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Individual like German SMEs: What a CRM can do

Many medium-sized companies have set themselves major digitization goals in the sales area. But how do you approach the decision about which software and which partner you need? What is important if you want to expand projects in the future? A.B.S. Global Factoring, successful provider of full service factoring, has implemented an individual CRM project with the specialist Sellmore, from the as-is analysis to the complete implementation.

From a 1-man company to an international player
The factoring company started in 1996 as a 1-man company and is now the market leader in Germany among factoring institutions that are independent of groups and banks. In addition to the German parent company with headquarters in Wiesbaden/Hessen, the financial service provider also has subsidiaries in Austria, Switzerland, Sweden and Slovenia.

As individual as a fingerprint
Every financial situation is as individual as a fingerprint. A.B.S. Global Factoring has made it its business to take a close look at precisely this financial fingerprint of a company. By purchasing receivables, the medium-sized company helps companies to stay liquid and go about their daily business. For this, a professional CRM is the best working basis for the financial service provider.
More efficiency for sales and customer service
The idea for a new CRM system grew out of dissatisfaction with the previous system. The MS Dynamics desktop solution used to date was not adapted to the company’s needs and was cumbersome to use. “From the sales side, the former system was only an address management system. No control of actions and also no sales-related evaluations were possible. However, we definitely have the claim and thus the requirement that a system can both control and monitor our sales,” reports Angela Hofmeister, sales employee at A.B.S. Global Factoring. Until now, the customer service department also used many Excel spreadsheets to map the necessary control processes, such as overviews for receiving business management evaluations (BWA) through to birthday lists. “This Excel and paper economy should be abolished,” adds Stefan Pütz, head of the IT department.

The right choice of partner
The requirements of A.B.S. Global Factoring for a new CRM solution were just as individual as the financial situation of its customers. After sifting through suitable CRM partners, the financial services provider chose Sellmore GmbH as its project partner. “We needed a very strong customizing. Especially in the field of factoring, the mapping of complex processes in a CRM is not so easy to set up. Mr. Oelsner, key account manager of Sellmore, convinced us with individual solution proposals and also with the experience values from other projects in the financial sector”, Stefan Pütz explains the decision. “And besides, we had the better gut feeling.”

From standard to individual solution
The CRM choice fell on Sage CRM. After A.B.S. Global Factoring had distributed the internal project roles, the first workshop with Sellmore took place. Together, the participants defined the processes that served as an important basis for customizing the CRM. “At the workshop, Mr. Oelsner showed us what Sage can already do as standard and sharpened our focus on what we still needed,” recalls IT Manager Pütz. This allowed the A.B.S. Global Factoring team to then think about which mask layout was desired and which data records were needed. In parallel, Sellmore set up the test system and began development.

The key words: communication and clever integration
Especially the phase of implementing defined requirements needs a lot and above all good communication. At this point, Sellmore employee Angela Hofmeister remembers: “What I personally found very pleasant: We had Mr. Oelsner as a central contact person. He took on the role of spokesperson for Sellmore very well. We were not asked to talk to 35 different people.” A.B.S.’s requirements also included integrations to several other business software systems. These include the MailChimp email marketing tool to automatically transfer A.B.S. newsletter subscriptions and unsubscriptions into the CRM. This ensures a clean database and correct mapping of DSGVO requirements. In addition, the Exchange Server with Office 365 for calendar synchronization and DocuWare for document management were integrated. “And we integrated our website’s contact form with Sage. As soon as inquiries are received via the form, they are directly stored in the CRM as a prospective customer,” explains Stefan Pütz. So there were a lot of to-dos to take care of, but: “We never had the feeling of being left alone. Mr. Oelsner was always available to us,” praises Angela Hofmeister.
www.abs-global-factoring.de/
www.sellmore.de