Meadowlark Company
Background
Meadowlark Company is a trucking and trucking brokerage business servicing clients throughout the United States and Canada. It has been in business for 22 years and employs over 100 people. Meadowlark specializes in outside commodities including construction materials transportation. Based in Billings, Montana, Meadowlark handles sales and operations throughout North America.
The Problem
Meadowlark’s sales department was overwhelmed with contact acquisition and maintenance. The staff of four was required to keep crucial records relating to all aspects of the business for the existing 600 contacts—and this was all done by hand. Information about each contact was kept in an individual hard file, and anytime there was any update or research regarding that specific client, the sales staff needed to dig through volumes of hand-written notes to find what they were looking for.
A typical working day for the sales staff consists of making and receiving sales calls, working with manufacturers, and fielding requests from existing clients. The task of maintaining accurate and detailed information pertaining to each area of the business was simply not possible. As it was, the salespeople were overwhelmed when bombarded with this level of responsibility. The inefficiency consequently became cyclical in nature; each need that went unmet created bigger problems in the future.
The Solution
With the implementation of GroupLink’s ContactWise, Meadowlark Company has built upon its success with Novell GroupWise and expanded the operating abilities in every aspect of the business. Mandy Roth, Operations Manager for Meadowlark, said, “The success we have experienced from the implementation of ContactWise is visible in every aspect of our business.”
Prior to the ContactWise implementation, Meadowlark’s salespeople were literally overrun with all of their tasks. Now Meadowlark has a customer service department of 12 representatives to help facilitate more effective sales and customer relations. “These employees are able to schedule calls, make appointments, and handle virtually every need our clients may have, said Roth. “This is all available to us because ContactWise provides us with detailed records and accessible histories on all of our clients and contacts.”
The ability to schedule and effectively log events—past, present, and future, has immensely increased Meadowlark’s productivity. “Now if we run into any problems, they are recorded and we have a reliable means to schedule fixing them,” said Roth.
Since the implementation of GroupLink’s ContactWise, Meadowlark has increased its contact database from 600 contacts to over 20,000 contacts and Roth says they are breaking all of the company’s previous records – last month alone was the best month ever in Meadowlark’s 22-year history.
Conclusion
With the implementation of GroupLink’s ContactWise, Meadowlark Company has seen dramatic improvements in every aspect of its operations. While leveraging a successful Novell investment, Meadowlark has increased productivity, operations, and ultimately profitability. ContactWise has transformed the way Meadowlark does business. In assessing the success Meadowlark has experienced, Roth and her team look to the company’s return on investment (ROI), and the figures are astounding and increasing every month.
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