Synergy Audio Visual Achieves Greater Transparency Throughout Organisation With FrontRange GoldMine CRM

Challenges:

• To manage expanding contact database for customers & suppliers.
• To achieve increased accessibility to a shared knowledge base throughout the entire organisation.
• To build and grow existing and prospective customer relationships.

Solution:

• FrontRange Solutions' GoldMine CRM Product Range

Results:

• Centralised contacts database with easy access to customer and supplier information.
• Creation of, and support for increased growth throughout the organisation.
• Utilisation of add-on applications including the development of organisational charts for reporting.
• Ability to track sales visits and leads with existing and prospective customers.

Background:

Synergy Audio Visual is a specialist importer and distributor of high performance audio and video equipment. Through the provision of product support and assistance to authorised retailers and their customers, Synergy AV's commitment is to the long-term development of the nine product ranges it distributes throughout Australia.

Established in Melbourne in 1995, the company has fourteen full-time staff working across a number of departments including administration, finance, sales, operations and service. Since its inception, Synergy AV has grown its business significantly and works with approximately three hundred businesses, including retailers and resellers throughout Australia - a number that has roughly tripled over the past six years.

Phil Sawyer, Managing Director Synergy AV said, " We're a wholesaler so we basically sell to retailers and resellers around the country. We're trying to build the business for each of the nine brands we work with."

Synergy AV also works very closely with a number of suppliers, which are based throughout the world in locations including the United Kingdom, the United States, France, Germany and Sweden. As a result, Synergy AV manages support calls from a diverse range of business contacts.

Challenges:

As an importer and distributor of high end technology products, Synergy AV manages a complex network of contacts, due largely to the number of customers and suppliers involved in the reselling process. The scope of contacts Synergy AV engages with is broad and varied, requiring stringent management.

"Prior to first implementing GoldMine back in 2001, we were relying on Outlook and paper diaries for managing contacts and correspondence," said Sawyer. "We got to the point in our growth plan where we realised we needed a centralised repository for all our contact information."

With a sales team across Australia, Synergy AV also required an efficient means of logging customer correspondence - both verbal and via email. This also needed to be linked back to a centralised database, managed from the company's headquarters in Melbourne.

Similarly, with suppliers based throughout Europe and the United States, Synergy AV also faced a challenge to effectively log and manage all correspondence with these companies, regardless of location.

Solution:

Synergy AV began using FrontRange's Goldmine Standard Edition in 2001. The decision to partner with FrontRange followed extensive research by Synergy AV into a number of CRM vendors, including ACT and Tracker CRM.

The decision to purchase a CRM solution was part of Synergy AV's plan to rapidly expand the company.

"Basically, what we wanted to achieve with GoldMine was a centralised knowledge base for the entire company, said Sawyer. "We wanted to be able to effectively manage all information and contact between ourselves, our suppliers and our customers."

Since first implementing GoldMine Standard Edition in 2001, Synergy AV has continued to invest in the CRM solution, having successfully implemented two major upgrades.

"We were on the GoldMine Standard Edition for quite a while, but as our business grew, so too did the scope of what was required from our CRM solution. The natural progression was for us to move to Corporate Edition and then most recently we've further upgraded to Premium. Each upgrade has been seamless and were delivered on budget and on time."

GoldMine Premium Edition has been developed specifically for medium-sized businesses and distributed enterprises. It features an advanced service and support module with the CRM functionality of GoldMine Corporate Edition.

Synergy AV engaged with Forward Thinking Consulting Services - a Melbourne based CRM specialist and FrontRange Premier Partner, to assist with the implementation of GoldMine.

"From the outset Forward Thinking has been an absolutely vital and fundamental element in managing and maintaining our GoldMine platform," said Sawyer. "They have become an incredible asset and wonderful supporter of both the product, as well as ourselves."

Results:

Implementing FrontRange GoldMine has enabled Synergy AV to acquire a centralised knowledge base for the entire company. This information can be accessed by staff regardless of their location, allowing them to manage their complex eco-system of customers and suppliers.

"GoldMine has allowed us to open up the information base of the company to all staff, enabling them to do their job more effectively," said Sawyer. "It makes the information in the company far more transparent and allows us to handle any service or support issues much more efficiently. Staff in the field can access information on their laptops or PDAs, providing full access to customer and case histories as well as correspondence should it be needed."

Synergy AV's growth has also been well-supported due to the scalability of GoldMine, with a clear upgrade path. This saw the company move from Standard Edition, to Corporate and finally, Premium Edition, adding vital service and support functionality.

Sawyer added, "When we started working with GoldMine we had about one hundred and twenty companies doing business with us. Today, we manage nine separate product lines and have more than three hundred customers. The amount of business we do with each customer has also increased

GoldMine's ability to provide a graphical view of customer contacts in the form of an organisational chart has also proved a welcome feature for Synergy AV.

"In any one of our customer organisations there may be ten or twenty people that we deal with," said Sawyer. "The org chart feature is one of the pivotal advantages GoldMine has over other products on the market right now as far as I'm concerned. We haven't seen a product that has Goldmine's level of sophistication in that area."