Case Study: Gesco Industries
Profile
The G.E. Shnier Company (later "Gesco") was born in 1938 when George Shnier moved from Manitoba to Toronto to sell rubber products for two American manufacturers. In time, Shnier focused his energies on a new product, sponge rubber, and as he prospered he was joined in the business by his brothers -- by five brothers, in fact.
The Shnier brothers built their company into a giant in the floor covering industry, and today Gesco is still growing under the direction of their children and non-family executives. The company "covers Canada coast-to-coast," selling everything from carpeting and no-wax vinyl to Italian-made ceramic tiles - and of course, sponge rubber cushioning.
Mark Shnier is Gesco's vice president for customer service and logistics. "Gesco is a complicated company," he says, "because we have a huge geography, an extensive line of products, and over 3000 active customers ranging from 'mom and pop' stores to Home Depot."
With a hundred sales reps, sales managers and sales support staff, thousands of customers and a territory 3500 miles across, Mark needed help with teamwork.
Mark's Challenge
- Communicate with sales reps nationwide
- Capture crucial customer data
- Share product information faster
- Find easy, affordable solutions
Mark needed a better way to see and share the account data gathered daily by each of Gesco's independent sales reps: who owns each local store, what they display, their competition, growth goals for the coming year, and so on.
Mark knew that such data, gathered and analyzed, could be a crucial corporate asset. "It shouldn't just be in the sales rep's head," he says. "If we lose a sales rep, we don't want to lose all the information about that territory."
In turn, Gesco wanted a better way to send data to its sales reps. "They are constantly bombarded with product information from us: pricing, promotions, policies and procedures. Most would use a combination of 3-ring binders, filing, and e-mail inboxes to keep track." Quips Mark, "We would blast something out to our reps and most of them would immediately lose it."
Gesco's sophisticated computer software, designed especially for the floor covering industry, handled transactional sales and shipping with ease but wasn't designed for this kind of daily teamwork.
Mark tried to fill the gap by building applications with Microsoft Access and Lotus Notes. "Access was inflexible, inconvenient and required outside programmers to make changes and to implement on an Internet accessible network. We dragged our feet on implementing Notes because the cost for equipment, programmers and administration was just too high."
"Then QuickBase came along and it was our answer -- for about a tenth of the cost or less."
The Solution
- One central database for all customer accounts
- Nationwide accessibility
- Improved communication and teamwork
- Improved customer relations
Mark used the easy QuickBase templates to build and customize his "flagship application": an account information and growth database.
Because QuickBase is Web-based, sales reps in New Brunswick or Ontario now can enter information from their offices, homes, or even in the field. Says Mark: "Sales reps are busy and on commission…it has to be easy and friendly to use. With QuickBase custom forms, they can fill out an account plan, print it out and sit down with the dealer to really plan for the next year.
"Once they have captured the info, QuickBase makes it easy to summarize all the accounts and our sales managers can designate a certain number per region as 'key accounts' to focus on for growth. This gives us corporate visibility into these accounts and helps us focus inside staff resources on them."
And sending new information to the field? "I used to say the life of a document was 60 days before nobody could find it. Now, everyone knows that documents will be posted to QuickBase and they are easily findable there whenever they are needed."
Account management was such a success that Mark began using QuickBase to interact with customers as well. Dealers now can visit the Gesco Web site and search items on clearance -- typically about 7,000 items, or 5% of Gesco's $18 million inventory.
"Previously, we had trouble selling this inventory because it was hard for people to know what was available. Now, we upload it into QuickBase daily and customers can easily see what is available. We even set up summary views based on anticipated customer criteria like 'I need something cheap in a carpet'."
Another solution affectionately called Ghostbusters because -- who you gonna call? -- lets Gesco clients search the company phone and departmental directory online. "When our customers go to QuickBase on our Web site, they find the right people for their situation, including pictures showing staff members doing activities they enjoy. It shows a human side, rather than just nameless staff members of a huge company."
Results
- Improved communication within the company
- Faster response to customer needs
- Better data analysis
- Time and money saved
"We have completely embraced QuickBase as part of the culture of the company," says Mark. "It is tough to get a sales force to take on new technology, and even they have embraced QuickBase."
Along with the big new account database, the document distribution and inventory clearance (not to mention Ghostbusters), QuickBase now helps book the office conference rooms and organize freight invoices. And QuickBase works right alongside Gesco's industry software.
"We import new data monthly from our legacy system and can easily do number crunching with, for instance, thousands of freight records. We can cull through very quickly to find ways to save money. One thing impressive about QuickBase is that you can set up a query against 5000 records and have incredibly fast response time even though it is stored on the web. It is instantaneous!"
Mark explains, "In 6 months, QuickBase has changed the culture of our company in terms of how we do things and where we find information."
