Driving productivity through the creation of an online CRM portal
Completion Timeframe: 10 Months
Introduction
In 2022, Telwater realised completion of a journey to transform their inefficient customer relation management system for their over 200 dealer network nationwide. This case study serves to outline how Telwater BRP, together with the team at PegboardCo., were able to effectively save costs by approx. 36% and drive sales by 17%
About Telwater
Telwater is Australia's leading and largest manufacturer of aluminium boat and trailer packages in the southern hemisphere. Their innovative designs, advanced technology and constant research and development program can be seen through Australia's leading aluminium boat brands, Quintrex, Stacer and Savage, as well as Yellowfin Plate Boats. Telwater's beginnings started in 1988, with the iconic Australian brand Quintrex.
Since then, Telwater has been acquired by BRP’s Marine Group as an independent product line, and now boast over 220 dealers nationwide. The company's success and reputation in Australia has allowed for expansion into the international market, exporting to over 22 countries covering the South Pacific, Asia and Europe.
Lead Management
Telwater and PegboardCo. continue to build strength in the market together within the digital arena for both Telwater and its dealers. As part of this continuance of bringing together useful and intelligent digital systems Telwater are searching for a CRM solution to benefit its 200+ dealers and its sales operation across Australia.
Currently, Telwater's lead management system is a disconnected mess of systems, lacking not only the ability to actively track and check the status of a lead, but ensure they are being followed through by the dealer network. This strenuous manual process meant that visitors fill out an enquiry form on the wider brand website (Quintrex, Stacer) or Boatsales. After which, the details of this form are sent off via email to the closest relevant dealer based on their designated area (PMA). It is up to the designated dealer to then read the email and contact the customer to close the lead. However, as soon as the enquiry is put through and sent off to the dealer, there is no way for Telwater to track whether the lead was won or lost. What's worse, if the enquiry becomes lost in emails, or forgotten, there is no way for dealers and Telwater to know and follow up on the enquiry. This meant that leads are not effectively tracked or accounted for, and Telwater had no way to understand the outcome of each lead generated by them to their dealer network.
COVID-19
With Australia's borders being shut and the inability to travel amid the COVID-19 crisis, Australians looked to holiday at home. This meant a renewed appetite spending time with family in localised outdoor leisure activities like boating. The result of this was unprecedented demand in the boating industry, surging by up to 4.7%. As boat enquiries skyrocketed to an all-time high, Telwater's issues with inefficient systems were heightened as dealers experienced phenomenal lead growth but nowhere to manage it all. Without a system to hold and manage leads, it was up to the dealers to manage all their email requests. But with so many new customer enquiries, this time consuming and manual system meant that many leads were eventually lost in a flurry of emails.
Disconnected Systems
Their lead management systems stayed disconnected to other systems. As a result, there was an inability on Telwater's end to track dealer success and see the status of a lead. It also means that there was no way for Telwater to understand the outcome of a lead and where they were lost in the process of taking them to a sale. Thus, a lack of reporting was able to be done to report on dealerships' progress and an overview on which dealers might need extra help closing a sale.
What Telwater looked for to resolve this issue
Frustrated with their customer and lead management system, Telwater acknowledged that something desperately needed to change. They began looking for a way forward not only to manager their dealer network leads/contacts for the future, but also for internal use by Telwater to communicate, track and report on the activity of leads and contacts at a dealer level and global view. Telwater highlighted several key areas;
- Productive workflows for internal staff to utilize their work for the business logic
- A web portal that was flexible to change depending on business needs
- Link sales data into CRM for better client management within an online portal
- Monitoring of each lead through the customer journey funnel
- Single Lead Vendor for project stability, point of contact, budget clarity and support services ongoing
- Add tasks and notes with deadlines for each customer
- Facilitate live tracking and reporting of customer interactions
- A viable return on investment for the organisation
- Security and integrity of overall system
- Reduce the administrative costs involved with Dynamics 365 for all dealers
The PegboardCo. Solution
Telwater engaged PegboardCo. after recognising that PegboardCo. could facilitate the fulfilment of their system needs. Shaped through an initial in-depth consultation and several scoping workshops, the dealer CRM system was built using the most current technologies and PegboardCo's SILicone. PegboardCo's SILicone product was able to use s single-point connection to integrate all lead generation information into a CRM dealer portal for dealers to view, manage and follow up, as well as a portal for Telwater to track and understand the dealers that are closing their leads.
Lead Management
- Delivery of leads from Telwater to dealers (integrated through multiple channels)
- Follow up suggestions and reminders for each lead if it is not actioned
- Some visibility on lead outcomes
Ability to manually add new contact or import excel spreadsheet and allocate to dealer
- Matching leads to customer details for re-marketing purposes
- Identification of customers in the sales path
Integration
- Integration with Boatsales for leads captured by each dealer
- Integration with Telwater ICE systems for PMA data and boat data so that leads can be associated to the correct model and salespeople can refer to the model information
- Integration with Telwater Quote System to draft a quote and push on the Quoting system
- Warranty and Scheduled Services from the Telwater Warranty system will be used to pull information
- Integration with third party newsletter and survey system (Mailchimp)
- Integration with Facebook and Instagram ad manager
Automated marketing campaigns and customer contact
- Access customer/lead data for EDMs
- Automated EDMs triggered based on events
- Filtering through customer and lead contacts to create a distribution list based on location, time of lead/purchase, lead acquisition, product purchased
Reporting/Dashboard of lead conversion and customers
- Live view of leads and activity breakdown by brand, location
- Integrates with digital marketing & websites
- Reporting on lead acquisition, response times and outcomes
- Ease of use for dealers
Seamlessly integrates with current systems
- Easy for dealers to access, update and view
Overall project outcome for Telwater
The overall end result delivered to Telwater was an integrated and efficient platform that delivered intuitive and effective outcomes for Telwater, its dealers, customers and clients.
PegboardCo. was able to deliver measurable results and satisfy all of Telwater's KPIs and functionality requirements.
- Close rate on boat sales increasing by 13%
- Average 143 additional leads to be tracked and captured for future marketing and sales activity on Telwater and Dealer level per annum
- Flexible and productive workflows for internal staff to utilize their work for the business logic
- Implementation of customised CRM within KPI tolerances
- Increased ability for dealer staff to access client/lead information 62% faster
- Enhanced internal reporting for Telwater
- Strict Project management KPIS met
- Delivered project on time and on budget
- Delivered ROI in less than 12 months