Note: This article appeared in Intranet Professional, prior to its re-launch as Intranets (in 2004).
This case study presents the benefits of adopting an intranet for the sales force of Centurion Vehicles Inc. of White Pigeon, Michigan. Centurion moved from a paper-based business to one that relies on the intranet for daily operations. Centurion is the leading U.S. manufacturer of luxury conversion vehicles, taking standard vans, SUVs and pickup trucks and turning them into feature-rich, high-quality vehicles with all the comforts of home.
The Challenge: Sharing Information with the Field
As Centurion's business expanded, maintaining a high level of communication with a growing field sales force became difficult. The company needed a better way to stay in touch with its field sales staff and a secure method to quickly distribute confidential information. Paul Campbell, vice president of Marketing, did research on the technologies available to meet the company's needs and selected Intranets.com. Centurion has two intranets in operation—the first is for the Starcraft brand, which has its own sales force, identity, pricing and specifications; the second covers its other brands.
Improving Communications
The sales and marketing departments are the heaviest users of Centurion's intranets. "As the head of marketing, a big part of my job is to make sure that the sales forces know what is going on in marketing and what we are doing to support them with product literature, our Web site, strategic plans, and other important materials," said Campbell. "The intranets provide an easy way to share this type of information as well as all of our sales materials." While sales and marketing are the primary users, managers from other departments have become members of one or both sites.
Must-See Information
With a sales force on the road 3-5 days a week, the sales team makes good use of the intranets' document-sharing capabilities. Centurion relies on its intranets to deliver a wide variety of information to its sales representatives such as order forms, pricing, and product information. In fact, the intranets have become the official repository of all key employee announcements.
"We are developing the mind-set that if it is posted on the intranet, we consider everyone to have been properly notified," explained Campbell. "Sales people can no longer use the excuse that they did not get the message, or did not see the fax. If it is posted, they are responsible for it. It is a great way to distribute all types of documents and announcements."
Reducing Paperwork, Increasing Productivity
Given the customized nature of Centurion's work, its order system has always been paperwork-driven and subject to constant revision. Until Centurion launched its intranets, placing and revising orders was an extremely paper-intensive, time-consuming process. Now, printing and e-mailing order forms and specifications have become the most-used features on the company's intranets.
Before the company had intranets, most of the documents were distributed by fax or overnight mail, which required many phone calls with the sales coordinator. Now the field sales representatives are more productive since they can spend time on more customer-focused tasks than ensuring documents have been delivered.
Saving Time and Money
The benefit from sharing documents goes beyond increasing employee productivity. Centurion's intranets deliver a clear-cut financial benefit to the company. The company has virtually eliminated the cost and time invested in printing order forms. Given the nature of the business, sales reps were constantly revising documents. That meant printed copies quickly became obsolete and had to be thrown away, which wasted a great deal of money. The ability to distribute color documents via the intranets has reduced the dependence on short-run color printing and color copying, which also represents a substantial cost savings.
Expense tracking is another heavily used application on the intranet. The field sales people can quickly file forms and get reimbursed for their out-of-pocket expenses. This feature is extremely popular because it replaces hand-written notes and back-of-the-envelope calculations. It is also much simpler for the people who process the expense forms.
One unexpected benefit to the company's introduction of intranets is that the technology has become popular with employees not only to keep on top of business matters, but to manage their personal lives. The Intranets.com home page provides a day planner, expense report, and task schedule for people to keep track of tasks and appointments.
E-Mailing Made Easy
Since they can access their intranets from any Web-connected PC, Centurion's sales force takes full advantage of the e-mail capabilities of their intranets. Working from home, a hotel room, or even a customer's office, the sales reps now have a much simpler way to communicate. This has helped improve the overall level of communication and collaboration within the sales force and between sales and marketing.
It also provides the sales representatives with a uniform set of e-mail addresses, so regardless of where they are, it is easy to send messages to customers, suppliers, and others from their Centurion or Starcraft address as opposed to a personal e-mail account. It also helps enhance the overall level of professionalism and brand identity.
Easy Setup and Management
One of the key reasons that Centurion Vehicles chose the Intranets.com solution is that it operates on the application service provider (ASP) model. Intranets.com hosts all sites and the company performs all maintenance, upgrades and security, enabling customers to focus on their jobs, not on upkeep of their intranet site.
Key Learnings
• Try it out first. Try an intranet out before deciding whether it works or not for you and your organization. For example, Intranets.com offers a free 30-day trial.
• Make it mandatory. In order for an intranet to truly be effective, it must be the exclusive source for business critical information and applications, whether it is content, documents, announcements, or reporting. If users have the option of using the old paperbound systems the intranet will not be fully utilized.
• Let it grow and remain flexible. Allow users to invent new ways to utilize the intranet. Users will naturally gravitate to the tools they find most useful. Make sure the intranet fulfills their everyday business needs and they will find multiple additional ways to use it.
• Use support. Take advantage of the support options for your intranet. If you do not understand how to do something, ask!