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Based in Vancouver, Washington, TigerStop LLC is the global leader in stop/gauge and pusher systems designed to improve the efficiency of manufacturing processes in the plastics, woodworking and metal industries. The manufacturer’s flagship TigerStop product is in use at more than 10,000 companies spanning a wide variety of manufacturing applications. The company relies on a global network of highly specialized and geographically distributed channel partners to take its products to market – offering customers the expertise and local support of a distributor close to home. To manage global operations including tracking relationships with distributors, handling sales through the channel, customer service and support and accelerating research and development efforts, TigerStop went to the market in search of a customer relationship management system. Having experienced business-jeopardizing technical issues with the company’s initial Salesforce.com system, TigerStop selected Maximizer Enterprise for its robust sales, marketing and customer service functionality, rapid deployment options and extremely easy-to-use interface.
Lean Manufacturing in Progress: TigerStop Automation
Manufacturers across a wide variety of industries remain competitive by producing innovative products, staying ahead of market requirements and by producing their products using streamlined, efficient and cost effective processes. In many industries, the manufacturing process requires precise cutting and machine feeding technology – to ensure high-quality finished products and also to minimize wasted resources throughout the process. The reduction of “mill ends” or defects in the manufacture cycle can mean tens of thousands of dollars on the bottom line of manufacturers in many industries. Using the standard TigerStop, TigerFence, TigerOptimizer and other TigerStop products, manufacturers are able to automate many manual processes and make major reductions in the amount of time and material that is wasted in the manufacturing process. Customers seeking out TigerStop’s market-leading digital stop and pushfeed products include major custom frame producers, window and blind manufacturers and a wide array of woodworking manufacturers. An innovator in the market, TigerStop has more than 100 technology patent claims granted or pending.
As a developer of market-leading technologies aimed at streamlining manufacturing processes, TigerStop is equally concerned about driving costs and inefficiencies out of its own sales and customer service processes – and ensuring the highest quality customer service and support. The company also prides itself on learning from customer feedback to develop new products and drive its research and development efforts. To achieve these objectives and support future growth, the company realized it required a customer relationship management system.
“From the outset, we’ve always made it a priority to back our world-class products with the highest standards of customer support, dealer training and product research and development,” says Ed Scott, IT Manager, TigerStop LLC. “As we grew, we recognized that we needed a means of streamlining our own business processes to gain better visibility into the changing requirements of our distributors and customers.”
Solution - A False Start
In 2003, TigerStop implemented customer relationship management technology from leading software as a service developer Salesforce.com to help manage the company’s sales and customer support requirements. TigerStop immediately enjoyed access to dealer and customer information from any Internet connection. However, the company’s traveling account managers quickly found that they could not conveniently capture feedback from distributors because they could not bring the system with them on their laptops – and Internet connections were not always available at accommodations in smaller centers. TigerStop also found that it was hard to make the new system match their business processes – particularly in that the company wanted to track the satisfaction not only of its dealers, but also of the final users of TigerStops. After three years, TigerStop realized it needed to re-implement Salesforce.com or move to another CRM system.
Having conducted evaluations of virtually all leading CRM software packages including Oracle/Siebel, Onyx, Pivotal, SalesLogix, Microsoft CRM and the re-implementation of Salesforce.com, TigerStop opted to deploy Maximizer Enterprise. “We seriously considered re-implementing Salesforce.com but given the importance of the project and the major costs involved, we did in-depth due diligence on a number of alternatives. In the end, our choice was simple; Maximizer Enterprise offered the functions and flexibility we needed, excellent options for a fast rollout – all at an attractive price point. The company also demonstrated that it could ease us through the transition with expert consulting support and integration to our Macola ERP system.”
With more than 7,500 customers, Maximizer Enterprise is the industry’s most popular and proven full-suite customer relationship management product. The system provides organizations like TigerStop LLC with complete sales, marketing, customer service and support functionality at a very low total cost of ownership. With extensive integration to Microsoft Office, including Outlook, users can take advantage of their preferred productivity tools while ensuring that valuable client information is captured and easily accessible for the next interaction.
Systems Integration - Professional Consulting Support
“For us, it was critical that our transition from Salesforce.com to Maximizer Enterprise went very smoothly and ultimately that our employees were comfortable with and used the system,” says Scott. “With limited IT resources in house, we brought in a team from Maximizer and their local consulting partner iCRM to install the software, do the conversion from Salesforce.com and tie the system to our Macola ERP program. This was a good decision – we’ve benefited from their expertise.”
With close integration between TigerStop’s Macola enterprise resource planning package and Maximizer Enterprise, the company has an end-to-end system for managing its business. Now, when a sales lead comes in from a tradeshow or magazine ad, Maximizer Enterprise Workflow Automation automatically assigns the lead to the appropriate account manager. From there, the account manager can assign the lead to a dealer and track the opportunity with the system’s Opportunity Manager. Quotes can then be generated in the system, changed at any time using Workflow Automation and sent automatically into the Macola engine to process the order.
Integration is also key from a customer service perspective. TigerStop’s customer service agents can dial customers right out of the customer record using TAPI integration to the company’s voice over Internet protocol telephone system. Incoming calls can be met with intelligent and knowledgeable service as the customer’s entire profile pops up on the agent’s screen automatically. “One of the main reasons we opted for Maximizer Enterprise was the user friendly interface. It’s the easiest system to learn and all our departments appreciated this. Ease of use was especially important for our service team who need to act quickly when a customer calls in to create a service case.”
Staying on the Edge of Innovation
A central pillar in TigerStop’s enduring business leadership is the company’s aggressive research and development plan and willingness to respond to the needs of the market with innovative new products. With the new CRM system in place, TigerStop’s R&D team is able to access a comprehensive repository of interactions with customers, dealers and prospects. Using this information, the team can examine product feature requests, better understand product feedback and identify patterns in the actual in-production use of its products. “Without a closely-integrated front and back office system, it is very difficult to make sense of customer feedback and determine the directions in which our products need to be going in terms of new features. With the system we have in place, every customer service case, sales call at a dealer and quarterly sales performance report is available to help us make decisions. Deploying Maximizer Enterprise is really going to help us drive our research and development program.”
“It’s always a pleasure to be working with an organization that has a smart, clearly thought out vision for how it wants to harness technology in order to improve the support it provides to its customers,” says Peter Callaghan, Chief Sales Officer, Maximizer Software. “TigerStop demonstrates the technology savvy and focus on customer satisfaction that comes from experience. This, combined with proven systems like Maximizer Enterprise and Macola, position the company for continued success.”
One of the most important benefits TigerStop has realized with the help of Maximizer Enterprise has been the creation of a standardized process for its sales and service activities. Using the system, TigerStop’s account managers are in a much better position to forecast their sales and assess the sales and service performance of individual distributors – allowing them to focus their efforts on top performers and help carry their best practices into other dealers. And, with the system available on their laptop or via a secure Web portal, traveling account managers can capture customer and dealer feedback while it is still fresh in their minds. Since the decision to upgrade from Salesforce.com to Maximizer Enterprise,
TigerStop LLC has:
- Integrated CRM with ERP to create a 360 degree customer view;
- Integrated CRM with the company’s VoIP phone system;
- Successfully moved its customer information from Salesforce.com to Maximizer Enterprise;
- Achieved 100% user acceptance on the new system;
- Created a standardized process for sales and service activities;
- Empowered its field sales team with a system they can take on the road.
What’s Next?
The next step in TigerStop’s ongoing strategic technology plan centers around improved reporting and visibility into the company’s customer data. “We’ve already taken advantage of the dashboard in Maximizer Enterprise for graphic visualizations of key sales and service information in the ‘My Work Day’ homepage for our employees. In the future, we plan to harness Crystal Reports XI to bring in some of the reports that we had used in Salesforce.com. This should give us even greater insight into the customer information we’re feeding into the system every day.”
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