Market-leading precision machinery manufacturer increases sales data quality with Mobile CRM

About ANCA Pty Ltd

Australian Numerical Controls and Automation Pty Ltd (ANCA) is the world’s leading manufacturer of tool grinders and computerized numerical control (CNC) systems. Throughout its 40+ year history, the company has developed and delivered exceptional precision machinery and software. Their customers range from many different industries, including manufacturing, automotive, electronics, aerospace, woodworking, medical, and numerous others.

Founded in 1974 in Melbourne, ANCA employs over 1,000 people globally. Of those, 400 are located at the Bayswater North facility headquarters in seven adjoining factories. Outside of Australia, the company has offices in the UK, Germany, Japan, China, Thailand, Brazil, Mexico, India, Taiwan, and the USA. All of these offices are supported by a worldwide network of sales representatives and agents.

ANCA Business challenge

ANCA uses Microsoft Dynamics CRM to manage and monitor its global sales process, primarily opportunities, contacts, and accounts. With sales staff all over Australia, Asia, the USA, and Europe, a CRM system is the glue that bonds them with headquarters.

However, sales representatives do not reside in permanent offices. They spend a great deal of their time, mostly on the road. That means finding time to access the CRM was difficult, and data often was not up-to-date. Therefore, the company’s back office couldn’t rely on a CRM to get an accurate outlook on current and future business.

The percentage probability of winning a deal could be completely out of date. And we were getting no visibility on the forecast for the future. We didn’t have the confidence to do our monthly or 90-day sales estimates using the CRM data. Another example would be the close dates – they’re drawn up in advance. However, if anything changed and it was not reflected in the CRM, the sales guys couldn’t close down the deal accurately just because they weren’t maintaining the data. Greg Perry, ANCA’s International Marketing Manager, illustrates the challenges they were facing.

The solution

That’s why the company needed a means of allowing the sales reps an easy way to manage their CRM data. Means that factored in their ever-changing working environment.

I was exposed to Resco at a Microsoft Dynamics user group meeting. At the time, it was challenging for us to keep the information in our system up-to-date. As our reps are constantly on the move, it is difficult for them to find the extra time. Simply sit down with a laptop to work with their CRM data. said Greg Perry

After testing several other mobile CRM solutions, ANCA picked Resco Field Sales+ as the one that best suited their needs. Today, the company’s sales team, traveling daily to keep personal contact with prospects and customers, has an easy and efficient way to keep the CRM updated—via the Resco Field Sales+ app installed on their iPhones / Android phones and iPads.

The key device for our sales team is their mobile phone. Everyone has a smartphone. It is the main tool for our sales staff to keep up with their emails. So the plan was to find a solution that could offer similar functionality for CRM. explained Greg Perry, ANCA’s International Marketing Manager

Benefits

Increased CRM data accuracy

For ANCA‘s back-office team, having fresh customer data is crucial in making strategic decisions, whether reviewing current performance via sales reports or creating long-term forecasts to estimate future demand.

The data entry delay could be a week, but in some cases it could grow even to months. For example, the sales guys would be collecting business cards and before they know it, they’ve got 20 business cards. And as they kept postponing the data entry, they would accumulate another 30, 40, or even more cards – and suddenly, uploading the information becomes a huge task. However, by using Resco Field Sales+ they can handle it as they go along. clarified Greg Perry, ANCA’s International Marketing Manager

Thus, the company’s back-office receives the latest data without unnecessary delays, and can deliver the right products to the right customers, at the right time.

In the end, CRM is only as good as the data you put into it and Resco Field Sales+ has certainly allowed us to get better data out of our system. Greg added

Reducing administration time in blocks

Upon completing a sales call a representative can instantly launch Resco Field Sales+ on their mobile device and update the opportunity, contact, account, and any other entities or fields.

Chipping away at entering sales data like this, saves them a long update session next time they are in the hotel or home office. Resco Field Sales+ enables you to be leaner with using your time. So our guys don’t have to spend over half a day each week updating the system.

If you sit there at lunchtime flicking through Facebook on your phone, you might as well go and check on your CRM – it’s that easy now. There’s no need to dedicate an extensive block of your time to manage the data. You can do it whenever & wherever the opportunity arises. described Greg Perry

Rock-solid performance

I think the biggest benefit of Resco, is its rock-solid performance. We tested also other mobile CRM apps, including Microsoft’s mobile client for Dynamics CRM, but they were flakey and not particularly reliable. With most of them you need an internet connection just to log in and that can be slow, or even fail quite easily. Greg Perry, International Marketing Manager at ANCA described the difference

With Resco Field Sales+ however, users launch the app and can start working straight away.

The offline capability certainly plays a significant role as it makes the app fully operational even when internet access is problematic. Overall, Resco in my opinion, provided the best user experience – quick, reliable, and user-friendly. Plus, we really like the map view. We have customized it to display customers and accounts with open opportunities. And we also use the capability to take photos directly from the app and attach them to related records. Greg stated

Expanding to service technicians

Currently, ANCA plans on implementing also the service side of Microsoft Dynamics CRM, and Resco is a key element of the proposed solution.

Since Resco solutions give us the benefit of working offline we plan to deploy it with our service technicians as well. Those guys work remotely, in different factories at various customer locations. On site, they have to fill out all this paperwork with the service information and once they return to the office, they need to retype it into CRM. It is quite a tedious task which can affect the quality of the information. Having an iPad with the Resco Field Service app, the technicians will be able to put in the service data to the CRM right then and there. And even if there’s no Internet throughout the day, next time they get connected they just hit “Sync” and all the information is uploaded to the company CRM. Greg Perry revealed ANCA’s plans to further expand their usage of Resco Field Service+.