"Intellisell has been designed from the ground up with Sage in mind. It intuitively thinks like Sage, minimising re-keying of information and maximising efficiency in our sales process. "
Scolmore International powers through Intellisell web sales
Objectives
- Scolmore needed a web-solution that could handle the range of products and pricing structures within the business without having to look to a costly bespoke website.
Thursday, 17 November 2011
What We Did
Steve Taylor, General Manager of Scolmore International comments, “The company traditionally received orders via the telephone or fax and we were unsure how the implementation of this service would affect our customers’ current ordering system. However, after canvassing opinion from some of our longstanding customers I felt that it was worth pursuing.”
The company has long relied upon printed product catalogues to promote its numerous ranges. “We wanted a website that would work in conjunction with our product literature - it didn’t need to be heavily designed, but it did need to be robust enough to handle our e-product range. We wanted our customers to be able to place orders with us whenever it best suited them enabling them to manage their time effectively.”
The Intellisell solution delivered true business to business web sales that had total integration with Scolmore’s Sage 1000 business software. Scolmore decided to take a simple grid view of products to ensure customers experienced easy order entry. After securely logging onto the customer portal the Scolmore customer can now see their own prices including a web discount and are able to view stock levels for all products.
All information is live from Sage 1000, so clients can always get the very latest information. “We loved some of the standard features in Intellisell designed to make life easier such as the order import feature that allows our clients to create their own order templates for frequently ordered products. We also took advantage of the Quick Buy facility, by which a client can add a product code rather than searching the whole catalogue. And because it has been designed from the ground up with Sage in mind it intuitively thinks like Sage, minimising rekeying of information and maximising efficiency in our sales process”, comments Steve Taylor. Intellisell was further developed to enable orders to be placed into allocated stock within Sage rather than go into back order, thereby giving Scolmore’s customers an accurate depiction of stock and visibility of order fulfilment.
The company has long relied upon printed product catalogues to promote its numerous ranges. “We wanted a website that would work in conjunction with our product literature - it didn’t need to be heavily designed, but it did need to be robust enough to handle our e-product range. We wanted our customers to be able to place orders with us whenever it best suited them enabling them to manage their time effectively.”
The Intellisell solution delivered true business to business web sales that had total integration with Scolmore’s Sage 1000 business software. Scolmore decided to take a simple grid view of products to ensure customers experienced easy order entry. After securely logging onto the customer portal the Scolmore customer can now see their own prices including a web discount and are able to view stock levels for all products.
All information is live from Sage 1000, so clients can always get the very latest information. “We loved some of the standard features in Intellisell designed to make life easier such as the order import feature that allows our clients to create their own order templates for frequently ordered products. We also took advantage of the Quick Buy facility, by which a client can add a product code rather than searching the whole catalogue. And because it has been designed from the ground up with Sage in mind it intuitively thinks like Sage, minimising rekeying of information and maximising efficiency in our sales process”, comments Steve Taylor. Intellisell was further developed to enable orders to be placed into allocated stock within Sage rather than go into back order, thereby giving Scolmore’s customers an accurate depiction of stock and visibility of order fulfilment.
Results
After training its sales staff on the system and launching it to its client base Scolmore began to see a steady uptake in usage of the website. Clients began to see the benefits of 24/7 access and found it a fast, efficient route to place orders with the company. Within three months Scolmore was experiencing considerable success sales revenue through the site went from 8% to 44% in that same period.
“All of the initial scepticism over whether or not our customers would benefit from web trading disappeared and we quickly saw benefits. We already run a very efficient organisation, but this has enabled us to maximise our sales and reduce the overheads normally associated with order taking and order entry. What’s more, we are delivering a far better service to our clients.”
“All of the initial scepticism over whether or not our customers would benefit from web trading disappeared and we quickly saw benefits. We already run a very efficient organisation, but this has enabled us to maximise our sales and reduce the overheads normally associated with order taking and order entry. What’s more, we are delivering a far better service to our clients.”
