AB Orthodontics' Success Strategy with FrontRange GoldMine CRM

Background

AB Orthodontics is a Melbourne-based supplier of orthodontic products, such as braces, mouthguards and hand instruments, to orthodontists throughout Australia and New Zealand.

It is also master distributor for an Australian brand of stainless steel orthodontic wire, which it sells domestically and exports to countries throughout the Asia Pacific and South America.

Established in 1979, the company has five administrative employees and three sales people located remotely in New South Wales, Victoria and Queensland.

The Challenge

With three field-force sales people managing territories covering the whole of Australia, AB Orthodontics faced a challenge managing increased reporting and communications between the sales staff and head office.

As Andrew Binns, Managing Director of AB Orthodontics, explains, “Having staff located remotely makes it hard for any sales manager to maintain a thorough dialogue or relationship where each person feels the lines of communication are both open and easily accessible. Generally, the better the technology you have, the easier it is to maintain [a good
relationship].”

AB Orthodontics’ sales people submit daily client reports from the field, which record detailed notes from sales appointments. Until recently, these reports were Microsoft Excel spreadsheet-based, resulting in a “large accumulation” of spreadsheets at head office. “We found spreadsheets to be a cumbersome way to submit reports. For example, there was a spreadsheet to track the customer sales call cycle in each territory, but it was so difficult to manage that we couldn’t really see how the sales people were planning for their territories. The manual nature of the reports also meant that daily reports were being filed only some of the time,” explained Mr. Binns.

Due to gaps in reporting and the volume of information, AB Orthodontics found it difficult to maintain a single view of customer history. “Each sales person may visit up to seven clients per day. Back at head office, we basically had to know which customer was seen on which date in order to find the customer record, which was a nightmare,” said Mr. Binns. “The communication was also one way, from the sales people to head office. We weren’t actually providing anything back to the sales people in the form of additional notes or call records if the client called head office directly.”

The Solution

AB Orthodontics selected FrontRange Solutions’ GoldMine customer relationship management (CRM) to address these challenges, based on a personal referral to the solution. “A colleague of mine discovered GoldMine and suggested we take a look at it. After doing so I was completely sold on it being the obvious way to go forward. We also didn’t need to evaluate additional products because my colleague had also gone through that process,” explained Mr. Binns.

AB Orthodontics implemented the solution with assistance from a systems integrator. It is also currently using FrontRange accredited partner, Forward Thinking, to enable the company to better utilise the full range of features in GoldMine.

AB Orthodontics Straightens Business With FrontRange GoldMine