Cosalt International

Cosalt International delivers a world class customer focus using CRM

What does a window cleaner with half an hour’s training in market research and a managing director born in Wales but speaking with a Scottish accent have in common?

The story starts with the results of an independent survey carried out by the British Marine Industries Federation, to review levels of customer care and service within the maritime industry - a survey that in fact revealed a blatant lack of customer care. Winston Phillips, Managing Director of Cosalt International Ltd was so appalled by these results that he decided to covertly conduct his own survey.

Having perfected his Scottish brogue, Winston enlisted a ‘willing’ window cleaner - and with a simple script and a short rehearsal, they made a series of telephone sales enquiries to various Cosalt Branch Offices. Their results only confirmed how bad things were ‘at home’, and in many cases worse than their competitors.

An opportunity was quickly realised - if Cosalt could offer a customer buying experience that was better than the competition - then they could become the supplier of choice and secure a better future for the business. So, they embarked on an initiative that would totally review everything that they did - everything that did not add any value for the customer would be removed if possible.

The Cosalt International Business

Cosalt International Ltd (CIL) is a leading supplier of safety equipment and protective clothing used at sea and on-shore. Headquartered in Grimsby (UK) with branch offices strategically placed to service the ports of the British Isles - CIL is a diversified business with many thousands of SKUs, sourced from around the world. Products include rope, wire rigging, nets, chandlery, ships stores, lifting equipment and testing services.The CIL market is very price competitive and a quotation is usually required before an order is placed. With a database of over 12 thousand customers, some buying perhaps only a few meters of rope to those re-equipping a vessel for a voyage, the service they receive is paramount to customer retention and business growth.

Business Challenges

The surveys revealed that Cosalt’s interface with their customers and prospects was really bad. Customers would be left waiting on the telephone - promises often broken and basic information such as names and addresses not recorded. Customer care and value lay at the heart of the Cosalt initiative, so they embarked on a programme of customer care surveys, using professionals this time! Customer concerns were acted upon and appropriate changes made to processes and procedures.

Although the systems being used were still a mixture of computer and manual, CIL firmly believed that it was important to get their records and processes right, before any attempt was made to introduce new IT systems. And staff response to customer requests was really more to do with culture and behaviour - so training and coaching featured highly in the change programme. The results were quite dramatic, and after 18 months Cosalt had moved from a position where they were near the bottom of the league table when compared with their competitors, to a position at the top! With good customer records and a culture of dealing with commercial issues as promised - in a timely and professional manner - the scene was set for embracing new technology.

Business Solution

Cosalt now understood the type of application they were looking for. A packaged solution to hold their customer data, sales enquiries, convert enquiries to quotations and orders - with links into inventory, forecasting and finance. A system that could be made to operate the way they wanted to work, at a pace dictated by the customer and without the need for modifications. A system that would support process change and measure performance - IFS Applications was the chosen solution and IFS the implementation vendor.

Business processes were modelled in the application using the in-built modelling tool, and key performance indicators (KPI) reviewed and agreed. The data used for assessing performance was a combination of that generated as part of the day-to-day operations, and soft issues like staff morale and skills and training needs. The results presented visually on a dashboard, accessed via a web portal.

Winston explained: “we have put a considerable amount of effort into ensuring that our business processes and our KPI measurements reflect a trend that continually tries to eliminate any activity that does not add to the total customer buying experience - in line, of course, with our strategy.”

Benefits

Cosalt International realised that if interfacing with their customers had been bad, then their downstream delivery performance was going to be bad too. In their old systems they could not measure delivery performance without considerable clerical effort. With the new business systems they were shocked to find that only 40% of orders were being despatched on-time and complete. To address this became a top priority, and the first target was set at an ambitious 70%.

IFS CRM enabled a detailed analysis of all orders taken, by branch office and by individual - this detail allowed Cosalt management to highlight the problem areas, to review procedures and take corrective action. The 70% target was beaten three months later, in May 2004, and over the remaining 7 months of 2004 the target beaten 6 times. The target was again raised in January 2005 to 85% - the 85% figure being hit for the first time in May. This step-by-step approach is seen as key to success. Winston said, “It is no good setting unrealistic targets - making steady progress and understanding the issues, and then removing them, is what makes lasting success possible.”

Improving delivery performance is important, but Cosalt also wanted to change the culture of the business from one that was order taking to pro-actively approaching customers to pre-empt their needs. The direct sales force who interfaced with their client’s buyers were set more aggressive targets on the number of contact meetings they scheduled and the conversion ratio of meetings to new sales. Internal order taking staff were also set targets based on the number of sales calls made, the number of quotations taken, and their conversion ratio to sales orders.

Winston said, “The real surprise for us turned out to be the disparity between individuals and branch offices - with this information we have been able to focus attention on selecting the best people for selling roles and the best for order taking tasks. We are also able to see those that are really out-performing their colleagues and use their methods and techniques to improve overall business performance. Before our CRM system, none of this would have been possible.”

So what for the future? Cosalt has come a long way - but as Winston pointed out, “We are not finished, just starting! We want to continue to hone our ways of working, apply them in new markets and in new geographies - where we believe we can grow our business and take on the best in the world.” And the window cleaner - he now runs his own marketing company!

For additional information, contact:

Christine Murphy, Marketing Manager
Telephone: +44 (0)1494 428900
Fax: +44 (0)1494 428907
E-mail: christine.murphy@ifs.co.uk