Selltis, LLC, a provider of on-demand customer relationship management (CRM) software for end-to-end sales process automation, has announced that WIKA Instruments Ltd. has selected Selltis Sales 5.0 as a business critical tool to power its sales and business operations. Selltis Sales 5.0 is the next-generation version of the company's namesake CRM solution, which is delivered via a hosted, software-as-a-service (SaaS) business model.
WIKA Instruments Ltd., the Canadian subsidiary of WIKA Alexander Wiegand GmbH & Co., KG, is a world-leading manufacturer of electronic and mechanical pressure and temperature instrumentation. With an extensive line of pressure gauges, chemical seals, thermocouples, resistance temperature detectors (RTD's), thermowells and associated accessories, WIKA provides a solution for any measurement task. The company's products are ideal for applications within the petrochemical, power generation, process, sanitary, medical, UHP and wastewater industries. WIKA employs 300 people in facilities located in Edmonton, Alberta; Oakville, Ontario; and Deer Park, Texas. The company also maintains sales offices strategically located across Canada as well as an established distribution network throughout the U.S.
With 30 outside sales executives and nearly 40 inside salespeople backed by product managers and project leaders, the sales force automation efforts by the WIKA Instruments team consisted of a "pen and paper" approach augmented by Microsoft Word and Excel call activity sheets. "We basically scribbled notes on cocktail napkins and fed the information into Word docs or Excel spreadsheets," said Victor Pawluk, national sales manager, WIKA Instruments, Ltd. "We realized a need to open our lines of communication, especially when connecting four or five sales reps that could be linked to a single sales opportunity that might cover engineering companies in Edmonton, Calgary, Toronto or Houston."
According to Pawluk, WIKA was challenged to review quotations, bids, sales calls and types of products for its customer base, and knew that the company could not rely solely upon manual processes, fax or email.
WIKA migrated to the new Selltis Sales 5.0 version in February 2008. "One of the single most important features that WIKA has optimized is the capability of Selltis Sales to handle quotes," said Pawluk. "Plus, the reporting is unbelievable. Even canned reports are useful and easily customized for filtering. The system is so intuitive that we are able to continually customize the Selltis system. If we want a different view or need to add a 'hot button' for a SIC code, we can customize it easily."
Pawluk notes that the savings of deploying Selltis have been innumerable. "Previously, if quotes were lost, then so was the ensuing business. Now, we can review the entire history of a specific opportunity and determine lessons learned and areas of improvement," he said. "We can also conduct forward planning based on sales history and prepare us today for the opportunities of tomorrow."
