Colligo’s Immediate Access to SharePoint Drives Productivity for AAXICO Global Sales Teams

AAXICO has represented the most reputable brands in aircraft parts and served as a trusted distributor to major commercial airlines and manufacturers for over 55 years. Clients include American Airlines, Boeing, Cathay Pacific Airways, and Delta Airlines. With 11 locations worldwide, managing customer information accurately and efficiently across international boundaries is important.

AAXICO deployed Microsoft SharePoint to enable its global sales teams to better share and track customer information. Since AAXICO sales executives spend as much as 90% of their time outside the office on any given week, they needed an offline solution that would deliver a faster user experience. AAXICO chose Colligo Contributor to give its international teams immediate online and offline access to its customer system from anywhere in the world.

About AAXICO

Since opening in 1946, AAXICO has held honesty and dependability as core values. Today, AAXICO is known to provide a comprehensive range of quality products to the farthest corners of the aviation market. The company operates stocking facilities in United States, England, Singapore, South Africa, and China, and has sales offices in São Paulo, Hamburg, Toulouse, Beijing, and Guangzhou. AAXICO supplies the world’s airlines with parts ranging from seats for cabin interiors to brake temperature sensors, keeping air travelers comfortable and safe.

Application

AAXICO deployed Colligo Contributor 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 international sales offices. 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 manufacturers that offer thousands of airplane products. The sales cycles are long and they must keep track of detailed sales activities. 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 accessibility from any connected computer and to avoid the maintenance costs typically associated with client/server solutions.

However, the user experience was still very slow due to 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 significantly improve the user experience.”

AAXICO sales executives, who spend up 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 to provide their international sales executives with fast, online and offline access to SharePoint.

“We deployed SharePoint to help our international sales team better manage their 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 Contributor solved our online and offline SharePoint challenges.”

Today, AAXICO’s international teams use Colligo Contributor to access and update their customer information when both online and offline. Users find it much quicker to read and modify SharePoint content within Contributor and to periodically synchronize 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 to using Colligo Contributor when online,” said Vieira. “Mobility is another. Now our international sales teams can update our SharePoint site from anywhere in the world using Colligo Contributor offline.”

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

Results

AAXICO has gained significant time-saving advantages from using Colligo Contributor. In addition, AAXICO has been able to:

• Drive 100% adoption of SharePoint among international sales executives
• Improve customer data standardization and quality
• Improve sales effectiveness by increasing visibility into key business accounts and sales activities
• Save sales executives and management from time-consuming reporting processes