Smeva
New staff are productive more rapidly thanks to Sofon
Jenny van Gompel
Manager Customer Service
5 questions for a Sofon User
1 What does Smeva do?
“We manufacture walk-in coolers and freezers, cold storage units and refrigeration systems. Our products are used in supermarkets to chill milk and pre-packed meat. We also produce service counters and client-specific counters for butchers. Our dealers are spread over the world and are the ones in contact with the end clients: supermarkets and specialized stores. Our dealers consult with us on plans for supermarkets so that we can make an appropriate offer. The dealers then take care of the actual installation.”
2 What does Smeva use Sofon for?
“We use Sofon to configure products and to make calculations, quotations and bills of materials. We also work with the Sofon CRM package, the Sales Organizer. We regularly plan activities for our field organization using the Sales Organizer. When staff are out of the office we can easily make them aware of a quotation they need to follow-up or a phone call they need to make. We also manage ap-pointments with our dealers in the Sales Organizer. That’s very convenient, as our staff work with their own dealers. If a staff member is on vacation or is leaving our company, a colleague can easily take over their tasks: all appointments, but also order confirmations, plans and drawings, are stored in the Sales Organizer. That saves us a lot of digging in our archives.”
3 What do your dealers use Sofon for?
“A number of our dealers use Sofon for generating calculations and quotations for the coolers and freezers. This saves us time because we are actually not needed to take care of this. As soon as a quotation becomes an order, we can enter the order and start production. In the future, we would like to extend the dealer application and possibly make it available via the internet.”
4 What was the situation before Sofon?
“Before Sofon was in the picture, we used interminable Excel lists in which calculations were made. It was difficult to filter out the un-necessary parts, especially for new staff. In principle, you could offer anything you wanted in this system. But it was hard to tell if a product offered was actually possible to produce. The whole process took a lot longer – up to two or three hours. And if you received a phone call while making a quotation, you tended to lose your place. In that case, you’d have to start over. ‘Where was I?’ You’d think. Things are now quite different. Even if you are interrupted, you can see exactly where you were. It’s impossible to forget anything and a quotation can be completed within half an hour.”
5 What else was achieved with Sofon?
“Thanks to Sofon new staff can go to work quickly, without much explanation. They answer questions about our products to put together a quotation, using defaults and exclusions. Because of this, they don’t need to have extensive knowledge of a product to be able to generate quotations. Previously, it would take at least a year to train a new employee. These days, staff are already productive after two months.”