Wilson’s Business Solutions isn’t just a thriving stationery and business supply company in Ontario, Canada. Its history is as rich and deep as the Wabigoon gold mines that attracted the area’s first settlers.
- 265 item subcategories
- 7 locations
- 90 employees
The Overview.
In 1940, the Wilson family purchased the historic Wabigoon Star newspaper (Est. 1897) and gradually expanded their family business offering to include furniture, stationery and office equipment.
From 6 staff members, Wilson’s Business Solutions now employs over 90 Team Members in 7 locations, across two provinces in Canada.
The Challenge.
When the team at sales-i first spoke to Sheila Wilson, she explained how Wilson’s had been using Acsellerate since 2010 but they were struggling to get the data insights they needed.
“Our three biggest reasons for looking for a new system were: drilling and reporting customization, quicker and easier use of the system, and the potential for future integration with marketing automation software.”
Another challenge facing Wilson’s was the large geographic area that the company serves. “Our team is in the field in remote areas.” Sheila explained, “Although Acsellerate had mobile access to their website, it required an online connection and data had to be drilled live, not ideal for remote locations.”
The Solution.
sales-i offered Wilson’s the chance to drill deeper into their back-office data, faster and with customizable options that opened up a new way of working for the whole team.
“Being able to see all my filter options right in front of me in sales-i makes it easier to craft a meaningful report.”
sales-i offered Wilson’s a solution to deciphering much of their data into insights that were actionable for their employees. But it also delivered insights beyond their initial expectations. “In the mapping process, we realized that we could customize our Customer, Product, and Transactional data filters to yield information in ways we had not anticipated. The filtering capabilities of sales-i are very malleable.”
With seven locations and differing levels of employee seniority, Wilson’s were also looking for a system that could tier data access. “Our company has six departments and 7 locations. With sales-i, we’re able to customize access on a user-by-user basis to relevant content that each salesperson should be focused on.”
Sheila Wilson, Sales and Marketing Manager"I have been totally blown away by the attention, assistance, and customer service we’ve gotten from sales-i along the way. I would recommend sales-i to anyone as an essential tool."
The Results.
“The customization in the mapping process with the sales-i team was terrific. Our company’s back-end software system hadn’t been used by any previous sales-i customer, but they worked with us to ensure our information was complete and correct.
The team at Wilson’s didn’t have long to wait to see the positive impact of sales-i in their day-to-day business interactions. “I couldn’t believe how quickly we were able to use the generated data, when I thought the process would take much longer.”
With granular insights delivered by sales-i, Sheila and her teams can quickly see changes in customer behavior. “We’re able to monitor the trends of specific product growth categories in our industry in real-time!”
Capturing and securing valuable soft data had previously been a challenge for Wilson’s, with the risk of information being lost when employees moved on from the company. “With sales-i, we now have the ability to create and format our own customized forms for our salespeople to generate information into note entries. This allows us to view and filter customers by industry, role, or any other criteria to understand our customers more intelligently.”
“A compelling reason for us to look seriously at switching to sales-i was their robust mobile app; a user-friendly tool that gives our sales team and team leaders the ability to push requests, images, and action plans for a customer out to the rest of the team on the spot. Now we can now load data in advance on devices, and use it offline—or, conversely, to input data offline that goes live when you once again have reception.”
The Future.
Planning for long-term growth, Sheila knew that further software integration would be required to stay relevant in the office supplies industry.
“Online retailers and service providers are moving more and more to digital marketing and away from print marketing. Customized marketing automation is the future of sending relevant and targeted information and promotions to those customers to whom the content will be meaningful and valuable.
Because of sales-i’s customizable CRM platform, it integrates well with automated marketing software—by partnering the two tools together, we can ensure that we are unlikely to send customers emails with content that may be perceived as irrelevant, and we are able to demonstrate that our marketing is pertinent, customer-focused, and adds value!”
I have been totally blown away by the attention, assistance, and customer service we’ve gotten from sales-i along the way. I would recommend sales-i to anyone as an essential tool."
