A global manufacturing company using an advanced sales, marketing, and customer support tool

A global corporation with year production more than 3 billion pieces

The company's headquarters are in Dekani, Slovenia, which is located close to the Adriatic Sea, offering excellent logistical conditions and links to the rest of the world. With offices in the EU, UK, US, Asia and Australia, the company employs more than 1.000 professionals (with more than 150 new hires in the last year). In FY2021 generated turnover was €175 million and manufactured more than 3 billion pieces. The foreseen annual turnover in the next five to six years is €350 million.

The company has started its digital journey by digitalising sales, marketing and customer support

The company implemented a cloud solution. They've been a Microsoft customer since 2015 and have witnessed the tool's rapid progress from a relatively basic Microsoft user interface to the countless advancements added to the solution each year. Today, the organisation can confidently state that the Microsoft technology exceeds their expectations with endless opportunities. New improvements to the technology (tool) are added annually, especially now that the cloud solution has made it even easier and more accessible, and the technology is adapting not only to their industry, but also to the needs within the company.

They have worked with BE-terna to come up with ideas and solutions how to improve the business, to cope with the challenges in a rapidly changing world where customisations are always needed and work never stops. This is the only way for the company to remain competitive, and to expand its market share, not just retain it.

Titus realised that implementing a CRM solution before the epidemic was a smart decision and that switching from a UK solution provider to BE-terna was an even smarter one.

In April 2020, when the epidemic hit, many customers cancelled all their orders; however, not even a month passed before the company received even more orders than before. Eventually, Titus exceeded its sales targets for 2020 by more than 15%. It would have been difficult to adjust to the new market requirements in such a short time without sufficient IT support in the form of a CRM solution, which enabled the company to handle sales and orders efficiently.

However, the IT implementer’s support was not always at the level that BE-terna presently provides.

In 2014, Titus experienced an example of bad implementation by a third-party company that did not fulfil needs and expectations. This experience made it clear that correct choice of development partner is paramount to a successful CRM implementation.

Project had to be temporary “frozen” to review and learn from mistakes made up until that point. Review made it possible to identify BE-terna’s Slovenian office as an appropriate partner with necessary technical expertise and the right industry experience. As BE-Terna was recognised by Microsoft for its regional excellence helped the selection process.

Migration is never easy for the client, but it can be made easier by a qualified new provider

Based on their experience with BE-terna's predecessor, Titus Group also decided to change the way the digitalisation project was managed. The digitalisation project was internally assigned to an employee who was extremely familiar with the company, its operations, and processes. This experience is valuable both for the client’s project management efforts and the provider’s developers, who receive high quality and meaningful information and guidance. It is important that the person leading the project is open to new technologies and business information, an attitude held by Titus project manager Pande Lazarov.

"I am a regular attendee at BE-terna events, where I learn about their technological innovations. I am particularly interested in the best practice examples that are showcased every year at the BE-terna Day. Staying constantly up to date with the trends allows our company to retain competitiveness and bring fresh innovative ideas into the organization."

According to BE-terna, an important factor for the success of the project was the composition of BE-terna’s implementation team, which established a great rapport with the client, and which provides immediate support and answers to questions at the click of a button. At the end of the day, even though we work in business, we always work with people. Relationships between the people involved are therefore important, particularly when implementing solutions. Cooperation thrives on solid relationships.

Pande, project leader for Titus, said:

"The team worked extremely well together, and I designed the idea of what we demand / desire as business users and what our customer’s needs. The BE-terna team took these inputs and transferred / shaped it into a useful tool. Literally the design process was from sketch idea to solution. The synergy and cooperation between teams were remarkable." 

CRM solution helps the company innovate and track the needs of existing customers and leads

Main challenges of Titus Group lie in developing new products and efficient processes of manufacturing due to the nature of the industry they’re in. The software solution they developed with BE-terna helps them to manage process stages as well as offers an effective overview of the situation.      

This is an industry where technology, the development of new products, new technologies and how to incorporate all the innovations into production, present the main challenges. With these requirements in mind, the company needs to tackle the issue of how to identify client needs and build upon them to create new products. Competition is fierce and everyone is battling for a market share, one of the challenges being how to retain existing customers with existing solutions and how to win new customers and new markets with new products.

Our CRM solution helps simplify the process of gathering information. According to the company, there was a lot of disconnected information in different parts of the world before the solution was implemented, but now they have a single database in a central location. Decision-makers can now keep track of trends, proposals, and demand to spot early opportunities for moving further along the sales funnel.

Positive effects can also be seen in the company's internal communication and business processes

The implementation of a CRM system has improved the company's transparency. With a 360-degree overview, sales and marketing operations can be carried out without employees having to wonder whether things have been completed or what pricing has been offered to certain customers. The management now has better insight into what sales will bring to the company. Management members have also found added benefits in predefined weekly and monthly reports.

Titus distributes large quantities of samples to customers on a daily basis. Prior to the implementation of the solution, their marketing department faced challenges in tracking which products had already been released, while the company had little way of knowing which client had received certain samples, or if the recipients were satisfied. The sample system is also very useful at large events where Titus has exhibition booths that are visited by many attendees. The CRM system provides excellent features for monitoring and managing leads, from sending samples to qualifying leads and making sales.

Company employees have played a fun game of comparing the time it takes a salesperson to write a proposal using Word against the time it takes to write it in CRM, with the results showing the benefits. Of course, CRM was the clear winner. In addition to speed, the CRM system ensures transparency and tracking, and integrates with Outlook and other Microsoft applications used by the company in its operations.

The following were the primary goals for implementing the solution:

1. All data stored in a single place
2. Faster work
3. Improved performance management
4. Help with sales opportunities
5. Improved key account management

Titus is happy with the improved customer overview, as each customer is assigned its own folder in which all activities are collected. This means that all customer activities can be viewed by the salesperson, supervisor or customer service agent. Today, if a customer is assigned to a certain salesperson and this employee leaves the company, the customer will hardly notice the change. Using the CRM solution, a system for performance bonuses has also been implemented that facilitates the payment of bonuses.

Employee engagement contributed to successful deployment

Keeping in mind that end users will be the ones using the solution, Titus first identified the challenges experienced by various departments. It listened to their issues and then set about finding a solution. Once a solution was found, it was initially presented to the end-users, and then implemented, first being deployed in a test environment and only after that, delivered live. As a result, the company has never implemented a feature that users didn't need. They are aware that the solution has to appeal to the user so that they will be happy to use it.

Artificial intelligence is in the cards

The advantage of having a partner like BE-terna, which covers all business areas, is that when the next step in a company's digital transformation is required, it can happen almost organically. Because the provider knows the client so well, it is easy to brief experts from other fields and help them understand the data and the client’s needs. Titus has already started planning a stock optimisation initiative with the BE-terna data science and artificial intelligence teams. As its next step, Titus wishes to use the CRM solution to integrate all company functions (in addition to sales, marketing and customer support). The company is also proud to have migrated to the Azure cloud this year.