Case study

Atlas Oil

Skynamo is removing the friction, helping Atlas Oil to run on all cylinders

Atlas Oil has a 50-year track record as a specialist lubrication solution provider . Their sales team sells to both resellers and end-users of lubricants.

Core to Atlas Oil’s business are regular customer interactions and the cultivation of long-lasting sustainable business relationships. Skynamo plays a key role in enabling sales staff to spend more time in front of customers and it provides management with a much greater insight into interactions that their team has with their customers.

• – Reduces admin and reporting time by 1.5 hours per day
• – Allows for more income generating selling activities to happen daily
• – Monitors daily customer visits and keeps sales people accountable

Before Skynamo

Time wasted and excessive admin

In the past sales people spent a lot of time documenting visits and order information in Excel. On average, they spent 1.5 hours a day capturing information and, in addition to that, made unnecessary trips to the office.

‘We realized our sales people spent only 15% of their available time in front of customers, selling and promoting our products, while 85% of their day was spent on planning and administrative activities,’ Steve, Sales Director at Atlas Oil, explains.

No real insight into field activities

Atlas Oil previously used Excel to capture quantitative visit information, and this information was dependent on the amount of detail in the information supplied. Qualitative data was very difficult to capture.

‘The most crucial information provided during conversations with customers are what they are actually saying and asking,’ Steve emphasizes.

‘In these conversations you learn what the customer’s needs are and how you can add value to their situation.’

From a management point of view, it was difficult to try and improve on service delivery by only interpreting numbers and not having real insight into the conversations that sales people were having with our customers.

Not maintaining consistency in terms of customer visits

Sales staff struggled to keep up their visit frequency for a whole week. Steve noticed that they would start off with a bang, but then lose steam towards the end of the week. This was due to a lack of proper planning and keeping track of their visit rates.

‘They would also tell you from memory when they visited a customer. It could have been two days ago or weeks ago, you never had a measurable proof. It’s easy to lose sight of time and then lose sight of your customers in the process,’ says Steve.

Adopting Skynamo

Becoming more productive

Atlas Oil employed a performance coach who worked with their sales team at the time when they first heard about Skynamo and the value it could add to their business. The performance coach certainly added value to their business but they were still looking for something more tangible and measurable.

‘The performance coach working with the team and I recorded every move of every day helping us to understand what our daily activities were focused on, and this is when we realized that 85% of our day was spent on planning and administrative activities.’

Atlas Oil looked to Skynamo to enable them to maintain higher levels of productivity while developing a healthy and sustainable office culture.

‘We didn’t have to police our sales staff, because we gave them the right tools with which to complete their tasks. Skynamo came along as the next step in our transformation into being a more productive team,’ says Steve.

Bringing salespeople on board

Skynamo was welcomed by the sales team as it meant they didn’t have to work in Excel anymore. The value that it added to the company was that the actual conversations and matters discussed during customer visits were now documented, which was never the case before.

‘It is important to manage the transition well, and make sure our sales people are properly on-boarded, and buy into the change’, stresses Steve who understands that change takes time.

Atlas Oil encourages the team to use Skynamo as a tool to track their actions and conversations so that they can improve the quality of any sales call.

Since Skynamo

Less time spent on admin

‘Skynamo removed much of the time-consuming tasks that prevented our salespeople from spending more time with customers, by simplifying the reporting process,’ says Steve.

The 1.5 hours people would spend away from customers logging information each day is now done on the fly. The time they used to spend on populating their Excel diaries and traveling to and from the office to submit documents has been effectively removed from their schedule. The result is that salespeople now spend the majority of their time on income-generating selling activities.

Better insight into the field creates more room for coaching – and more customer visits

Skynamo enables the sales team to communicate what happens out in the field more clearly to their manager. It helps the manager gain a better understanding of why certain things are not working out as planned, or why staff couldn’t complete their scheduled tasks or visits on time.

‘Understanding why our salespeople are struggling out there, or why they perform inconsistently and don’t make target, provides us with a coaching opportunity to effectively sort it out,’ says Steve.

The GPS feature has also enabled the Atlas Oil sales team to identify bad habits in route planning, and they are now better equipped to take the more economical route between customers.

More transparency and greater trust within the sales team

There is a greater willingness among staff to confide in management about things they are uncertain about or when unforeseen circumstances come about.

The transparency brought about by Skynamo encourages everyone in the sales team to be more open and honest with each other and makes it easier for management to be more forthcoming, because of the trust that exists between them.

‘Staff enjoy the freedom to tell us when they need to run personal errands, and we are able to take note of it in real-time and adjust schedules accordingly. Because customer visit history is easily accessible in digital format, any necessary arrangements can be made if another member of the sales team needs to cover for them when they are unavailable, sick or on leave,’ says Steve.

Higher productivity at a sustainable rate

‘Skynamo enabled us to maintain higher levels of productivity but also to do so in a relaxed manner. In fact, the sales team started managing themselves a whole lot better because we gave them the right tools to work with,’ shares Steve.

Growing with Skynamo

Atlas Oil is still growing into the software and is constantly learning more about how they can fully utilise what Skynamo has to offer, continuing to reap the benefits from it.

‘I’ve only recently learnt about Skynamo’s compatibility with voice recognition keyboards like Swiftkey. That’s definitely something to look forward to as it would save even more time capturing information into the system,’ says Steve.

They are currently looking into the possibility of doing orders directly through the Skynamo application and to continue sending their team on training to capitalise on the system’s features and benefits.

Skynamo has created more transparency within the Atlas Oil Sales Team, enabling them to use their time more productively and deliver world class service to all their customers.