The Challenge

Total ID is a leader in the UK’s identification product industry. Once established, the business followed a steep growth curve and headcount increased.

As an operation that primarily sources, markets and delivers largely bespoke products to businesses, driving up efficiency and maintaining competitive pricing without compromising on quality of service are pivotal.

When the founders of Total ID started the business, they were already known to the industry and so sales rapidly grew. In a relatively short time, the company’s customer base exceeded those initial contacts and it started to need:

• Larger-scale sales intelligence, e.g. where new business was coming from and buying patterns
• Automation that reduced the admin burden
• A system that would provide them with visibility over all areas of the business
• A method of ensuring all information, from all employees, was structured, accessible and usable
• Technology that would drive workflow planning and correspondence co-ordination
• More sophisticated data storage and management
• Better diary management facilities that were integrated with customer and order records.

The business had become too large to be managed on its existing CRM system. Although it was loaded with information, it consisted of extensive notes that various employees made when discussing requirements with prospects and customers.

“It took too long to find records, and even longer to find the piece of information we needed within a file. We’d grown out of our CRM system. Although it was good for storing records, it didn’t have a format that organised the information when it was being inputted, and didn’t give enough business value back,” explained Debbie Thomas, Office Manager at Total ID.

The next system would have to support every individual’s activities within the company. The business was already highly organised, but any new technology would have to reflect this – and improve on it, to add value.

The Solution

As the company headcount increased, the hunt was on for a less labour-intensive system that would:

• Provide useful information
• Drive sales, ordering and logistics procedures
• Automatically assign information to the appropriate sales territories and departments • store information from throughout the supply chain
• Assist with marketing
• Automate calculations and generate real-time visual illustrations of performance
• Be quick and easy to use, regardless of staff’s IT literacy
• Generally fulfil a supportive role rather than being an administration overhead.

SuperOffice was chosen because of its greater functionality and market-leading features compared to others that were shortlisted.

“Matt at SuperOffice went out of his way to set it up for us. Even after it had gone live, we found that staff were using it inconsistently – this was largely due to old habits. However, after we realised this, and trained everyone in the new way of thinking, the results started rolling in,” commented Debbie.

The Results

Profits increased without significant headcount change as employees in sales roles found SuperOffice quick and easy to use.

Cross-selling and upselling opportunities that would previously have been buried in notes were no longer missed, as SuperOffice’s prompts and reporting facilities directly impacted the number of quotes generated each month.

After SuperOffice was implemented, the number of quotes being sent out each month steadily increased. However, with the new SuperOffice CRM work practices, this rocketed to an average of 1394 quotes per month.

As well as increasing the size of existing accounts, SuperOffice helped the Total ID sales team to find new customers more quickly and efficiently. The number of customer records rose when they started to use SuperOffice to over 4000 – and is still rapidly rising three years later. Two years after implementing SuperOffice, revenue had risen by over 40%.

“The dashboard displays for each user save hours of number-crunching. Calculations of costs, margins, pipelines and much more are displayed in graphics. At a higher level, our Manager’s dashboards give an overall view of business performance based on real-time information, so the accuracy of their decision-making has improved in line with the new levels of accuracy in statistical reports,” added Andy Roberts, Director of Total ID.

Prior to changing to SuperOffice, all Total ID’s quotes, invoices, delivery notes and other correspondence were manually created. Now SuperOffice’s templates are automatically generated, containing the appropriate supplier or customer correspondence details, which has completely removed a substantial amount of admin. Without it, company growth would have been far more costly.

“Time and efficiency are the biggest bonuses of using SuperOffice. We can report on practically anything, and most information is just one click away. It’s so quick and easy to use. It’s made the sales intelligence – which was previously locked in company data – accessible and usable. We’ve started to use this information along with SuperOffice’s digital marketing modules. It’s all extremely joined up,” commented Debbie.

• 40% increase in profitable turnover
• 400% increase in average number of quotes sent each month after SuperOffice was implemented
• A further 700-fold increase in the average number of quotes sent each month after training from SuperOffice
• Provided clarity in profitability of each quote
• Customer count rose by 250% within three years
• Each individual area’s sales have shown growth whilst their sales cycle has become more efficient
• Increased capacity without increasing headcount
• Efficiency drove a rise in profitability without passing on any cost to customers
• Data was transformed into useful business information
• Leveraged data to increase the value of existing customer accounts
• Eliminated a large proportion of admin • Standardised and sped up procedures
• Dramatically reduced the chance of missing sales opportunities
• Real-time management reporting improved effectiveness of decision-making
• Enabled collaborative sales and marketing, which improved targeting and lead generation