How Teamwork Helped Taste Upgrade from Excel to CRM Excellence
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Taste is a full-service digital agency based in Prague, with a 60-person team covering Business (Projects team and Business Development team), Strategy, Paid Advertising, Social Media Marketing, SEO&UX, Analytics, Creative, Brand Building, HR and Back Office functions. The agency was formed through the merger of three high-flying marketing businesses – Sun Marketing, Medio Interactive and Digistory – each of which brought distinct specialisms to the table. Today, Taste offers a mix of traditional online marketing and cutting-edge data-driven services to clients including Coca-Cola HBC Česko a Slovensko, dm-drogerie markt, ESET, Kärcher, LINET, Tipsport and Notino.
"Doing CRM in Excel was very limiting"
Teamwork has been Taste’s project management provider for several years. Over that time, the agency has often been an early adopter of our new products, from Teamwork Spaces to Teamwork Desk.
When Taste’s Chief Business Officer, Sandra Gligic, noticed we’d brought out a new tool, Teamwork CRM, the decision to try it out was “a no-brainer”. Up until that point, the agency had used Microsoft Excel spreadsheets to manage its sales.
“We had all our information in Excel tabs, which was making it difficult to do forecasting and interpret the business we have in-progress,” says Sandra.
“The main problem was the reporting. We had all the data and information about our clients in one place, but there was no good way to interpret it. We had to process the data manually, and that was very limiting.”
In the space of a few weeks, Sandra and her team successfully migrated their sales data to Teamwork CRM, making sure to enter sales leads and business opportunities into their dedicated pipelines.
One tool with all the functions we need
Switching to Teamwork CRM instantly gave Taste the key benefit of consolidating all the agency’s CRM data and activity onto a single platform.
As Sandra puts it, “instead of multiple Excel sheets, we now have one tool with a nice user interface that offers us all the functions we currently need.”
Taste has found that the advantages of using a single platform for CRM have ranged from the straightforward to the strategic.
"Now we don't have to worry that any of the business cases will be lost due to the shortcomings of the previous system of handling", says Sandra.
Other core benefits have included improvements in team alignment, visibility, control over customer relationship phases, workflow planning and ease of use.
Reporting and sales forecasting have empowered senior team members
Consolidating sales data onto Teamwork CRM hasn’t just made sales more efficient for Taste: it has also unlocked new strategic possibilities.
"With all the data in one place, we can forecast future sales, we can analyze successes and failures, and we can be prepared and ready for a period when we have a worse business forecast."
In Sandra’s view, Teamwork CRM’s most valuable assets for business strategy have been its sales reporting and forecasting features.
“They save time for our business team members, and they also provide me with more current data to use in my decision-making as Chief Business Officer,” she says.
For a marketing agency like Taste, with blue-chip clients like Coca-Cola HBC Česko a Slovensko, having that ability to make timely, well-informed sales decisions could be a deal-clincher.
“We now have full control over our relationships”
According to Sandra, the more Taste has delved into Teamwork CRM’s features, the more the agency has gained.
For instance, the team has started using Teamwork CRM to document every interaction with each lead or client during the sales process.
“Documenting our client interactions has given us full control over our relationships,” says Sandra.
“We are now able to make further decisions based on the current situation with each client, and we are also able to share that information between team members.”
“If ever we needed to change the project manager, the new PM could come in and use Teamwork CRM to review the full history of communication with the client.”
With Teamwork CRM, Taste as a company has full control over each and every customer relationship.
A CRM solution with a support team that listens
Sandra and the Taste team are effusive in recommending Teamwork CRM to fellow businesses. In Sandra’s words, “It’s an excellent tool that gives you one CRM resource with many functions.”
Providing an effective, feature-rich CRM tool is one thing; but for Sandra, it’s Teamwork’s highly responsive customer support team that sets us apart.
“If you identify a functionality which is missing from Teamwork CRM and which you would appreciate, don’t be lazy – contact Teamwork’s support team,” says Sandra.
“We remember many cases where we proposed a new function and it was soon implemented.”
Through centralizing the sales process onto one user-friendly platform, enabling smarter business with tools such as forecasting and client relationship history, and through attentive, proactive customer support, Teamwork CRM has given Taste a sales solution that lives up to its exceptional work in the marketing industry. It sure beats Excel.
“Whereas working with Excel spreadsheets wasted precious time that could have been spent on important activities like planning and filtering, Teamwork CRM is saving our time and making our work effective.”
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