The Shutter Shop: From Manual Processes to Automated Success

For over 30 years, The Shutter Shop has been the leading expert in interior plantation window shutters & blinds.

A long standing family business, with a showroom located in Fulham, London, they supply and fit the finest in quality, custom made plantation shutters & blinds.

Working on both residential and commercial projects, they offer customers the most comprehensive shutters range in the UK.

For the past 10 years, the Director of the business has been Ben Kelly, and he has led the integration of the SugarCRM into the business model.

The company has adopted SugarCRM to address operational challenges, improve team performance, and enhance customer relationships to stay competitive and customer focused.

What we'll Cover:

• The Shutter Shop: A Growing Need for Increased Visibility
• The SugarCRM Solution: Automation and Process Visibility
• The Results
• A Look into The Future

The Shutter Shop: A Growing Need for Increased Visibility

Before implementing SugarCRM, through our partner, enable.services , The Shutter Shop faced operational struggles that prevented the company from adequately handling the sales process and customer interactions. According to Ben Kelly, the company needed an effective way to handle customer interactions while growing process visibility.

“We needed better visibility into sales performance and more reliable, real-time reporting to ensure we delivered what our customers needed.” – Ben K., Director, The Shutter Shop

The specific areas of improvement as identified by the company were:

• Lack of Automated Sales Tracking: The company’s field sales team and in-store sales operations struggled with the lack of automated capabilities to track sales performance. With manual sales tracking, reporting was inconsistent, and there was limited visibility into individual and team sales activities and performance.
• Siloed Operating Systems: The company’s systems were siloed, leading to inefficiencies, especially in managing communications between sales teams and operations.
• Lack of Meaningful Customer Insights: Without a robust CRM system, The Shutter Shop lacked real-time insights into customer preferences, making it challenging to tailor product offerings and pricing strategies effectively and identify trends in product demand.
• Limited Reporting Capabilities: Due to the lack of integrated systems, reporting was a slow process, often not providing the sales team with enough data to make timely decisions.

The SugarCRM Solution: Automation and Process Visibility

With all the struggles identified above and committed to improving operations and visibility, The Shutter Shop turned to SugarCRM. With SugarCRM’s product portfolio, and enable.services ’ help, the company could tackle all the issues simultaneously.

While sales tracking was a common pain point in the company’s operations in the past, with Sugar’s help, it can now monitor sales with automated sales reports. The Shutter Shop now has ways to track performance metrics like conversion rates, the number of appointments, and individual product sales. This automated system replaced manual tracking and reduced inefficiencies.

With a central hub to store information and data, The Shutter Shop also gathered customer-centric insights: product popularity, customer buying behaviour patterns, and customer preferences correlated with customer interactions. The company now uses all this data and information to adapt its product offering and marketing strategies to meet customer needs.

The company also wanted to improve cross-departmental communications. Together with SugarCRM’s experts, the company’s technical team integrated Microsoft Outlook with SugarCRM. Now, sales and support teams can access all customer interactions in one place, reducing the chances of missed communications or data loss.

In terms of operational management, The Shutter Shop wanted to enhance its field team management capabilities. Once implemented, the SugarCRM solutions have become pivotal in team performance monitoring and management.

Now, the company has a real-time view of appointments, sales conversions, and product popularity. This way, the management team can make informed decisions about resource allocation and product focus.

The Results

Since adopting Sugar, The Shutter Shop noticed improved reporting, better customer segmentation, and increased operational efficiency. The system’s integration with Microsoft Outlook has enhanced communication and reduced team inefficiencies.

The Shutter Shop continues to leverage SugarCRM for real-time insights into sales trends, allowing them to adjust their offerings and provide personalized service to their customers.

“The CRM system has been a game-changer for us, especially in managing our field sales team and tracking product trends… With SugarCRM, we’ve been able to tailor our solutions to our customers’ needs, ensuring that we offer exactly what they’re looking for.” – Ben K., Director, The Shutter Shop

Currently, Sugar’s solutions are leveraged across the company to serve several vital functions:

• Sales Reporting: Automated weekly and monthly reports to track performance, helping the team identify opportunities or areas for improvement.
• Customer Segmentation: Sugar’s segmentation capabilities help target specific groups of customers based on their buying habits and preferences, enhancing the impact of marketing campaigns.
• Inventory and Trend Tracking: The company leverages Sugar to monitor which products are in demand, allowing it to adjust production and marketing strategies.

A Look into The Future

Looking to the future, Ben Kelly noted that they plan to expand their usage of SugarCRM, focusing on refining customer engagement and enhancing personalized marketing.

They’re exploring ways to further integrate the CRM with other tools to create a more seamless customer experience, both online and offline.

“We’re always looking for ways to improve how we serve our customers, and SugarCRM will continue to be a big part of that.” – Ben K., Director, The Shutter Shop

If you’d like to learn more about how our customers are effectively leveraging the SugarCRM solutions for improved operations and efficiency, you can read more case studies here .

by Mihaela-Cristina Chiurtu

Originally published on SugarCRM .