Stat-Plus Ltd is a general office supplies company specialising in the legal market, which operates from a network of six depots throughout the UK. There are over 30,000 products in Stat-Plus's portfolio but 95 percent of its business is in 3,500 core products. Its annual turnover is £30m.

Over recent years Stat-Plus has found itself operating in a declining market with tight margins. "The UK office supplies market was down by seven percent last year and is following that trend this year," says Stat-Plus Sales Director, Keiran Walsh. "All the research we've done indicates that there is forty percent more business to be won from our existing customer base. That's the easiest sell we've got because it is very hard to win new business without reducing prices."

In order to increase the value of sales calls made to its existing customers Stat-Plus turned to VECTA.

VECTA is a sales intelligence solution that analyses historical sales date in order to helping companies increase their share of customer spend by highlighting sales opportunities. The software can identify potential problems with lost or drifting customers and generate detailed information on customer buying patterns prompting users to sell more proactively.

The sales force at Stat-Plus is predominately field-based and comprises 34 regional account managers. The company has invested in a combination of VECTA and VECTAPocket, the mobile control option of VECTA that runs on a PDA. "It was a case of understanding what the sales representatives needed to actually run their queries and sell more proactively, and then finding a solution to match that," says Denes Nemestothy, IT director at Stat-Plus.

Sales data is exported from Stat-Plus's back office system once a month. "We run our end of month processes and when they are completed we run a script which grabs the data from our system," explains Nemestothy. "Then we run another set of queries and we export data cuts to various branches so that they don't have to look at the whole database, they can just look at what they want to locally. For our sales representatives we do a data cut at rep level."

Nemestothy sends the sales executives an email and they click on an attachment, which allows them to synchronise their PDA with their laptop or desktop computer. "It copies everything over and they then have access to all their customer accounts and a year's worth of historical sales data," he explains.

VECTA has replaced a paper-based system, which according to Walsh was becoming increasingly difficult to handle: "Before VECTA we were sending out thousands of bits of paper and that was becoming impossible to manage. We were looking for a quicker and easier way to get the monthly data flow out to the sales representatives."

Many of the sales representatives at Stat-Plus are over 50 and have been selling stationery for years. "They were nervous about the switch to an IT-based system but I helped with the training sessions," says Nemestothy. "It gave the sales team confidence to have someone they knew showing them what VECTA can do. They have taken to VECTA very well and couldn't work without it now."

One of the major benefits of using VECTA is that sales professionals can turn up for an appointment and, while waiting in reception, call up the customer's history on their PDA and have instant access to detailed analysis of the customer's buying patterns. "It will tell them exactly what they have and haven't bought and identify gaps," comments Nemestothy. "They can go in fully prepared."

VECTA has also helped to integrate new members of staff into the company very quickly, enabling them gain a thorough insight into the state of the business and Stat-Plus's position in the market. "We took a new rep on in Leeds and he was able to get up and running very quickly using VECTA," says Nemestothy. "He was up to 50 accounts in less than two months."

The company is pleased with the impact VECTA is having on the business. "The information we get out of VECTA is proving extremely useful and has been very well received," concludes Walsh. "The sales team now has faster access to a lot more data. VECTA has given them the tools they need to make them sharper and as a result our sales revenues are improving each month."

Keiran Walsh
Sales Director
Stat-Plus Ltd