Client Reference System Case Study

The Problem

The Client Reference System was developed for a medium-sized office furniture manufacturer and solution provider to track their customers, solutions and job sites. 

Even though the company was growing and penetrating many North American markets, they only had a handful of showroom facilities where they could showcase their products and designs. This made it difficult to impress potential clients outside a handful of major centers where they had showrooms.  For major clients, the company would fly decision-makers to their head office facility, which was set up as a showroom facility.  For mid-market clients, the company decided to use existing client facilities (with permission, of course) as showrooms to showcase their office solutions and high-end furniture.  Most clients who were satisfied with the relationship were happy to oblige.

The theory seemed like a great low-cost strategy for business development, but when it was put into practice, there were a number of hurdles that needed to be overcome.  No database existed to capture information about every job performed, so if the organization had a potential Chicago-based customer that was interested in product line “X”, it would become a “hit or miss” proposition that an existing customer in the immediate geographic area could be found.  Usually, the relationship manager interested in locating an existing client site would have to start calling numerous people within the organization to track down the information, if it even existed.  Sometimes through anecdotal information, an existing client in the area was located, but this information became increasingly difficult to find as employee turnover increased within the organization.  Occasionally, someone at the head office was able to find the information, but when the existing client was called, the relationship manager received an angry reception because the client had a prior negative experience.  Relationship managers were left scrambling to find the desired information by any means necessary.   

The Solution

The Client Reference System was created so that information pertaining to each job for each customer across the entire organization could be referenced instantaneously.  For example, the relationship manager could use the Client Reference System to identify all customers in the Chicago area, or all of Illinois.  They could also identify which customers in the area purchased from product line “X” and they could also read comments relating to the job itself to see if the customer was happy with the work and products.  Customer contact details are also provided so that the relationship manager in Chicago could quickly start calling customers to see if their facilities could be used to showcase the company’s work and products.  The software allowed the organization to pursue a low-cost strategy of showcasing their product lines across North America.

Results and Benefit 

The main benefit was that the software tool facilitated their strategy of showcasing their products to potential customers at existing customer locations.  This gave the company a powerful business development tool at almost no cost to the organization.  The cost to set up and keep fresh numerous new showcase facilities throughout North America would have cost several million dollars.  This case is an example of technology facilitating and supporting a business strategy.  The relationship managers saved a lot of time and the cost of telephone calls trying to track down information within their organization.  The major cost saving came in the form of reduced opportunity costs associated with not being able to showcase products in all markets.

Visit our Client Reference System demo page to see the software application in action.