October 2008 Edition

SHOP MANAGEMENT

Custom Software Led to Customer Success

One-size-fits-all often means one-size-fits-none. Rather than purchasing off-the-shelf customer-relations management software and adapting its business practices to the application, a grinding shop helped develop a software-solution that fit its needs.

Off-the-shelf solutions may work for many, but a software program tailored to a shop’s specific needs will bring results faster and with less unnecessary work. Arrow Grinding, Inc., Tonawanda, NY, looked towards customizing when it needed shop management software.

Arrow is a grinding job shop that specializes in Blanchard grinding, centerless grinding, surface grinding, and cylindrical grinding in its expanded 43,000 ft² facility. The industries that the company serves include medical, aerospace, and industrial markets.

Disorganization Causes Problems

Arrow receives up to 25 request for quotes per day. But, for four years there was not an efficient way, such as an automated system, to organize the customer information and track their inquiries.

Without a way to cross-reference new prospects or existing customers with shop-floor processes like Blanchard grinding, or centerless grinding, the company was wasting valuable time and falling behind.

"We weren’t able to track developing customers, or inquires by machine operation," Billy Heywood, vice president of sales and marketing for Arrow, said.

"Another issue we had was our follow-up on inquiries was inconsistent. We were not documenting and adapting our business from what we learned from other customer follow-up."

A Customized Solution

The solution was developed using Microsoft Access with a shared database file so all users on the local area network could access the data simultaneously. The application was developed by Greenwood Systems, Cheektowaga, NY, an IT consulting company that offers IT-related products and services.

"We began by segmenting our customers by classification," Heywood said. "The classifications are based in volume, industry, and manufacturing process. We designed and programmed an in-house IT system that tracks quotes, orders, and customers based on these criteria."

The custom application contains three major components: customers, quotes, and sales. Data from all three modules are integrated so reporting and analyzing data among them is easy. For example, sales people can open a customer window and view a snapshot of past quotes and jobs, including their values and status. Likewise, the president of the company can create reports using custom criteria to determine the success rate of converting quotes to jobs.

"Our approach to the system ties in with one of the company’s philosophies: continuous improvement," Heywood said. "Teaming with a very good software developer, and having a custom application lets us improve the system. We never stop improving and the system gets better every week."

System at a Glance

The shop management program was implemented approximately two years ago and provided immediate results for Arrow.

The customer module, which started as a basic customer list, was enhanced with features that turned it into a full-featured customer relationship management – CRM – application. Since it is part of the system that contains quote and job data, sales people can view a customer’s history in terms of quotes and job orders. Each conversation with a customer is documented, which enables anyone in the company to have intimate knowledge of a contact, even if they’ve never talked with them.

"Since the customers are segmented, we track quoting levels to determine future workload. We also have the benefit of knowing exactly which customers to call if work slows in a certain area. It’s almost like turning a knob to adjust our work levels," Heywood said.

Every customer database is broken down by main contacts, sales opportunities, quotes/jobs, customer notes, and reports, with the most important display within the database being the quotes/jobs screen. This shows all the quotes and jobs in descending order by date. Each one can be displayed by double-clicking on each record.

Once the core application was developed and refined, Arrow built additional features to automate tasks and streamline data entry.

"We automated the pricing calculation for some standard operations, added a scheduling module, and created an interface to export financial data to our accounting package," Heywood said.

"We have also developed our customer module to be a full CRM solution. We track all activities related to customer contacts, have a reminder system, and even track receivables activities through our customer module."

Growth from Organization

During the past two years, Arrow attributed a 10 percent annual revenue growth to the project, due to its ability to deliver quotes faster than before, more effective customer follow-up, and more efficient management operations. It also allows better management of the increased volume of production without staff increases.

This time and productivity savings created by the program eliminated non-value-added activities, which increased efficiency and output for Arrow.

Arrow Grinding attributed a 10 percent annual revenue growth to a custom CRM application

"Hours that were lost each week now are spent tracking, following up, and communicating with our prospects and customers," Heywood said. "The result is increased revenue and profit we re-invested in the business."

Company management knew creating a custom application would be a cost-effective approach to solving problems. Had it used an off-the-shelf solution, it would have spent time redesigning business processes to fit the software and creating data interfaces between the other software packages it would have needed to purchase. Even if the company had followed that route, it may not have developed all of the functions it needed, so Arrow still would have needed to develop custom features, such as reports.

By investing in custom software, the company has a single application that fits its business processes and integrates its critical business data. As a result, it has streamlined its operations and has intelligent reports for business analysis. Greenwood Systems

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