Case Study | AAXICO

Immediate Access to SharePoint
Keeps Global Sales Teams Productive

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"The faster user experience has been a huge benefit of using Colligo Contributor when online. Mobility is another. Now our international sales teams can use Contributor offline from anywhere in the world to update our SharePoint site."

Terry Vieira
Senior Vice President
AAXICO

Application
AAXICO deployed Colligo Contributor for SharePoint for its international sales teams – to improve the speed of the SharePoint user experience while online and to keep executives connected to business processes and its customer system while offline.

Business Challenge
In order to best serve its customers, AAXICO operates 11 offlices globally, with direct international sales teams. Disconnected from the Miami head office customer management application, international sales executives previously used Excel spreadsheets to track customer data. “Every Friday, each member of the global sales team would update their weekly report and send it to head office,” said Sergio Rodriguez, Global IT Manager at AAXICO. “This process was not only time consuming, but also prone to forgotten data and entry errors.”

AAXICO sales executives represent dozens of manufacutures that offer thousands of airplane products. The sales cycles are long and they must keep track of detailed sales activites. In June of 2006, AAXICO deployed Microsoft SharePoint to centralize sales and business development information and to improve the standardization of customer data. The SharePoint site allowed the sales teams to keep and share all notes in one organized and central point. AAXICO chose this hosted solution to provide global accessiblity from any connected computer and to avoid the maintenance costs typically associated with client/server solutions.

However, the user experience was very slow resulting from inconsistent connection speeds available around the world. “Because it often took four minutes for the site to load, adoption of SharePoint was limited,” explained Rodriguez. “We needed to find a solution that would drastically speed-up the user experience.” AAXICO sales executives, who spend 25 to 90% of their time away from the office, were also frequently unable to access SharePoint while on the road. AAXICO needed a solution that would improve the user experience while online and solve the offline usability challenge.

Solution: Colligo Contributor
AAXICO chose Colligo Contributor for SharePoint to provide their international sales executives fast online and offline access to SharePoint. “As a light client-only solution, Colligo Contributor was easy to deploy,” said Rodriguez. “It was as easy as click, click, done. The sales executives installed the software on their own and started using Contributor without training.”

“We deployed SharePoint to help our international executives better manage their sales activities and to give management added visibility over global customer activities,” explained Terry Vieira, AAXICO Senior Vice President. “However, the initial user experience was slow and not truly mobile. Colligo allowed us to solve both our online and offline challenges.”

Today, AAXICO’s international teams use Colligo Contributor to access and update their customer information when both online and offline. Opening documents, filling out forms, and creating follow-up tasks in Contributor is fast. Users find it much quicker to read and modify SharePoint content within Contributor and to periodically synchonize their changes to the SharePoint Server. AAXICO sales executives use Contributor both in the office and on the road while visiting clients and attending industry conferences.

“The faster user experience has been a huge benefit of using Colligo Contributor when online,” said Vieira. “Mobility is another. Now our international sales teams can use Contributor offline from anywhere in the world to update our SharePoint site.”

Colligo Contributor has helped AAXICO achieve a quick return on their investment in a sales solution for their international teams. “Contributor has saved our international sales executives considerable time,” added Vieira. “ROI on Colligo Contributor was achieved in one plane ride, from London to Madrid.”

Results
AAXICO has seen significant time savings from using Colligo Contributor. In addition, AAXICO has been able to:

• Drive 100% adoption of SharePoint site among international sales executives
• Improve customer data standardization and quality
• Increase frequency of reporting by international sales executives
• Improve management visibility into key business accounts and sales activities
• Save sales executives and management from time-consuming reporting processes
• Achieve quick ROI - Colligo Contributor was paid for with one international plane ride

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