company had different islands of information created by a rather complicated organisational structure: > two legal entities; > four operational business units: Financials, Industry, Logistics and 1S (the IT infrastructure division); > two geographic locations: Zaventem and Sint-Martens-Latem. Selligent has given us full control over the sales and marketing cycle and by implementing MCP (Marketing Control Process) and SCP (Sales Control Process) we are now able to efficiently manage the workflow as well as having extensive reporting capability.
IBS: from a customer to a partner
Based on their experience implementing Selligent in their own company, and recognising it as the best solution for their clients, IBS Belgium signed a reseller agreement with Selligent. IBS believes that Selligent is the right CRM solution to meet the requirements of its clients for a number of different reasons. IBS sells ASW, an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system. IBS is a specialist in providing total solutions for companies in a one-stop-shop environment and they needed a state-of-the-art CRM system that would efficiently integrate with ASW. Selligent met this need and as well as being easy to integrate, Selligent is user friendly, quick to implement, offers the industry’s best configuration features - including its unique Global & Local system, and a good price to performance ratio. IBS stresses that one of the main advantages of Selligent is the ability for them to easily tailor it to meet their customer requirements without the need for expensive programming skills. By implementing Selligent in their own company, IBS gained the experience they would need to efficiently implement Selligent for their clients.
The customer - the all round winner
IBS customers are the all round winners. IBS have greatly improved their Customer Relationship Management and are now better equipped to communicate efficiently with their customers, with the right person, at the right time with the right offer. And by choosing Selligent as the tool to manage their own business, IBS have gained valuable experience in implementation, which will be passed on when their customers implement Selligent as their own CRM solution.
