Tour de Force Success Stories: Hydra-Fab Fluid Power, Inc

Tour de Force Success Stories: Hydra-Fab Fluid Power, Inc

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Hydra-Fab Fluid Power, Inc., manufactures hydraulic power units, hydraulic control systems, fan drive cooling systems, and other hydraulic systems. The company is located in Mississauga, Ontario.

An inefficient and wild sales process

The management team at Hydra-Fab Fluid Power, Inc., wanted to take action to improve the company sales process, which had become inefficient and wild. Individual salespeople from both the inside and outside sales teams each had his or her own sales methods – some used Outlook, some used notepads, some even attempted to remember their sales information without writing it down. Everyone approached sales with strategies they believed had worked for them in the past. Meanwhile, opportunities were being lost and ideas were not being shared.

Transitioning to a standardized sales process

The company’s technology-focused management was determined to find a solution that would provide value to the salesteam and help individual salespeople move away from their “go-it-alone” sales mentalities. Hydra-Fab already used the Unix-based Tribute Software System to manage their accounting tasks. Tribute provided a good initial snapshot of account information, but digging more deeply into the data would be a tough sell to a sales team that didn’t have time to learn complex software, according to Hydra-Fab's IT specialist, Dustin Titus.

Transition wouldn't be easy, or happen overnight. Some on the Hydra-Fab sales team had used Maximizer for ten years or more. However, Maximizer's inability to provide a solid basis for sales force automation had led to an inefficient sales process. After evaluating several possibilities including Microsoft CRM, ACT!, Goldmine, and Selltis, Hydra-Fab chose Tour de Force, an Outlook-based solution created by the MRH Technology Group in Findlay, Ohio.

Integrating Tour de Force with Tribute

During initial product demonstrations, Hydra-Fab was impressed by the Business System Integration (BSI) module of Tour de Force. The BSI module allows a Tour de Force user to access his company's business (ERP) system. This integration gives a manager or sales person the ability to access data that may have previously been available only on a weekly, monthly, or quarterly basis. Using the BSI module, users can generate a powerful, overall snapshot of a current customer account.

At the time of Hydra-Fab's purchase of Tour de Force, a BSI connector had not yet been created for use with Tribute. Knowing what the benefits could be, Hydra-Fab soon requested that a connector be created. As development of the connector has evolved during the past two years, Hydra-Fab's sales team has come to enjoy their access to the business data.

"Our accounting department is constantly being heckled by sales guys to get week/month/year end numbers," said Titus.

The BSI Module has opened up new possibliities for management as well.

“The Snap Shot view provided by the BSI Connector is extremely useful….since it resembles a balance sheet, it is very easy to understand and provides important metrics very quickly. The Manager's Console has made it even easier to check out these figures with out having to dig too deep. Tribute provides simplistic information (YTD Sales, Last Year Sales) without needing to dig too far, but a multitude of reports must be generated in order to dig as deeply as the BSI," said Titus.

The snapshot view of an account provided by the BSI Module of Tour de Force provides value to the sales team as well.

“[Our] younger reps use the BSI information to get an accurate picture of what is going on per account. This helps to minimize the amount of contact each sales rep has to have with support staff.”

Making the transition has been more difficult for the more experienced sales reps at Hydra-Fab, who were more set in their ways. But, according to Titus, they too are beginning to see the benefits that Tour de Force and Business System Integration can bring:

"One of our major account managers is about 60 years old. Adoption of the system for him has been a very slow process. One day he was visiting his account and was asked by one of their engineers what value Hydra-Fab added to the product supplied and not only what value was added but how does Hydra-Fab manage the value. Apparently this question came down from one of the new MBAs that this particular account hired to streamline their business process. The engineer left our manager with the question and asked him to have a good answer the next time they met. After talking this over with our sales manager the account manager realized what TdF is really doing and what it is in place for; adding extra value to managing relationships for clients so they don’t have to. So, he has seen the light, so to speak, and is making changes in his daily routine to integrate more of Tour de Force."

Motivation and Enthusiasm

One of the issues Hydra-Fab had with Maximizer was that the sales team simply didn't use it consistently. Having several power-users of Tour de Force is helping to improve the overall implementation:

"Our base users are slowly turning into power users as they acquire the necessary skills. I find this process to be completely dependent on management and the level of competency and discipline they show to the strugglers and the base users."

Meanwhile,

"power users have major influence on the base users and strugglers. Enthusiasm usually rubs off on the base users. Practices are developed and pushed down."