Challenge
After a number of changes in corporate ownership and focus over
a period of years, Perkin Elmer required a period of calm to build
on it’s reputation as leader within the biotech industry.
In 1999, Perkin Elmer UK approached Marketpoint with a number of
internal challenges. Each year a large budget was being spent contacting
the UK customer base to inform them about company events, seminars
and special offers. These names were being held in a flat file,
and it goes without saying that over a number of years, a significant
number of duplicates and inaccuracies had crept into the file. Each
time a mailing was carried out, gone-aways came back by the sackload!
Added to this, the marketing team had little knowledge of the Return
on Investment (ROI) for each campaign and a lot of working hours
were being spent organising the events.
Perkin Elmer’s sales force also had their own individual
data sets with no instant integration with other departments resulting
in valuable leads being missed, as notes or messages were lost internally.
For PerkinElmer Sales and Regional Managers, any attempt to produce
sales information involved gathering files individually. Hours were
being spent trying to provide sales reports and pipelines for superiors
and there was no quick way to review sales teams’ performance
individually or regionally.
The Salespoint.com Solution
1. mCRM – Managed Central Database
2. Salespoint.com – web-based Contact Management software
3. Response Management & Lead Tracking
Stage One was to load the mailing file on to Marketpoint’s
mCRM centrally and use it’s data cleaning module to de-duplicate,
merge and purge the complete file prior to making it available to
PerkinElmer in a fully relational format.
Stage Two started the updating process. Unlike other companies
who quickly move into an outbound telemarketing mode at significant
expense, the Marketpoint approach is to use a simple incentive mailing
to advise contacts on the database that the file is being updated
and that they should respond with the simple Fax-back or Web Form
to update their details and let us know that they would like to
continue to receive further information. Obviously, depending on
the attractiveness of the incentive, the level of response can be
quite significant, and thus reduces the size of the final file for
clean-up using outbound telemarketing.
In PerkinElmer's case, the size of the contact file as a result
of these first two clean-up stages, had reduced from 16,000 to 12,000
- the net saving of 4000 people enabling a very quick return on
investment from postage costs alone!
Stage Three then swung attention to the sales force. As is normal
in most organisations where a central marketing database is not
readily available for day-to-day sales force use, each of the dozen
odd Sales Executives had been forced to create their own contact
files for each of the territories - some as Excel files others using
Access or even Outlook contacts.
Enter Marketpoint's web-based Contact Management solution, Salespoint.com.
The Application Service Provider (ASP) approach is absolutely perfect
for mobile, enterprise-wide applications involving sales and marketing
personnel. Being multi-level, individual password access to the
Central Marketpoint database allows sales people to view their territory
(and download CSV files for local manipulation as required), add
completely new records and, with the central Response Management
module in place, view individual inquiries to the PerkinElmer Call
Centre every minute of the day.
Marketpoint’s module then ensures that any screened and qualified
sales leads from the Web or any other form of marketing communications
channel, are e-Mailed to the Sales Executive with a back-up SMS
text message to their mobile phone. Follow-up reporting on these
leads is then simply provided with a feedback button on Salespoint.com,
with the important decision being taken by the Sales Executive as
to whether each sales lead will be owned in future by the Sales
Executive or returned for central telemarketing re-contact at the
right time in the future.
"The real beauty for us
with Salespoint is that you never have to reach a point where
the specification is fixed in stone, like old laptop software
which always proved to be a compromise"
Head of Communications
Perkin Elmer, UK
Benefits
In the initial weeks, it has to be said that many of the sales
people were reluctant to change old habits and adopt the new system,
and it wasn't until they had each been involved with initial presentations
and the standard half-day training that this all started to change.
A good indication of this is evidenced by sales force follow-up
of sales leads at an average of 47 per cent during the year 2000,
pretty good by most standards, but with a further dramatic improvement
to 97 per cent by the end of 2001!
With the introduction of Salespoint, PerkinElmer had a centrally
controlled database customised to their specification. The new system
ensured that all the sales and customer related information could
be reached by the sales team instantly, and sales representatives
had a way of ensuring that sales leads were sent to the correct
people for follow up, thus enabling quick follow-up to both customers
and new enquirers.
Through Salespoint.com, individual sales people were then able
to manage specific regions to see where successes were, whilst targeting
new areas for growth. Likewise Sales Managers could now produce
sales pipelines for individual product lines all the way through
to country regions at the touch of a button thus giving them more
time to focus on developing more sales from the team.
Switching back to the Marketing Department, new direct mail projects
can now be carried out in a targeted manner more frequently at targeted
sections of the database, and responses captured easily through
Salespoint’s bureau team. The ROI of the marketing campaigns
is of course fully monitored to increase their effectiveness of
future promotions.
This has resulted in reduced marketing cost and improved sales.
Eleven more countries throughout Europe have since been added to
Salespoint following the success in the UK. PerkinElmer's Head of
UK Marketing Communications stated "The real beauty for us
with this system is that you never have to reach a point where the
specification is fixed in stone, like old laptop software which
always proved to be a compromise. Things develop weekly and need
adjustments to keep pace. This makes a web-based solution perfect
for us, along with all the extra capacity available from Marketpoint's
Bureau Services when we need them!"
"Things develop weekly and need
adjustments to keep pace. This makes a web-based solution perfect
for us, along with all the extra capacity available from Marketpoint's
Bureau Services when we need them!"
Head of Communications
Perkin Elmer, UK
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