Case Study
Transcription of Case Study
My name is Ben Andrew. I'm a sales manager at BusinessMobiles.com. We provide mobile phones to businesses all throughout the UK. We deal primarily in small to medium enterprises, varying from two handsets right through to 12 to 1500 handsets.
Hi, my name's Charmaine de Souza, and I'm the managing director at businessmobiles.com. So I'm responsible for really the vision of businessmobiles.com, and particularly with a view to our sales, our marketing, and our technology advancements. So initially a few years back we had decided it was really time to get rid of our very old CRM system, which was Goldmine. It was not really serving us particularly well at the time. So we looked at lots of different CRMs, such as Salesforce and Microsoft, and we were not massively enthralled with those products because they are off the shelf products. There's not a lot of personalization for our industry. I couldn't believe my luck when I found The Layer. The Layer, for me, it was the first of its kind. It was specific to our industry. The presentation that we had was phenomenal. I saw instantly how it was going to revolutionise the way that we did business. It was already set up for our industry, so much was already complete. I could see the level of personalization was going to really help us bring down our costs for implementation.
The experience of implementing The Layer initially was one of trepidation actually. So when we first started out, it's important to understand, anyone who's undergoing this sort of a journey with updating a CRM or changing the way their company works, you're never going to go into something going, "Oh yeah, I'm sure it's going to be all great." The answer is that we'd actually attempted it a couple of times in the past, failed miserably, and ended up going back to old systems. And truth be told, when we went into The Layer there was a part of me that felt that as well, that, "Am I going to be in six months time looking back going, 'Well, that was a big waste of time?' I should just stay with the way things were." And fortunately, in retrospect, now I can actually say actually that was unnecessary, that thought process. Even though every customer will go through it.
The reality is is that the process of rolling out The Layer was nothing short of perfect. On our day of rollout The Layer ran perfectly, if that makes sense. And I think there are probably very few companies out there that'd be able to say the same thing. So we went from day one using five or six different systems, and day two eliminating all of those systems and rolling out a brand new CRM. And we've not looked back since.
So we've been using The Layer now since January 2018. So that's just over a year and a half. And so far it has absolutely revolutionised the way that we do business, especially in regards to the statistics and our ability to really monitor and measure what's happening in the heart of our business.
So my name is Glen Burges. I'm the marketing director here at businessmobiles.com. And I'm responsible for drumming up all the inbound leads. Ever since integrating The Layer, it's been amazing, because it's given us the opportunity to see our numbers and be able to work out our return on investment on all the different marketing verticals. So I can export data from the CRM at the drop of a hat, and know exactly where we are at with all income, whether it's one business, pipeline business. It's invaluable. It's just the most amazing tool for keeping your finger on the pulse of the numbers. I love it. From a marketing perspective, it's amazing.
Initially when we started the project there was a scoping document. And what I loved about their process is that, when we were ready to launch, it was very easy for us to go back through that scoping document and really tick off all of our expectations. And whatever wasn't done we went back to, we made sure that it was done. And I thought that was an amazing service that they gave us, that we had such clarity on such a complex project, that we had gotten exactly what we paid for.
My name is Chris Greaney. I work in the finance department here, but I'm more of a data analyst. From the report side from The Layer, being able to work with the team, they understand my needs, and also able to provide me with custom reports. It's been amazing. I now feel we have everything we need. It's replaced and gone two, three, four steps further than the information we used to have before. And the breakdown is necessary. And it's found new areas that I'm able to reconcile that I wasn't able to reconcile before. So it's been a great improvement. And our accuracy has got better as a result of this.
Within a sales team you're going to have people who are naturally organised. The nature of the beast, actually, very often my best sales people are not the most organised people. They are the ones that are a little bit off the cuff, to be honest. And having the layer there as a support structure to those sorts of people enables them to do a lot more business. So they come in, they don't have to think about who they're calling. They don't have to think about where their money's coming from, or of their existing base who's coming up for a [inaudible 00:05:30]. The Layer tells them all of it.
I think for me the two most standout successes of The Layer since implementation has been in our ability to really stay on top of our customer cases, so that our customers have received the best possible experience of the businessmobiles.com service. As a consequence, we've risen to a five star rating in Trustpilot. And I really think a lot of that is due to our ability to stay on top of customer cases. The other thing which is really important to the business obviously from a revenue point of view is customer retention. Since implementing The Layer, our customer retention rates have been much higher, and we're able to really stay on top of our customers much better.
I suppose the question that I ask myself about The Layer is: was it worth it? Yeah? And the answer is answered very often in the first couple of days of the month. How many times, certainly in the first few months, the amount of times where I was in amongst other people in the organisation who were doing different things on The Layer, and you hear the words, "Oh. Well, it's just paid for itself. Oh, it's just paid for itself. Oh, it's just paid for itself." And it's one of those things that we hear a lot in the organisation. Whether it's simply we've found a couple of items of stock that had gone missing and we've found that through The Layer. These days we talk about a couple of items of stock, it could be an iPhone of 1500 quid. That's £3000 of saving. Just being able to find items of stock. And these things can go missing. They do go missing. Whereas now they don't.
We know that, with the stock ordering system, it's all very secure. We know every item is booked into the system. We know every item is booked out of the system. So just from the stock point of view it pays for itself. When we talk about lead management and we talk about making sure that our customers are being called, in the past we might get a thousand leads in, but what process we used to have to go through to know that we'd given those opportunities or those leads the best possible chance of being closed, there was no system really that we had. Whereas now I'm able to say, "Right, have we really pushed that as hard as we can?" I can look at each individual lead. I can then, if I feel like a lead has not been pushed hard enough, I can pass it on. So our close ratio has increased.
So in terms of lead management it's paying for itself. In terms of order management it's paying for itself. In terms of stock, it's paying for itself. Any one of those independently pay for The Layer. But as a whole, it just generates a huge amount of profit.
I see The Layer as a key partner for businessmobiles.com. In terms of when we look at short term, medium term, long term goals, they feature in every stage of those goals. And I'm comfortable that level of importance in our goals as well.
Would I recommend The Layout? It's one of those I don't want to recommend it to anyone else because I want it for myself. But the answer is, without a doubt, yes. We've been saying it since we implemented that we'd be happy to put our name against The Layer and say, "Yeah, it has changed everything for us." And we don't say that lightly either.
So do I think the layer is value for money? 100%. We would be lost without it. And from marketing's perspective, it's been incredible and well worth every penny.
I would for sure recommend The Layer to any business in the telecommunications industry. Their ability to adapt and the team's ability to just pick up what you need and get it done is amazing. And it provides everything we need, really.
I'm not really sure that I want our competitors to use The Layer, because it's just made us so much more effective, quite honestly. But yes, if I was a selfless person I'd say, "Yes, go and buy The Layer," because to find a CRM system which is so closely modelled on how we in the telecoms industry do business is a rare find. And there's nothing out there which comes close to The Layer in terms of functionality or even price. Thumbs up from us.
Case Study
Transcription of Case Study
My name is Ben Andrew. I'm a sales manager at BusinessMobiles.com. We provide mobile phones to businesses all throughout the UK. We deal primarily in small to medium enterprises, varying from two handsets right through to 12 to 1500 handsets.
Hi, my name's Charmaine de Souza, and I'm the managing director at businessmobiles.com. So I'm responsible for really the vision of businessmobiles.com, and particularly with a view to our sales, our marketing, and our technology advancements. So initially a few years back we had decided it was really time to get rid of our very old CRM system, which was Goldmine. It was not really serving us particularly well at the time. So we looked at lots of different CRMs, such as Salesforce and Microsoft, and we were not massively enthralled with those products because they are off the shelf products. There's not a lot of personalization for our industry. I couldn't believe my luck when I found The Layer. The Layer, for me, it was the first of its kind. It was specific to our industry. The presentation that we had was phenomenal. I saw instantly how it was going to revolutionise the way that we did business. It was already set up for our industry, so much was already complete. I could see the level of personalization was going to really help us bring down our costs for implementation.
The experience of implementing The Layer initially was one of trepidation actually. So when we first started out, it's important to understand, anyone who's undergoing this sort of a journey with updating a CRM or changing the way their company works, you're never going to go into something going, "Oh yeah, I'm sure it's going to be all great." The answer is that we'd actually attempted it a couple of times in the past, failed miserably, and ended up going back to old systems. And truth be told, when we went into The Layer there was a part of me that felt that as well, that, "Am I going to be in six months time looking back going, 'Well, that was a big waste of time?' I should just stay with the way things were." And fortunately, in retrospect, now I can actually say actually that was unnecessary, that thought process. Even though every customer will go through it.
The reality is is that the process of rolling out The Layer was nothing short of perfect. On our day of rollout The Layer ran perfectly, if that makes sense. And I think there are probably very few companies out there that'd be able to say the same thing. So we went from day one using five or six different systems, and day two eliminating all of those systems and rolling out a brand new CRM. And we've not looked back since.
So we've been using The Layer now since January 2018. So that's just over a year and a half. And so far it has absolutely revolutionised the way that we do business, especially in regards to the statistics and our ability to really monitor and measure what's happening in the heart of our business.
So my name is Glen Burges. I'm the marketing director here at businessmobiles.com. And I'm responsible for drumming up all the inbound leads. Ever since integrating The Layer, it's been amazing, because it's given us the opportunity to see our numbers and be able to work out our return on investment on all the different marketing verticals. So I can export data from the CRM at the drop of a hat, and know exactly where we are at with all income, whether it's one business, pipeline business. It's invaluable. It's just the most amazing tool for keeping your finger on the pulse of the numbers. I love it. From a marketing perspective, it's amazing.
Initially when we started the project there was a scoping document. And what I loved about their process is that, when we were ready to launch, it was very easy for us to go back through that scoping document and really tick off all of our expectations. And whatever wasn't done we went back to, we made sure that it was done. And I thought that was an amazing service that they gave us, that we had such clarity on such a complex project, that we had gotten exactly what we paid for.
My name is Chris Greaney. I work in the finance department here, but I'm more of a data analyst. From the report side from The Layer, being able to work with the team, they understand my needs, and also able to provide me with custom reports. It's been amazing. I now feel we have everything we need. It's replaced and gone two, three, four steps further than the information we used to have before. And the breakdown is necessary. And it's found new areas that I'm able to reconcile that I wasn't able to reconcile before. So it's been a great improvement. And our accuracy has got better as a result of this.
Within a sales team you're going to have people who are naturally organised. The nature of the beast, actually, very often my best sales people are not the most organised people. They are the ones that are a little bit off the cuff, to be honest. And having the layer there as a support structure to those sorts of people enables them to do a lot more business. So they come in, they don't have to think about who they're calling. They don't have to think about where their money's coming from, or of their existing base who's coming up for a [inaudible 00:05:30]. The Layer tells them all of it.
I think for me the two most standout successes of The Layer since implementation has been in our ability to really stay on top of our customer cases, so that our customers have received the best possible experience of the businessmobiles.com service. As a consequence, we've risen to a five star rating in Trustpilot. And I really think a lot of that is due to our ability to stay on top of customer cases. The other thing which is really important to the business obviously from a revenue point of view is customer retention. Since implementing The Layer, our customer retention rates have been much higher, and we're able to really stay on top of our customers much better.
I suppose the question that I ask myself about The Layer is: was it worth it? Yeah? And the answer is answered very often in the first couple of days of the month. How many times, certainly in the first few months, the amount of times where I was in amongst other people in the organisation who were doing different things on The Layer, and you hear the words, "Oh. Well, it's just paid for itself. Oh, it's just paid for itself. Oh, it's just paid for itself." And it's one of those things that we hear a lot in the organisation. Whether it's simply we've found a couple of items of stock that had gone missing and we've found that through The Layer. These days we talk about a couple of items of stock, it could be an iPhone of 1500 quid. That's £3000 of saving. Just being able to find items of stock. And these things can go missing. They do go missing. Whereas now they don't.
We know that, with the stock ordering system, it's all very secure. We know every item is booked into the system. We know every item is booked out of the system. So just from the stock point of view it pays for itself. When we talk about lead management and we talk about making sure that our customers are being called, in the past we might get a thousand leads in, but what process we used to have to go through to know that we'd given those opportunities or those leads the best possible chance of being closed, there was no system really that we had. Whereas now I'm able to say, "Right, have we really pushed that as hard as we can?" I can look at each individual lead. I can then, if I feel like a lead has not been pushed hard enough, I can pass it on. So our close ratio has increased.
So in terms of lead management it's paying for itself. In terms of order management it's paying for itself. In terms of stock, it's paying for itself. Any one of those independently pay for The Layer. But as a whole, it just generates a huge amount of profit.
I see The Layer as a key partner for businessmobiles.com. In terms of when we look at short term, medium term, long term goals, they feature in every stage of those goals. And I'm comfortable that level of importance in our goals as well.
Would I recommend The Layout? It's one of those I don't want to recommend it to anyone else because I want it for myself. But the answer is, without a doubt, yes. We've been saying it since we implemented that we'd be happy to put our name against The Layer and say, "Yeah, it has changed everything for us." And we don't say that lightly either.
So do I think the layer is value for money? 100%. We would be lost without it. And from marketing's perspective, it's been incredible and well worth every penny.
I would for sure recommend The Layer to any business in the telecommunications industry. Their ability to adapt and the team's ability to just pick up what you need and get it done is amazing. And it provides everything we need, really.
I'm not really sure that I want our competitors to use The Layer, because it's just made us so much more effective, quite honestly. But yes, if I was a selfless person I'd say, "Yes, go and buy The Layer," because to find a CRM system which is so closely modelled on how we in the telecoms industry do business is a rare find. And there's nothing out there which comes close to The Layer in terms of functionality or even price. Thumbs up from us.
