Simple Solution
by Hallie Forcinio

Posted on 2004-07-02 12:00:34.303

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Brandrud enhances capabilities of familiar tools to ensure follow-up at crucial points in the sales process.

A small investment is yielding big benefits at Brandrud, a manufacturer of furniture for healthcare and educational settings with about $15 million in annual sales. Earlier this year, the company spent $15,000 to purchase Prophet 2004 sales opportunity management software from Avidian Technologies.

Basically, Prophet 2004, a plug-in to Microsoft Outlook, adds features to the popular information management program designed especially for sales personnel. "Everyone uses Outlook," says James Wong [1], co-founder, president and chief executive officer of Avidian (Bellevue, WA). "It's probably the application used the most each day, especially by sales people," he adds. Installed in customer service and inside sales, Prophet 2004 already has boosted Brandrud's (Auburn, WA) quote backlog yield to 30%-meaning the company is converting 10% more of its quotes to sales. As a result, sales have risen 15%.

"We never really managed quotes before," says Bobby Holt, president of Brandrud. "It's helped us change from being passive to proactive about potential business," he explains. The quote backlog yield and sales should improve even more when the company's outside sales force goes live with the system later this year.

After Holt and his partner, Lee Falck, bought the business in 2000 from private investor Larry Green, the pair concentrated on streamlining the manufacturing process, reducing lead times and updating designs at the company, which was founded in 1955 by Harold Brandrud. "Our primary focus ... was to build capacity and capabilities to grow the business," recalls Holt. Holt and Falck, who spent the early part of their careers at General Electric and met at Harvard Business School, implemented lean manufacturing concepts and a quality program similar to Six Sigma.

With capacity improved and delivery lead time cut from 10 weeks to four, the pair focused on growing sales and better managing the front end of the business. A Microsoft Access database, which started with a few simple forms and contacts, had expanded to more than 5,000 contacts and up to 10 users trying to access the system simultaneously. Since Access has limited scalability, the system had become unwieldy and slow.

Brandrud considered several alternatives including Prophet 2004, Act! and custom development. Requirements for the Access replacement included ease of use, enhanced reporting, the ability to create benchmarks for sales opportunity management and to capture actual data in the sales pipeline to improve sales forecasting. Brandrud also wanted help defining and reinforcing the sales process.

Brandrud sells the furniture it manufactures for hospitals and educational institutions through commercial interior designers and architects via an in-house sales force and approximately 50 independent sales reps, who are supported by an in-house customer service staff. Orders often are customized and the sales cycle is relatively long, ranging from six weeks to about nine months. Requests for quotes are handled by customer service personnel and then forwarded to sales for follow-up. As a result, there often are multiple contacts with potential customers over the course of the decision making process.

"The dynamics of the healthcare industry have changed," says Holt. "Although you hear about how the industry is trying to cut costs, they also are trying to attract customers, so it's important to create an appealing environment for patients, guests and employees," he explains. As a result, there's a strong demand for higher-end product like Brandrud's.

After being involved in the beta testing of the Prophet 2004 product during the latter part of 2003, Brandrud purchased the single user version of the software in February of this year and then upgraded to the Server Edition when it launched in April. "The single user product helped some but the server product, which allows data to be shared, is what we really needed," explains Holt.

Fast ROI The relatively low initial investment for a 10-seat license, the fact that Prophet 2004 works within Microsoft Outlook, and its ease of use, convinced Brandrud to buy the product. "It's paid for itself in just a couple months just in the increase in the yield of quotes," says Holt. The Prophet 2004 software currently resides on 10 desktop systems in sales and customer service and stores data on the network. "We didn't need to install a separate server," notes Holt.