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southernstates Southernstates uses Zoho Analytics

John O'learyGeneral Sales Manager, Southern States

What we wanted was a simple to use and reliable service where the sales representatives could update our head-office staff with all field and transactional activities with the usage of their smartphones, replacing paper and transcription activities with mobile forms that would release information in Real Time.

Business

Farmer owned since 1923, Southern States is one of the USA's largest farmer-owned cooperatives that provide a full range of services and growing solutions for farms and around the home.​

Challenge

With more than 300 sales representatives across the south-east of The United States and business increasing, Southern States recognized it needed to improve efficiency if it was to keep its promises to its customers. Explains John O’leary, General Sales Manager, "We had no visibility into what our reps were doing before, until they came back in and handed over their paperwork."

Southern States was looking for a paperless solution that would eliminate the cumbersome and lengthy process of documenting sales visit reports and other documents by its sales representatives filling in forms and reentering data into their back-office. Southern States also wanted to save the time its staff spent daily calling with price exception needs and other requirements.

Solution

Southern States decided to use BlackBerry smartphones with the leading mobile data capture solution eSurvey that would seamlessly synchronize with Zoho Analytics. The proposed solution allowed Southern States to streamline operations, increase sales productivity, and enable the power of real-time information to update Southern States’ Zoho Business Intelligence Dashboard, empowering the company to make better, faster and smarter decisions.

For me, the documentation and the support provided by the Zoho Analytics team when setting up our initial reports was crucial. The integration between various Zoho products and the APIs were helpful too. To cap it all, Zoho Analytics allowed us to match several tables and do recurring calculations and analysis easily.

Results

  • Since implementation, Southern States has seen a new incremental growth of almost 20% on gross sales, an improvement on its price consenting policies from its sales representatives.​
  • Accuracy of the data collected has increased 100% in visit reports, customer needs tracking and other relevant sales metrics.
  • Zoho Analytics has improved efficiency and customer service by enabling Southern States to plan ahead of the game of its competitors and coordinate sales programs such as offers and other sales campaigns more effectively and timely.