Established in 1918 and turning over £23 million a year, Ridley Quiney has become a leader in the distribution of wholesale packaging and janitorial products. The company has 1,200 customers, all of them wholesalers, and a range of 1,600 products to choose from. Ridley Quiney prides itself on the market knowledge of its sales executives, and over the past year, VECTA has been helping them to further enhance their customers' experience.

VECTA sales intelligence makes sales professionals more successful by giving them access to vital information about customer buying patterns and account status helping them sell more effectively. "We work in a highly competitive market with very tight margins and this has resulted in a number of sales problems," comments Ridley Quiney managing director, Roger Berry. "Customers were not buying across the range and sales opportunities were being missed."

VECTA gives Berry a very detailed picture of how each member of the sales team is performing. "Previously we could only measure performance in terms of margins and sales but using VECTA we can now tell individual sales executives when they aren't selling enough of a particular product range or ask why they aren't selling more of another. That was something that was very much lacking before."

VECTA immediately alerts Ridley Quiney's sales team when a customer stops buying certain lines. The ability to identify potential problems with lost or drifting customers is extremely valuable when, like Ridley Quiney, you have a catalogue of over 1,600 products.

The software is also helping Ridley Quiney sharpen-up its purchasing strategy. "A considerable number of our products are sourced from outside the UK. In effect we act as a medium between our customers who are wholesalers and our suppliers abroad so we need to look several weeks ahead," explains Berry. "That means the purchasing team needs to know whether product sales are increasing or declining to ascertain what stock-levels to keep. We use VECTA to do that as well as identify areas where we can improve. This has made us a much more proactive and efficient organisation."

VECTA interfaces directly with Ridley Quiney's existing Xeres enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution, analysing and measuring customer relationships and sales processes; and highlighting alternative or additional related products to increase the value of a sale.

"What has impressed us most about VECTA is the speed at which it delivers vital sales information. The sales team now has access to a vast spectrum of up-to-date meaningful sales intelligence and can use that information to achieve higher profitability per order."

Berry also believes that VECTA boosts confidence and levels of professionalism: "VECTA gives sales people access to all sorts of charts and information about how their area is doing. That makes them feel more professional and more in charge," he says. "Before VECTA we would generate reports every six months but they weren't product specific because it would it have involved reams of paper. It was a very blunt system and it is one hundred times better since VECTA."

According to Berry the company achieved a rapid return on the investment. "VECTA paid for itself in within the first four months of using it," he says. "It took a matter of weeks for all the users to be trained and fully up to speed using the tool."

Having already paid for itself, VECTA is helping Ridley Quiney build the business by giving it what Berry has termed 'congruity of customer' - a means by which the sales team can ensure that customers are consistent with each other. He explains: "VECTA is a very powerful sales tool. You get a very detailed picture of a particular customer and you can look at a similar customer and see if the picture is the same. If it's not the same, you can begin to ask questions and strengthen your sales pitch. Our sales representatives are making additional sales based on a knowledge of what other customers are buying."

VECTA has given Ridley Quiney access to the information it needs to be more agile as a sales-focused business. Sales leads are now delivered automatically and time previously spent running and analysing reports is being used for far more productively.

"We're delighted with the software," concludes Berry. "Everything that VECTA brings us is additional benefit to the business. We fully anticipate that in a year VECTA will deliver £300,000 in additional sales, an average return of twenty percent for each of our external salesmen."

Roger Berry
Managing Director
Ridley Quiney