Sage 200 and Sage CRM integration
UK medical distributor given the tools to streamline and focus on growth
A Customer Success Story
Project background
The client
Central Medical Supplies Limited, founded in 1989, were initially an exclusive UK distributor of medical devices to hospitals and leading maternity retail brands. However, they now provide a wide range of medical equipment and technology to operating theatres and companies around the world.
Technical training courses are also offered to NHS Trusts that use their equipment and wish to maintain it themselves.
Greater financial control
The challenge
As Central Medical Supplies Limited grew, Sage 50 accounts showed its limitations. As their number of users increased, the software was restricting- it was slow and kept crashing, and quickly became clear that an upgrade was necessary.
They also had no CRM systems in place, just worked off spreadsheets which, as the company grew, became a nightmare for Sales Director, Tracey Pavier- Grant to keep an eye on her sales team’s pipelines and activity.
It became very apparent that we needed a system to hold all of our client information. Keeping track of multiple spreadsheets and trying to report on sales forecasts and activity became incredibly tricky and was taking me a long time to produce a simple report. I’ve used CRM systems previously in other companies and I know the benefit of having one, so I was determined to roll this out within Central Medical.
Tracey Pavier-Grant, Sales Director.
An innovative approach
Our solution
To eradicate the current challenges, we were confident that an upgrade to Sage 200 would eliminate the limitations they were facing with Sage 50. Many companies that start out with Sage 50 accounts, end up migrating to Sage 200 as their business grows; Central Medical were displaying typical pain points that we have seen before at the time of a necessary upgrade. At Solutions, we have a lot of expertise upgrading clients from Sage 50 to Sage 200, with minimal disruption.
“We were concerned that there would be a lot of disruption to our systems having such a large software change, however, we had nothing to worry about, the transition was very smooth – there was virtually no disruption what-so-ever.” Said Tracey.
We also knew that having an integrated accounting and CRM system was important to Central Medical Supplies Ltd. Having two integrated systems eradicates errors, duplication and enables efficiency throughout. It also gives greater transparency over your entire business through dashboards, in a matter of clicks.
“The quality of training we received was great, we were very impressed. We couldn’t fault the smoothness of the transition either.” Said Tracey.
To ensure the transition was as undisrupted as possible we implemented the two pieces of software on separate occasions to warrant minimal downtime.
The outcome
We understood that an integrated system was important to Central Medical Supplies Limited, to enable a more streamlined process and more transparency throughout the business.
Increased accounting functionalities were fundamental to the continued growth of their company and a CRM system was necessary to provide a complete business overview and to enable a clear strategy and forecasts to be created, to continue their growth.
We have a clearer view of our business as a whole now that our systems are integrated, giving us greater control and confidence. Upgrading from Sage 50 to Sage 200 has made our accounts process quicker and easier to manage and track and having Sage CRM in place has helped myself and my team in a huge way – being able to manage and monitor sales results through a dashboard has saved so much time. I would recommend anyone with a separate accounting and CRM system to consider having them integrated. Having a complete business overview not only benefits the senior management team, but also our sales staff as they are able to access far more information without having to go through the rigmarole of requesting it from someone in the office. Since the software installation, we have saved so much time and I am very happy with the choice we made to migrate to an integrated solution and that we chose Solutions to provide this for us.
Tracey Pavier-Grant, Sales Director
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