Metrohm-Peak
New Company, Increased Challenges
A nationally recognized distributor of ion chromatography instrumentation and provider of analytical services, Metrohm-Peak, Inc. was created in April 2000 as a partnership between Peak Analytical, Inc. in Houston, Texas and Swiss-based Metrohm, Ltd.
Metrohm—Peak turned to Advanced Applications, Inc. for help in implementing an integrated CRM solution.
Several formidable challenges arose from this merger between two leaders in a fast-growing market. The newly formed Metrohm-Peak was unprepared to manage requirements for multicurrency support and serialized inventory, and faced item-costing and invoicing issues resulting from the merger.
With aggressive plans to increase sales 20 percent by 2002 and significantly boost their market share by 2003, Metrohm-Peak’s most challenging obstacle to growth was the lack of a well-integrated and company-wide information source for their Sales, Marketing and Customer Service divisions.
To achieve their aggressive growth plans, Metrohm-Peak selected Sage CRM and Sage 300cloud running on Microsoft SQL Server to provide a centralized customer relationship management and accounting system that could meet their various requirements. They turned to Houston-based Advanced Applications, Inc. for help in implementing this integrated CRM solution.
Selected for Seamless Integration
Metrohm—Peak selected their Sage CRM based solution in part because of the high level of compatibility between Sage CRM, Sage 300cloud (formerly known as Sage Accpac) and Microsoft products. The seamless integration between Sage Software and Microsoft solutions has enabled the company to centralize their disconnected information, address inventory issues and automate manual processes.
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Prior to the installation, “each department from sales and marketing to receivables and customer service kept its own information,” says Jeff Brewer. “With separate databases of information throughout the organization, individuals were forced to perform tasks without working from a consistent view of our customers.” As a result, customer service and sales were under-achieving, and analysis, reporting and forecasting were insufficient for the company’s needs.
Thanks to their new Sage CRM solution, Metrohm-Peak employees can now access company information from anywhere with a Web browser, facilitating real-time transactions such as order entry, AR invoicing, item lookup, commissions and quoting. By improving their information flow, the sales cycle at Metrohm-Peak is now significantly shorter, access to timely and reliable sales forecasts is easier than ever, and sales productivity has begun to increase.
With Sage CRM and Microsoft SQL Server, employees now have access to more accurate and complete sales and service histories, allowing them to create more effective relationships with customers and ensuring that service issues are resolved rapidly. “By automating and streamlining our business, we are able to provide a higher level of service while reducing our cost of doing business,” says Kim Brewer, CFO of Metrohm-Peak.
