Customer Success | pfm Medical

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Sue Wollington

Head of Sales & Marketing, Histotechnology

In the healthcare sector, reputation is everything. So being as professional as possible in all areas is essential for a company looking to build business.

That’s particularly true if you’re a smaller player wanting to punch above your weight in a highly competitive marketplace, like pfm medical UK.

A subsidiary of a German parent company, pfm medical UK supplies high-quality medical products to the NHS, private hospitals and laboratories throughout Britain. The largest of its three business units, Histotechnology, generates over 50% of the company’s turnover.

“That’s something we couldn’t have achieved without Act!,” says Head of Sales and Marketing, Histotechnology Sue Wollington. “When I was hired in 2009 to set up the Histotechnology unit, there was no CRM in place. But I just knew we couldn’t grow as a business without one.”

With her previous CRM experience limited to ProspectSoft, Sue began researching alternatives. She quickly realized that, since pfm medical UK was already using Sage accounting, Act! was the obvious solution, given its ability to link the two.

That was seven years ago. Now, Act! is very much a core component of the company’s success and Sue is very much an enthusiastic advocate.

We couldn’t have grown as we have as a business if we didn’t have Act!

With some 1,500 contacts spread across 350 accounts, managing sales of products that range from lower-value, frequently-bought consumables through to high-ticket capital equipment with much longer purchase cycles, requires both power and flexibility.

“Given the amount of information you can get out of Act! and the way it can track and monitor business on a daily basis,” she says, “my team just couldn’t survive without it.

“With Act! you have everything you need in one place, so even if one person’s on holiday or has left the company,” says Sue, “there’s someone else who can pick up on it. That gives us a lot of agility, as someone’s always available to help a customer – because there’s nothing worse than being pushed from pillar to post.”

It’s a coordinated approach that demonstrates to customers that everyone in her unit is ‘tuned in’, something that marks out the company as efficient and at the top of its game.

If more evidence were needed of Act! and the office team working in harmony, Sue can point to a 99% next day and on time delivery rate – something that their much larger competitors can only dream of.

I have been very impressed with the range of tools that Act! can provide, and how it has been tailored to the individual needs of each of our sales teams. It has certainly made a significant contribution to our success.

A truly customized CRM

“I have always believed in CRM systems being an essential support for sales teams, when used in the right way”, says Managing Director Gemma Borgert. “I have been very impressed with the range of tools that Act! can provide, and how it has been tailored to the individual needs of each of our sales teams. It has certainly made a significant contribution to our success.”

“We’ve now got Act! pretty much the way we want it”, adds Sue. “Our Act! Certified Consultant has been very good at supporting us and tweaking the system so we now have customized columns and a database that is segmented in the way we want.”

However, Sue and her colleagues are also conscious that no matter how tailored Act! is to their needs, even the best CRM system in the world can’t deliver if it’s not fed accurate, up-to-date information.

That’s why the company has established strict standards about the way the database is maintained and data inputted. These standards ensure that the system is fully synchronized every day, so everyone is working from the most current information.

From her own point of view, Act! is indispensable to Sue when it comes to preparing the quotations that are such an essential part of business-building, which thanks to Act! she says are “considered the most professional in the whole company.”

However, as an ambitious company, pfm medical UK is looking to improve quotations even further by adding images of consumables, for example, to make them more visually appealing.

Powerful email marketing and add-on capabilities

Apart from such internal salesmanship, pfm medical UK uses Act! emarketing for email marketing campaigns across multiple business units.

David Haykin, heading up the Vascular Access unit, says: “We have now run several successful Act! emarketing campaigns for the launch of Powerwand XL and the promotion of our Wound Drainage range. Due to the success we have had with these, we will continue to strengthen our brand and target our customer base.” And John Carr, heading up the Surgical Implants unit, adds: “Act! emarketing and an accurate, up to date database enables us to target the correct people with our high quality products”.

The whole team across all divisions, is also very appreciative of the add-ons available for Act! and are especially enthusiastic about Handheld Contact.

“When you don’t want to carry a laptop around, or there’s no internet connection, you still have access to customer and product data, which means the sales teams can access notes and input data when they’re on the road. That cuts down on their admin time, so they improve their productivity and get more done”, says Sue.

Powerful email marketing and add-on capabilities

Creating an international impression

The success of Sue and her team using Act! hasn’t gone unnoticed. The quotation system has now been rolled out to the company’s other two UK divisions.

Sue hopes to persuade her German counterparts to do the same, now that they are starting to see what a powerful business tool Act! is.

“They are always impressed that I can give them such an accurate picture of our sales and product mix” says Sue.

Apart from such internal salesmanship, going forward, pfm medical UK uses Act! for email marketing campaigns which again extend across all divisions, and to further segment the database so they can achieve ever more targeted marketing.

For this vibrant medical supplies company, that could be the prescription for an even fitter future.

Key Takeaways

Given the amount of information you can get out of Act! and the way it can track and monitor business on a daily basis, Act! has become essential to Sue’s team.
Thanks to Act!, Sue and her team achieve a 99% next day and on time delivery rate – something that their much larger competitors can only dream of.
Act! emarketing and an accurate, up-to-date database enables pfm medical UK to target the correct people with their high quality products.

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