Lanier Implements StayinFront's CRM Solution

Document management solutions provider Lanier Worldwide Inc., a subsidiary of Ricoh Corp., unveiled plans to implement a global customer relationship management system to expand its sales force automation systems.

Lanier officials say the company will implement a CRM system from StayinFront Inc. Using StayinFront's Visual Elk 9, Visual Elk for Web, Panorama, and Panorama for Web, Lanier will roll out the system to 1,200 users, including its national sales force. Lanier will also use Visual Elk modules for Knowledge Management, Solution Selling, Opportunity Management, and Key Account Management.

Tom Duncan, manager of sales force automation at Lanier says the company has complex requirements due to the configuration, pricing and financing options for the solutions it sells. Lanier, headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, has 350 locations across the U.S. and 8,000 employees worldwide.

"StayinFront's systems provide us with a truly flexible architecture, with applications that can be easily configured to our exact business requirements," Duncan says. "We also selected StayinFront solutions because we need both synchronized systems and Web-based options for our remote sales representatives. StayinFront also provides a powerful Command Center tool to easily manage our large remote user base."

Lanier plans to use Visual Elk to support the complex configuration of its products and orders, which over the years has seen a growing number of orders that cannot be processed. Lanier officials say Visual Elk will eliminate those exceptions and cut down our cost per order.

In addition, Visual Elk will integrate to a number of backend systems, providing Lanier's sales representatives with information such as lease expirations, service alerts, and up-sell opportunities to help improve customer service and increase customer retention.

Lanier plans to use Panorama, a data mining tool, to perform data analysis and identify opportunities and to assess sales and marketing programs via real time queries.

Lanier and StayinFront will integrate Visual Elk 9 to backend ERP, legacy and e-Business systems as part of Lanier's enterprise CRM strategy.

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