In using VECTA they were able to focus their sales team and ensure they reacted quickly to any sales trends or deviations, in addition to selling a broader spectrum of products. By analysing customer requirements and identifying opportunities, they estimate that £100k of additional sales can be attributed to this VECTA function in 2012.

These are the only pan European awards which recognise the crucial role that ISVs and Solution Providers play in the delivery of real world solutions, and attracted entries from 24 countries - double that of previous years. Entries were submitted by the ISVs, Solution Providers and Systems Integrators themselves describing the solution provided. Each entry had to be supported by an endorsement by the client.

According to the independent judges the quality of entries was much higher as well, with some superb entries in the new categories of Business Intelligence and Analytics, and Communications and Mobility.

Nine categories are designed to allow ISVs and software developers to show their skill in delivering business applications for their customers. The judges will be looking for entries that show a real understanding of the customer's requirements and the ability to deliver software to specification and time scale while meeting or exceeding agreed customer targets.

VECTA's 2 entries are in the categories for Relationship Management Solution and Business Intelligence & Analytics Solution.

VECTA finalists at IT & Software Excellence Awards... Full Story.

Kings Langley BS offers a wide range of building and DIY materials and products, delivered locally for free by its own specialised fleet and by experienced staff, who offer practical advice and consultation drawn from extensive previous personal experience in various trades. The level of choice offered by Kings Langley BS, combined with the highest levels of customer service, has helped to build many long term relationships with its clients and much of its business arises from repeat custom and recommendations.

VECTA will support the company in helping to improve and advance these services, as Jim Rance, Managing Director, confirms: "We have implemented VECTA as a simple, yet more focused system that will help our people to be more productive and manage our customers better by enabling a more planned approach to customer conversations and contact."

"VECTA gives us fast visibility of our results and helps us to easily identify and take action when customers have stopped buying particular products, or when link sales opportunities are missed, and to manage the mix of our product sales. This is all essential in the current climate and we have already recovered sales using the fast customer spend analysis VECTA gives us."

"We are appreciating the benefits of having faster, relevant information easily to hand and are confident that VECTA will help our business to grow and remain competitive in the current challenging trading environment and coming years."

Visit Kings Langley website.

Dave Riches, Sales Director, explains: "When we first implemented VECTA we wanted to improve management visibility of opportunities and results and help the sales team sell more effectively. With the sales information from the system made easily available, there was an instant positive impact upon the business.

The new Live WEB version 7 of VECTA has provided even greater value and my team are equipped with the information they need in a way that easily fits into their busy working schedule, plus we immediately experienced improvement in productivity and results. The new version has been very well received, my sales team can now tap into the system wherever they are via laptop, tablet or smart phone, and have instant access to the latest sales, opportunities and customer information.

Remote users for example can now instantly see key information about their territory and customers, and can produce information and reports on the fly. As well as improving call prep and shared information, this self-sufficiency has freed up internal resources, providing further cost benefits for the business.

We now also use VECTA for our call logging and call reporting which has provided an effective way to manage sales force activity and improves the visibility between the internal and external sales teams. The flexible dashboards in VECTA ensure that each person gets straight to the information most relevant to their own responsibilities which means that the information is used constantly to support the sales operation and the team are spending time acting on opportunities, not trying to find them."

VECTA Benefits to Sealey:

"Since putting VECTA in, our sales have increased by over 30% and we are seeing a consistent increase in our share of customer's spend. We are confident that our ongoing use of VECTA will continue to generate additional sales revenue from existing customers and ensure consistent growth in line with our expansion plans, in a highly competitive market place."

...read more on how VECTA Sales Intelligence helps the Sealey Group

To read the full case study, click here

"Key Accounts is a very profitable area of our business," confirms Martyn Sheppard, Business Services Manager at Screwfix, "our challenge is to ensure that we continue to provide outstanding levels of customer service, whilst focusing our people on the best revenue and margin opportunities.

Before deploying VECTA, we were able to run reports and see customers whose overall spend was in decline, but we did not know the reason why, or any further details. We couldn't deliver this information to our Account Managers in a timely manner, so they could make their sales calling time more effective. Our team required a way to easily identify and interpret information about existing customers, their ordering patterns and sales opportunities."

With VECTA, Screwfix can make these details available to staff in a user-friendly way, as Martyn explains:

"VECTA enables us to instantly identify those customers where there is lost business or account drift and which products are in decline, so we can direct our Account Managers to call those customers to try to win back the business. We can then maintain meaningful contact and deduce if there is competitor activity, or a price or customer service issue to address."

VECTA has helped Screwfix to:

"VECTA is the key link in our systems chain, directing our sales people to opportunities within the customer base and the team is more proactive and customer-focused than ever.

The information generated by VECTA is fast, easy to access and customise, and it enables us to make strategic and informed business decisions throughout the B2B sales team. We have seen growth in our top customers of around 15% in a very tough climate and VECTA has been instrumental in helping the team to achieve this."

To read the full case study, click here

VECTA is a powerful and easy-to-use sales intelligence and CRM solution, designed to improve sales efficiencies and results. It automatically identifies customer buying patterns, gaps in spend, link-sell opportunities or potential problems, prompting sales professionals to sell more proactively.

Tim Roberts, RA Roberts, Managing Director, takes up the story:

"Our business has grown tremendously over the last few years, helped hugely by VECTA and it has continued to evolve to meet our changing needs.

VECTA is the sales teams lifeblood, they have instant visibility on things like: which customer they will be calling next and what their customers are and are not buying, so they have information instantly on what they need to be talking about, which means they are very productive.

VECTA has helped us to:

We have adopted the latest web-based version - VECTA7. The upgrade was easy and has paid for itself quickly. We did consider taking on an alternative business intelligence tool, but we recognised that VECTA7 would give us what we needed and would be quicker to install.

VECTA has helped us to successfully diversify into cross-selling new product lines and contributed massively to the achievement of our growth targets in what is a very difficult climate - and we are still growing. We have very ambitious plans to accelerate the business further in the next three years and VECTA is a key element in those plans - we'd be lost without it."

To read the full case study, click here

A talented team of people in a call centre based at the Bicester head office handle all sales enquiries and the company employs 8 external sales executives.

Sales efficiency is an important aspect of the Cooper Callas operation and using the VECTA Web service, the team can see customer and sales information and log calls on their mobile devices, as well as on laptop, tablet or PC. Now that the information is live in the Cloud, all the sales team have to do is log in to their PC or mobile and they have all their customer information available to them when they need it and in a user friendly display that highlights key facts to them.

VECTA is a web-based solution that combines call logging with analysis of historical sales data to help companies increase their share of customer spend. It will highlight further opportunities, identify potential problems with lost or drifting customers and generate detailed information on customer buying patterns, prompting users to sell more proactively.

Explaining the reasons for upgrading to the new version of VECTA, Darren Cooper, Managing Director, said:

"We have been using the VECTA solution for a number of years to help our sales people sell more effectively, however the new, live web version of the system offers us even greater value through improved operational efficiency.

Our field sales team can now immediately access the most up-to-date sales information on demand, wherever they are, and on any device. This is ideal for very quick and effective call preparation before a meeting or extra information needed on the fly and any notes or messages for the office can be input there and then. Information can be shared with the office and is immediately visible to the management team, which allows us to keep our finger on the pulse of the business and VECTA is also a simple efficient vessel for us to provide direction to the team.

With VECTA7, we now have even faster and clearer insight into our business's and customers' needs, so we are able to maintain our high levels of customer service which are recognised throughout the industry."

Ashby Hope, Cooper Callas IT Co-ordinator, added:

"It was a painless transition onto the new version of VECTA and the hosted service means I no longer have any local administrative tasks for VECTA - I have simply arranged the file updates to be sent to them and they do the rest. Having no software to load onto the users' PCs, or our server, has also freed up resource providing further cost benefits for our business."