https://www.xperience-group.com/case-study/belvoir-fruit-farms/
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| Key Contact(s): | Lawrence Moore |
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“Essentially the three key benefits are: information, information and information! It isn’t data for data’s sake. Microsoft Dynamics delivers and organises salient and useable information to which everyone has access and which helps them to deliver more efficient and qualitatively better customer service."
Founded in 1984, Belvoir Fruit Farms is a leading manufacturer of naturally delicious Cordials, Pressés and Fruit Crushes. Famous for their quality drinks, the company experienced an impressive growth which meant the combination of spreadsheets and Act CRM they’ve been relying on wasn’t enough to support their expansion.
Sales Director Lawrence Moore explained “We’d been using a combination of spreadsheets and an older version of Act. Our recent growth had resulted in a larger customer base which meant different routes to market. It was getting harder to ensure consistent and measurable approaches to sales and marketing, and the flow of information was becoming increasingly difficult to manage. ”
Belvoir was looking for a CRM solution that could be deployed with minimal disruption and be accessible to personnel in a number of job functions. “CRM is more of a cultural shift than a piece of software, so getting ‘buy-in’ from the staff was crucial. Any package had to be intuitive and friendly as well as powerful in terms of data handling.”
“Microsoft Dynamics 365 fitted the bill really well in terms of its look and feel, and we felt it would be far better received than some of the alternatives. It’s also very customer-centric and genuinely helps the day-to-day work with measurable staff benefits as well as improved transparency of communication and business information.”
Microsoft Dynamics was installed in March 2014. “Of course it’s early days, but – so far – the primary benefit is the ability to track the communication between ourselves and key customers,” says Lawrence.
“With such a geographically disparate team, Dynamics 365 is making us more agile and responsive, improving customer relationships. Now multiple staff members can have ongoing dialogues with customers with everything stored in ‘one version of the truth’. Indeed it’s my hope that soon we’ll be able to dispense with the phrase ‘I will just need to check with…”
In addition, the company has a large number of independent customers serviced by wholesalers. “We needed to be able to track activity effectiveness and end-customer ‘buy-in. Not just at a wholesaler/route to market level’”, Lawrence adds. “Dynamics 365 is enabling us to capture a much wider spread of data which, in the longer term, should help inform our promotional strategy in this complex area of the business.”
“Already we’re seeing improvements in communication plus streamlining of the sales lead management process,” says Lawrence. “Also, our teams are able to organise their time more effectively and be more responsive to customer needs.
“Essentially the three key benefits are information, information and information! But it isn’t data for data’s sake – Microsoft Dynamics 365 delivers and organises salient and useable information to which everyone has access and which helps them to deliver more efficient and qualitatively better customer service.”
“The main benefits of Dynamics 365 are the better external view of our customer services and a reduction in the time frame from new sales lead to on-shelf availability. All of this coupled with better insights into market opportunities will, in turn, impact future sales and marketing plans.”
Belvoir hopes to expand the role of CRM but is taking a phased approach “to ensure that individual elements work in areas where the benefits will be most readily felt” before moving on to the next phase. “Management time is at a premium, so a phased deployment is our best chance of landing a long term solution with solid foundations which can grow and expand with the rest of our business capability.”
Finally, why did Belvoir choose Xperience? “We had a sense that, from day one, they weren’t simply interested in the optimum solution for our current needs but one that would be scalable for the future. Their product demonstrations were strong and thorough, and at no point did we feel we were being ‘sold to’.”
“With Xperience we had simply found a partner willing to spend the necessary time with us to understand our business past, present and future and deliver software and – more importantly – after sales service and training which has got us off to a good and confident start.”
