Project Overview
The Alsco Sales Office application unlocks traditional IT constraints on their vast field force. It utilises a mix of advanced features delivered in an intuitive user interface, which unlocks the potential of their existing enterprise applications and allows each employee to maximise their daily output.
Project Commissioner
Project Creator
Team
Luke-Harvey Palmer, Tony Ockleshaw, Julian Robertshawe, Simon Torsellini, Dr Matt Willis, Nicole Pizarro, James Santilli, Chris Nevin, Alessandro Boron, Yann Bodson
Project Brief
Alsco field teams had a major mobility issue. There was no reliable CRM solution available for their sales executives and there were increasing gaps in their product knowledge. This often led to confusion over customer ownership, and caused Alsco to miss opportunities and lose business - resulting in poor customer engagement and a negative impact on sales figures.
“We never really got the engagement of the sales team in capturing the data we needed, and using the data to actually be more productive and drive more business” Explains David Petrie, National Sales and Marketing Manager for Alsco
Alsco’s sales teams spend significant time on the road, engaging with prospective customers and putting together proposals based on a wide range of services from their diverse portfolio of products. They required a mobile CRM that was designed around the way they did business, one that worked for them, to ensure user engagement and reduce downtime.
Alive showed how harnessing the power of mobility, in a fully integrated and fully interactive solution, could significantly improve the way Alsco did business.
“(They) educated me about the power of mobility, and how the world of apps in conjunction with mobile devices could really transform the business you’re in.”
With advances in Apple’s iOS, iPhone and iPad technology, Alive saw an opportunity to improve productivity and significantly enhance the quality of data and information readily available to Alsco’s team of sales staff through a dedicated mobile application.
Project Innovation/Need
Alsco’s Sales Office Application is different to anything else in the market because it combines multiple back-end functions and data sources specific to Alsco and presents them in a useful, custom UI providing employees with everything they need to complete their day, in one place.
It is innovative because it delivers Alsco’s process back to the business and away from the costs and constraints of IT.
Some of the most unique elements of the application include:
- Real time data transfer across multiple, traditional enterprise applications, which unlocks their potential and eliminates the need to check into a home base
- Displaying a range of customer information in a map function, which efficiently and effectively maximises employees’ daily productivity
- KPI and performance training within the application
However, what is truly unique in the Alsco Sales Office application is that it is a completely new enterprise system, which requires no manuals and no training itself because it is intuitive, fun and easy to use.
User Experience
In any new system the biggest risk is always in user adoption and engagement. Alive deliver a quality product to all of its customers by mitigating this risk through its Mobile Business Design process. Before a line of code is written, highly trained members of the Alive team, including Dr Matt Willis who has a PhD in human computer interaction, work closely with a cross section of the organisation to diagnose issues and opportunities in their business process.
With Alsco, the Alive team conducted a comprehensive consultation process in which they interviewed and work-shopped with 20 Alsco staff members and went on the road with field teams. Through this process, Alsco’s fundamental challenges were uncovered and invaluable insights gained.
Because of this upfront investment, the Alsco Sales Office application has received unprecedented levels of adoption from the field force despite the absence of any training sessions or materials.
Importantly the financial and behavioural outcomes of the technology are recorded through Alive’s in built analytics tool - Immersion. In Alsco’s case, their field force have enjoyed a productivity increase of 30% while they have saved millions of dollars in printing and other administrational costs.
Project Marketing
Alive and Alsco worked in collaboration to develop a marketing strategy to present and share the success of the Sales Office application. The noted challenges Alsco faced along with the corresponding benefits of the application have been documented in a targeted content marketing campaign, comprised of an eDM release, Case Study & Customer Testimonial, in addition to third party media publications.
David Petrie, Head of Sales and Marketing at Alsco, worked closely with Alive from inception to project delivery. Alive’s ability to inform David on the potential improvements mobility could bring to Alsco’s business was fundamental to the success of the app and recognition within the broader marketplace.
“There is huge opportunity both on the sales side, but also the operational side of the business and I’d be just encouraging people to educate yourself and try to understand what mobility can do and what applications can do, it really is quite transformational – I really believe it.”
The success of the Alsco’s project has enabled Alive to target other large organisations that have a focused sales force division to unlock productivity within their workforce through dedicated applications unique to their business process.
Project Privacy
The success of each project is dependent on the level of access and information the customer extends Alive and their team of experts to truly understand the challenges and opportunities of each business. As such, both parties will execute Non-Disclosure Agreements as a means of protecting all confidential and sensitive information unique to the customer’s business.
Once an application is launched, Alive has a strict privacy policy in place to ensure all online middleware and data collected via each customer application is stored and managed securely. Furthermore, each customer will employ their own privacy policy (of which Alive can provide advice on) that determines the conditions of use for customer data and information collected through the mobile application for use by their staff.
Sales Force
This category relates to applications that are design to aid a sales force become more productive.
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