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FREEAGENT SUCCESS STORY
We needed to manage our projects from start to finish on one platform. FreeAgent gives us that capability and much more.”
GP Reeves
Holland, MI
Industry
Manufacturing
Favorite Feature
Visibility and Reporting
Impact
+ 16.7% Revenue growth
⚡ 16+ hours saved/month
2x faster employee onboarding
💥 80% adoption rate
We are problem solvers. A company will come to us because they are having difficulties with their dispensing, and we work with them to provide a solution. Whether that’s a new product or a new process, we find a way to help.
We’ve been doing this for 50 years, so we know how to get things done.”
Larry Jackson Jr.
Sales Manager | GP Reeves
We offer complete solutions to the dispensing problems our customers face. Sometimes that’s providing access to a standard dispensing tool, and sometimes that involves creating something custom to fit their needs.
Our top priority is to simplify the processes of our clients.”
Christine Melvin
Marketing Lead | GP Reeves
Unique Challenges Require Custom Solutions
For more than 50 years, GP Reeves has been creating custom solutions to address all manner of dispensing needs. They can manufacture equipment to suit a variety of environments, develop processes to overcome any challenge, and share techniques and insights gleaned from their decades of experience. A team of problem-solvers, the mission of GP Reeves is to simplify the day-to-day operations of its clients through access to innovative, cutting-edge tools built to overcome the unique obstacles those clients face.
GP Reeves sought to streamline their internal systems to serve their customers better. They had been using a CRM for some time, but the tools provided by the software were not up to the task of managing their unique business needs. They wanted a platform that their entire team could work from— one that could help improve their sales tracking but also help to simplify their project management processes. They didn’t want it to be complex, but they did need it to be robust. With these criteria in mind, the team at GP Reeves set out to find a solution. They did their due diligence and looked at several different technology platforms. Upon finding FreeAgent CRM, with its suite of user-customizable and uniquely configurable tools, they knew they had found what they are looking for. FreeAgent could provide the in-depth visibility that GP Reeves desired while at the same time optimizing their various processes through advanced automation and workflow technology. What’s more, the team at FreeAgent was like-minded— innovative and industrious with a desire to find solutions to any challenge.
Objectives
Creating unique solutions to solve any dispensing problem requires a high level of organization and adaptability. Communication and collaboration are essential to delivering a quality product in a timely fashion, especially a product that is up to the high standard that GP Reeves is known for. To that end, the team at GP Reeves needed to employ a centralized hub that served as a platform to work from and a repository of all the information required to sell, manufacture, ship, and maintain their products. This platform had to be accessible, easy to use, and efficient.
For the sales team at GP Reeves, their challenges centered around sales tracking and account management. Their team was skilled and dedicated, but much of their reporting was ad-hoc, performed by individuals with a generalized process that lacked accuracy and efficiency. They needed a way to make reporting more accessible, more precise, faster, and codified so that every team member was on the same page.
On the project side of things, complexity was the primary issue. Manufacturing a unique tool made for order is quite a challenge. It requires not only know-how and experience but also oversight and communication. There is no set process that can be repeated again and again. Instead, it is the expertise of skilled engineers that makes such things possible. In order to help their engineers succeed, GP Reeves wanted to remove much of the administrative burden. They wanted to set up a series of automations and workflows that would aid the transition of a project from one phase to another, simplifying the collaborative process while removing bottlenecks and backlog.
FreeAgent gave us the ability to have our data connected. We wanted our leads, opportunities, and projects to be linked together in a way that gave us a macro view of our operations while still allowing us to zoom in on a micro-level.
Having a single platform that could— nurture a lead, create an opportunity, send a quote, track the project (as the product is put together), then manage the process of sending the product to the customer, and finally, process the payment— was very important to us.”
Christine Melvin
Marketing Lead | GP Reeves
One of our biggest challenges was reporting. Once a month, I would get a spreadsheet from everyone on my team who had their quotes and win probability. I would then take that data and transfer it to a master sheet. It was very cumbersome, and the data was often rough and not entirely correct. With FreeAgent, all of that data is updated in real-time, and it is accessible and accurate.”
Larry Jackson Jr.
Sales Manager | GP Reeves
The team at GP Reeves needed to:
With FreeAgent, we now have an accurate accounting of our sales projections. That helps with our sales budget. Each team member has a budget that they can now see in real-time. This has allowed the team to make more informed decisions with our quoting and targets.
FreeAgent also helps us to be more targeted in our email campaigns. We can filter our companies by product type, location, or industry and then send out a mass email targeting companies based on those filters. It has made things a lot easier for both our sales and marketing teams.”
Larry Jackson Jr.
Sales Manager | GP Reeves
I love how FreeAgent is so customizable.
We added fields that let us track the unique aspects of our business, such as the types of materials being used or the custom equipment we designed. This has allowed us to see what we need to see how we need to see it.
It’s so easy to implement something new because we can do it ourselves.”
Christine Melvin
Marketing Lead | GP Reeves
The Solution
The experienced team at GP Reeves knew that implementing change was a process best done in moderation. With that in mind, they began to introduce FreeAgent one step at a time. First, they began to input all of their account data into the FreeAgent platform. This would pay immediate dividends for the sales team as they would go from a series of disparate spreadsheets and processes to a single source of truth for all of their accounts. Now, their entire client history was accessible with just the push of a button, and any communications, notes, orders, and the like were captured and time-stamped. This single step allowed for much greater collaboration than was possible before and transformed their reporting process from a burden to an asset. Team members could see their budgets updated in real-time, allowing them to make more informed decisions. What’s more, they could see where they stood in relation to their peers, which was a valuable tool for motivation and assessment. This helped with coaching, as the leadership team could evaluate performance based on real data and adjust their training methods accordingly.
The next step for GP Reeves was creating the automations and workflows that would alleviate the organizational workload of their production team. This process required an in-depth review of their processes to define the various steps a project goes through. Mapping out the various approvals, hand-offs, transitions, and phases and identifying blockers would allow the team at GP Reeves to refine their operations and improve efficiency. They worked with the team at FreeAgent to create a framework for their workflow engine. This would serve as the foundation of their new project management process and provide the data-driven insights required to improve every aspect of their production further.
Going forward, GP Reeves has no intention of slowing down. They have already begun to input the various techniques and practices they use to manufacture their products into the FreeAgent platform. This will allow their engineers to operate from a single source of truth, just as their sales team does. Technical specifications for applying a particular material or details regarding the molecular makeup of a particular substance will all be accessible using the same suite of tools used to inform a team member that a task is completed or a product is ready to ship. This will not only save time but improve focus and accuracy.
The Impact
The team at GP Reeves has already seen some impressive gains as a result of adopting FreeAgent. Revenue has increased by more than 15% year over year. Their sales team has saved a significant amount of time thanks to the ease of reporting. Leadership has gained greater insight into their day-to-day operations, which will lead to better forecasting, lead targeting, and coaching. Onboarding new employees is now easier. A new team member needs only to learn FreeAgent instead of a variety of recording and reporting methods unique to each spreadsheet or document— and this is just the beginning. As the production team implements the automation and workflow tools FreeAgent provides, the efficiency gains will be considerable.
FreeAgent is excited to be a part of the great work that GP Reeves is doing. In a world of cookie-cutter solutions, GP Reeves offers another way. This creates opportunities and supports innovation. These types of impacts cannot be measured in hours saved or dollars earned, but a flexible and dynamic industry is the foundation of a healthy and secure economy. FreeAgent and GP Reeves are aligned on that front and seek to help businesses succeed.
FreeAgent has helped us improve our employee onboarding process significantly. I have hired two new salespeople recently, and getting them up to speed has been simpler and faster. I used to have to teach them how to fill out this spreadsheet and that spreadsheet and then show them this process and that process. Now, we just teach them how to use FreeAgent, and everything they need to do is in there.
The time savings have been huge. It’s about 16 hours a month per employee. Before FreeAgent, the last two days of every month were spent filling out spreadsheets. After that, it would take me a whole day to transfer the information from those spreadsheets to a master sheet. Everything is updated in real-time with FreeAgent, so we get those days back.
We have seen revenue grow 16.7% from the fiscal year 2020-2021. That was right in line with when we started with FreeAgent. That was a big jump, and a lot of that is because we can send quotes faster and our hand-offs between teams are easier. Also, everything in the quote is viewable by our engineers to see what we quoted and why. They don’t have to come back and ask a bunch of questions and slow the sale down.
Everything is just faster and easier in FreeAgent.”
Larry Jackson Jr.
Sales Manager | GP Reeves
FREEAGENT SUCCESS STORY
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