About Contracts Engineering
Contracts Engineering Ltd is a precision sheet metal manufacturer based in Kent, UK, which improves customers’ supply chains by delivering high-quality service on time, in full, at competitive prices. Founded in 1989, current owners Catherine and Troy Barratt bought the business in 2012 and invested heavily in technology, machinery and training, tripling the business size in 6 years.
Centralised Data for Growth
Their primary markets of operation include manufacturing for commercial industries such as light infrastructure, street furniture, construction, design installations and hard landscaping equipment. They also manufacture for industrial end markets which include extraction and ventilation, food processing and niche engineering equipment companies.
Growth has been achieved not only through great customer service and product quality, but also by customer referrals and a proactive sales approach. As growth continued to be a primary objective, the business management decided a new CRM system was needed to help drive the company forward.
Defining Needs and Trialling
Before turning to SpotlerCRM, Contract Engineering had been using a different CRM for three years but found the system too inflexible for their modern workforce. It was overly complicated with poor reporting features, and expensive. Realising this was not meeting their business needs, they embarked upon the search for a new CRM with a better fit, at a more competitive price.
They came across SpotlerCRM from an online search and decided to trial the system alongside several other CRMs, including Pipeline and HubSpot. Company director, Catherine Barratt, stated, “In running the trial we found SpotlerCRM to be a really great product that could do everything we needed, with a straightforward user interface. SpotlerCRM illustrates how easy and simple CRM can be without losing any detail or functionality.”
Excellent Customer Service
Catherine was also impressed with her interaction with the SpotlerCRM customer onboarding process. She comments, “Sales rep Muhammad Miah provided us with a fantastic introduction, answering all my questions. We next attended the various live webinars which were really good and helped us to quickly get up to speed with the system.”
In making their final selection, Catherine added that SpotlerCRM came out on top due to its “fair, flexible and sensible pricing”. She also commented that transferring their data from their old CRM software to SpotlerCRM was “super easy”.
Managing Sales and Business Planning
Contracts Engineering is currently using SpotlerCRM to manage daily tasks, keep track of their sales pipeline and running reports. As their business expands, the next step is to look at creating custom dashboards and reports for a larger team, as well as using the CRM to help with their business planning.
The CRM system has streamlined how the business manages all day-to-day tasks leading Catherine to add “With all our information in one place, we are able to stay on top of our leads and we know what we need to do each day, rather than scrambling. It allows us to stay on top of potential leads, making follow-ups easier.”
Catherine continues, “Besides some adjustments to the account view, there have been few drawbacks in using SpotlerCRM. Our sales process is quite unique in that we are a service provider, so we often have numerous opportunities with an existing customer. To a certain extent, we have adapted how we work, but not significantly.”
Moving forward, Contracts Engineering is looking to further tailor the CRM to suit their growing requirements.
Catherine explained “Whenever we’ve needed support, SpotlerCRM team has always been super helpful. The webinars and online tutorials are also very informative and well put together.”
Recommendation
Catherine concludes, “A CRM system is highly important to our business. We couldn’t manage without a CRM system and we really like SpotlerCRM. If you’re looking for a CRM I’d recommend you talk to SpotlerCRM and take the free trial.”