CLF Warehouse Inc. Enables Sales Team with Mobile AutoPowerBI Sales Analysis Solution
Overview
Founded in 1972, CLF Warehouse, Inc. has grown into a major independent wholesale aftermarket supplier of heavy-duty and midrange truck parts. Headquartered in Whittier, CA, the Company now incorporates seven locations that serve a customer base of approximately 18,000 dealerships, independent parts stores, and repair facilities across North America.
CLF Warehouse maintains an impressive $3 million inventory comprising 50 product lines of premium brand truck parts and accessory products from industry-leading suppliers and manufacturers. Customers receive tailored service from a staff of 12 inside customer and parts specialists and a team of nine field sales representatives.
Challenge
As a long-time user of the AutoPower System, CLF was sitting on a wealth of sales data stored in the system but had no way to exploit it to achieve business objectives. CLF management wanted to create system transparency to enable their geographically diverse sales team to easily access and leverage that data to enhance sales productivity and customer service insights Thus, there was a need to connect the sales teams’ smartphones to the large volumes of customer and vendor sales data–both current and historical–stored in the AutoPower System. Management understood that the wealth of sales data would unlock hidden sales potentials and trends that could dramatically boost the productivity of their sales team.
The challenge was how to quickly and economically implement a mobile sales analysis and enablement strategy
Solution
CLF management elected to participate in a pilot deployment of the AutoPowerBI Sales Analysis Solution.
The AutoPowerBI Sales Analysis Solution was the first component of the new browser-based advanced reporting and business intelligence platform. It provided specific mobile touch-enabled reports to help their sales team focus on customer trends and new insights.
These dynamic near-real-time reports and visualizations display directly on any smart mobile phone connected to a carrier’s data network or wifi network.
Because the solution was designed to tap directly into the vast store of sales data already present in the AutoPower System, no data entry or normalization was required. And because it was integrated with the proven architecture of Microsoft’s robust PowerBI platform, the solution offered exceptional functionality and ease of use.
As a result, the solution was installed, and the sales team rapidly trained—with the “time to benefit” totaling less than 30 days.
Results
After three months of using the AutoPowerBI Mobile Sales Analysis Solution, CLF Management cited an array of strategic benefits, including
- A 90% reduction in the time and effort to conduct customer evaluations
- A dramatically improved ability to recognize the relationship between sales volume and sales potential
- Advanced insight and analysis of profitability:
- Improved business operations and competitiveness, including
- Better inventory management, thanks to a clearer view of customer purchasing patterns
- Better analysis of why customers move from some manufacturers to others
- Early warning of when competitors are encroaching by price cutting
What has been most impressive is the range of value that the system provides – from the strategic aggregate view, down to important tactical and actionable, details. For the first time, we have a dashboard view of our sales operations that not only provides an accurate and very fast overall briefing, but reveals important nuances that would normally go undetected,”
Carl Josey – Sales Manager, CLF
CLF plans to incorporate more of the Sales Analysis Solution’s functions into their sales management processes with system access to inside and outside sales personnel. They also look forward to adding the other AutoPowerBI Analysis components in the future