Manufacturing is a complex industry, and with growing competition, connecting with your customers is more important than ever before.
But it’s no small challenge to create a completely seamless experience – especially if you rely on dealers, distributors or other partners to be the biggest ambassadors of your brand.
Finding the Right Strategic Partner
Forrester Consulting reports that manufacturers can experience 114% ROI and benefits of $3.8 million over three years by working with Perficient (The Total Economic Impact of Working with Perficient in the Manufacturing Industry, March 2020). For the commissioned study, Forrester Consulting interviewed executives who are responsible for driving digital transformation, as well as improving dealer and customer experiences.
8 Big Bottom-Line Benefits
The manufacturers who were interviewed:
#1: Increased marketing budget efficiency valued at $1.7 million.
It’s no surprise: better data leads to better customer understanding. And with better insight, you can avoid running inefficient campaigns, refine whom you target, and make more informed decisions – faster – about which programs and offers are likely to resonate with your dealers.
Perficient worked with the manufacturers in the study to rearchitect schemas and improve the data quality in their marketing and CRM systems. As one VP of product management noted in the study: “An executive had spoken to a few dealers and heard anecdotally that one demographic was increasing. In two seconds, I pulled up my business intelligence dashboard, looked at sales, and was able to show how this group had actually been declining for the past five years.”
#2: Avoided $1 million of internal development costs.
Manufacturers in the study struggled to find – either internally or through job postings – the right people to analyze, architect, and roll out their partner relationship management (PRM) solutions.
“Hiring people wasn’t an option. We would have never considered it. We just don’t attract the type of talent that somebody like Perficient gets,” noted one executive. With expert resources right at their fingertips, these manufacturers avoided the ramp-up time and costs associated with hiring and training staff. Plus, Perficient’s industry expertise helped them avoid common digital transformation pitfalls along the way.
#3: Reduced support calls by 40% (valued at $408,242 in savings).
By implementing new communities, these manufacturers reduced costs and improved the experience for digitally-savvy buyers who want to interact online – on their own schedules.
Another executive in the study put it simply: “Extending our data to self-service [communities] helps us provide a better customer experience.
#4: Improved lead management, gaining $587,519 in revenue.
Better qualified leads. Better win rates. Before working with Perficient, one VP in construction equipment explained: “We’d generate thousands of leads, including inquiries from 12-year-old kids and bored prisoners, and just send them all to our dealers. Because of that, our dealers would consider our leads junk and ignore them – even the quality leads.”
Another digital marketing manager shared: “Through an API, we’re now delivering higher quality [leads] straight to our dealers’ CRMs, and they’re accepting 90% of them.”
#5: Improved data quality for a 360-degree customer view.
By tracking and consolidating transactions across channels, you can better personalize customer interactions, increase cross-sell opportunities, and strengthen loyalty.
The manufacturers interviewed in the study did just that – partnering with Perficient to clean and enrich their CRM databases, create account governance standards, and increase overall customer understanding.
#6: Increased customer engagement.
High website bounce rates often indicate that a company’s content and/or user experience are missing the mark.
Additional efforts included helping these manufacturers overhaul their existing website design and establish more flexibility for content creators. The results: faster page optimization and lower abandonment rates.
#7: Improved partner relationships.
In the study, improved lead qualification and automated routing resulted in increased sales, as well as reduced the time and effort spent on bad leads. By providing dealers with these higher quality leads and by improving their warranty claim programs, all of the interviewed organizations felt their relationships with partners improved immeasurably as a result.
#8: Gained a trusted strategic partner.
And last but not least, making the right architectural decisions now has a far-reaching impact in the future.
These manufacturers wanted a partner who would not only implement PRM solutions, but set up their organizations for long-term success. As one VP noted: “There’s this level of trust where there isn’t a line between Perficient and my organization. We’re all one team. We didn’t have any developers or architects at my organization that could do what we needed, so I used everyone at Perficient. They became another department for me.”
Now … What Could Those Benefits Do for You?
Check out the full study below featuring statistical results, real-world interviews and more. Or if you’d like to talk directly with one of our manufacturing experts, let us know.
Tell us what’s on your mind, what you need, and where you want to go. We’ll help you get there.
