news >
System IDs Profitable Prospects
A strong case for CRM: in most print shops, customer data resides with sales reps.
By Lisa Cross | January 1, 2009 |
 |
Who are your most profitable customers? Don't know? Then, print MIS solution provider Avanti Computer Systems could have just the product for you.
The company's Marketing Campaign Management module, voted a Must See 'em technology at Graph Expo 2008, combines production and sales data to provide printing managers with a means to measure and assess profitability of clients, produce more accurate sales forecasting and determine total job costs. “Next to your people, your most valuable asset is your customer data. But, in most print shops, customer data resides with sales reps—on their laptops in a stand-alone contact management system or their e-mail or in hard copy files,” says Stephen McWilliam, Avanti executive VP. “If you lose a rep, you run the risk of losing lots of customer intelligence.” Avanti supports more than 400 installations across North America, Europe and the Pacific Rim. The Toronto-based company's software powers all sizes of print shops, from units of printing giant RR Donnelley to quick print shops, as well as in-plants, including half of the “Big 10” universities, financial institutions and large government agencies.
The company's print MIS offering is a modular, JDF-certified solution that can be specifically tailored to a printer's workflow. “Our MIS solutions are focused on each client's unique requirements and offer extreme flexibility,” McWilliam says.
The Marketing Campaign Management module (part of Avanti's Customer Relationship Management, or CRM, system) is written in Microsoft.NET. It provides a user-friendly graphical user interface that allows for profiling and filtering of customers and prospects based on specific criteria—i.e. vertical market, revenue or profit to the print shop, buying patterns, etc.
It also automatically allocates costs and revenue to determine each campaign's effectiveness and Return on Investment (ROI) by tracking leads from initiation to closed business.
Marrying customer and production data
A big challenge for printers has been combining the customer and production side of operations.
“Avanti's CRM system solves this challenge by providing everyone in the shop [who has the security rights] with one consistent, real-time view of everything to do with the customer,” notes McWilliam. Because it is driven from the exact same database that the production system is operating from, any update occurring anywhere in the print shop is instantly accessible by all users.
Combining customer and production data in one system allows printers to identify their most profitable clients for targeted sales campaigns, or to track lead generation and produce accurate forecasts.
Avanti CRM is made up of three key components: Contact Management provides centralized storage and management of customer contacts and interactions across all departments—and filters hundreds of notes by contact or customer. Sales Forecasting analyzes estimates, customer buying histories and profitability.
Lastly, Marketing Campaign Management generates customer lists for exporting to VDP applications, such as XMpie or Pageflex, and automatically tracks the ROI of each campaign.