Bean counters spice up client relations with Sage

Chartered accountant firm Taylor Cocks has used Sage's SalesLogix CRM product to streamline its client relations.

The small business, which has around 80 staff and 1,000 clients, was finding it increasingly difficult to manage a proliferation of spreadsheets and the resulting silos of data.

After considering rival offerings from the likes of Siebel it selected Sage's SalesLogix offering, supplied by CRM services company QGate, to create a centralised reservoir of client data - giving its staff access to an overview of every transaction for each client the business has.

Ian Cocks, managing director of Taylor Cocks, explained: "We have one instance of a client throughout the business, so every single transaction that we have with every single client is recorded in one place - every single telephone call, every single letter coming in, every single letter going out, plus also financial information.

"So I personally can sit here and see anything to do with any client."

Cocks said Sage offered a cost-effective product, priced for a SME business. He also felt reassured that it would continue to support and develop the software. But the decision to use SalesLogix was heavily influenced by the fact Taylor Cocks was already using other Sage software for marketing - so staff were familiar with the look and feel of it, making migration easier.

The benefits for client relations have been huge, according to Cocks. "It's quite usual for accountants not to speak as often as they need to with their clients - so you can go for four months without speaking to somebody," he explained. "The result of that is the client feels that you don't love them anymore and then you lose the client."

Taylor Cocks uses SalesLogix to monitor contacts between its account managers and clients and to set "contact frequencies" - so clients don't get to feel neglected.

The software has been up and running for around five years - and has evolved from a "vanilla, out-of-the-box'" implementation to a heavily customised one, said Cocks. The firm integrates other systems - including financial systems, time recording systems and business intelligence software - with it.

He said: "The way we would describe it here is it's sort of 'industrial glue' - it glues the whole business together."

Cocks added that while the choice of software is important, the choice of support partner is "the critical issue". "No matter how clever you are, how much research you do, you can never find out everything you need to know," he said.