Futuristix installs SalesLogix

Insys Business Solutions, one of the leading VARs for SalesLogix in South Africa, today announced that SalesLogix had been successfully installed at Futuristix.

Futuristix Advanced Control Systems is the sole Southern African distributor for Wonderware Industrial Automation Software products, which are widely used across many industries. Wonderware believe their products are the ultimate in design excellence, and are backed-up by unparalleled service and technical support. Futuristix primarily markets the Wonderware products through system integrators, equipping them to provide a value added service in turn to their end users. A few larger users, that are capable of doing their own system integration, purchase directly from Futuristix.

Despite investing heavily on an existing CRM solution, Futuristix was never able to give remote sales executives access to the existing CRM solution, to integrate the CRM tool into their current financial package, or to offer their system integrators facilities such as on-line quotations or order status tracking via the Web. Additionally, Futuristix found they couldn`t give their customers the kind of customer service information they would like to offer, such as reports about the sales statistics of their sales executives or system integrators, call statistics, or statistics about products per customer.

However, after implementing SalesLogix there are smiles all around. All Futuristix employees are connected to one SalesLogix database. The remote sales executives access SalesLogix via a data synchronisation process without experiencing any kind of problems, and they are now able to generate quotes and orders in SalesLogix.. As the pricing of Wonderware strictly depends on the US$/SA Rand exchange rate, Futuristix is able to capture their Product Master Data in US$. Quotes and orders are processed with their Rand value, as the latest exchange rate is automatically used to calculate the pricing. As all information is automatically linked to the end user and the system integrator statistics, no double data capturing takes place.

As Futuristix decided to use the SalesLogix eOrder Site, all quotations are now available online. Instead of endless telephone conversations the system integrators now simply logon to the password protected eOrder Site and ask for any kind of quotation, including the calculation of any relevant discounts. Via the quotation history file, orders can easily be generated by an appropriate change of status. The order history enables the system integrators to track the status of their current orders and give their customers an immediate response. As the eOrder Site is fully integrated into SalesLogix, Futuristix employees can process these orders without any kind of delay.

Using the customer support capability of SalesLogix, Futuristix is now able to log support issues and assign these to certain technicians, as well as reassigning them automatically, when certain time frames are exceeded. Futuristix can now use standard problem and solution descriptions to streamline the whole support process. As products are already registered in the quotation and order view parts of the database, the support department is automatically informed about all registered products per customer, including serialisation.

As maintaining good customer relationships are essential for Futuristix they are able to benefit tremendously by using the SalesLogix marketing utilities. It is now able to automatically send out personalised e-mails, faxes or letters for invitations to events, functions or the Wonderware User Group, which includes hundreds of customers and system integrators. Additionally, Futuristix can now warn their customers of expiring support contracts at the beginning of every month, since SalesLogix automatically generates different e-mails or faxes dependent on whether their support contract will expire within the next 30, 60 or 90 days.

With SalesLogix every Futuristix employee has now access to the data related to the their customers. They are now able to streamline their sales process, to offer their customers excellent support and thus let their partners benefit from the new CRM-tool.