B-to-b marketers looking to get the most bang for their CRM buck would do well to invest in core selling, order-taking and customer service platforms, according to a new study from Forrester Research.
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Web Self-Service Solution Snapshot:
i-MARK's Part Number Cross-Reference Capability was Instrumental in Grove's eCatalog Evolution.
Grove Gear, a 3+ year customer of i-MARK, manufactures standard and custom gear drives for industrial and specialty applications. Sold through Industrial Distributors and Original Equipment Manufacturers (O.E.M.), Grove Gear's product line is the most extensive line of Speed Reducers in North America.
Challenge
Utilizing i-MARK's eCatalog module, Grove has realized much success from their user focused eBusiness website that enables self- guided and intuitive product discovery for their now 250,000+ parts. Recently, Grove's eCatalog needed comprehensive part/product data revisions requiring ease of execution and precision. In summary, Grove had redesigned a major product line which now included some new parts as well as a new part number naming convention for the line. At the same time, Grove needed to unify their Cast Iron Worm Gear line to incorporate products categorized under separate, sister-company brand-names. Some of these products were physically the same as the Grove product, but with a different part number. These parts also needed to be updated with the new part number name convention.
Grove needed to continue to effectively support their external channel partners, customers and prospects with intuitive website self-service product discovery and selection. Not only did they have to consider the volume of new parts being added and/or combined into the eCatalog, but many existing part numbers needed to be replaced with a new part number naming convention. In addition to the data integration capability required to handle this task, once complete, Grove wanted to be able to allow the user (regardless of whether they knew the old or new part) to search both versions of the part number in their eCatalog and be presented the same exact result.
Solution
Using i-MARK's data management capabilities, Grove was able to update and add all of the new part information seamlessly into the existing eCatalog. The key element of the project was addressing Grove's need to be able to keep all of the obsolete part number conventions in the eCatalog. Using i-MARK's eCatalog part cross-reference feature, Grove was able to allow users who only knew the old part number to type it into the search and have it automatically bring up the same part and obsolete part number, but with reference to the new part number naming convention. Likewise, if there was a user that was only familiar with the new part number, upon searching, the eCatalog would only display the new part number.
Results
Grove has such an extensive line of speed reducers that an interactive, easily searchable web-enabled version of their catalog has been instrumental in their success. It has greatly boosted customer satisfaction and created efficiencies for their channel partners and external reps while allowing Grove to focus on more important business priorities. When it was time to expand and make significant and somewhat complex changes to their data, they did not want to compromise what they had previously established. i-MARK's process for making such extensive eCatalog updates was quick, painless and reliable.
"Our customers value the cross reference tool that i-MARK built in addition to all of the other great features of our web-based eCatalog", said Amanda Bulgrin, Grove Gear's Marketing Coordinator. "From our perspective, i-MARK's ability to customize the eCatalog to our exact specifications is the key to our success. I've never been told 'no, we can't do that' and that is truly impressive." |
