Setting Up a Chemical Reaction with CRM - Why the system is invaluable (
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"We're putting in a lot of information that can help us competitively, like which manufacturers and distributors our customers buy from and how much of various chemicals they have used during the past year—and we gather that information on every product a customer sells," Kuhn said.
Once the information is in the database, it is accessible to E.T. Horn staff for various uses, from internal market reports to planning campaigns to markets for new suppliers that might need a new product.
"Now we can run a simple report and say ‘show me all of the products that would be of interest to Dow Chemical,'" Kuhn said. "That information appears in the center of our call report as a small table, and [account managers] can type out a summary of how the call went and what projects Dow Chemical is working on."
The system has been invaluable on many fronts. In addition to making the company more competitive, it helps the company keep up with demand. For example, when Behr paints became a staple at Home Depot, E.T. Horn knew in advance, which allowed employees to make plans.
"If we didn't have that information, our suppliers would have been surprised by a new $20 million account at Home Depot and wouldn't have been able to keep everything running," Kuhn said.
In addition to using the system for data organization, reports, departmental communication, information storage, pricing distribution, analysis and inventory requests, Kuhn has expanded its use over time.
Recently, Kuhn added a new way to search chemical compositions of products in a way that will allow E.T. Horn executives to analyze not just what products are being sold to a particular customer, but what ingredients those products would be comprised of. The goal, he said, is to make it easier to find solutions for customers.
