AGS Solar, a specialist green energy solar water heating provider, has contracted AWCape to supply, design and implement Sage CRM in a hosted virtual server environment.

As a member of the 30 year old Saban group of companies, AGS Solar is developing a ‘house-hold' brand in South Africa as both turn-key and collaborative solutions provider to the commercial, industrial and residential sectors under stewardship of managing director Ori Saban, an Alternative Energy Architect who completed his studies at UCT. The company sets itself apart from its competitors by offering local access to a wide range of leading global solutions, including an exclusive relationship with Chromagen, the world's leading solar water heating brand, offering superior and proven durable technology.

With its head office in Cape Town and trusted installation partners nationwide, AGS Solar required a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system that would support the company's growth and market leadership. Manual procedures to manage incoming enquiries for solar products and services were no longer delivering desired results, and keeping track of customers and prospects in an Excel database was no longer practical. AWCape was approached for a software solution and through a process of evaluating AGS Solar's business processes and future growth requirements, AWCape proposed the deployment of Sage CRM in a hosted virtual server environment.

Sage CRM was supplied to AGS Solar during October 2014 and was installed on a hosted virtual server with automated daily backups scheduled to run after hours, thereby releasing AGS Solar of the burden of having to maintain an in-house server and taking care of backups and technical issues.

Ruan de Bruyn, a member of AWCape's System Engineering team who holds a master's degree in Industrial Engineering from the University of Stellenbosch, was tasked to design and develop the CRM system for AGS Solar along the following guidelines agreed with AGS Solar's Ori Saban and Phil Craig :

* The system should be designed & implemented with simplicity & increased business efficiency in mind  no complex and expensive solution.
* To increase the availability of information, leading to improved customer service and retention. 
* Through this process CRM should allow for better targeting of marketing activity and improved visibility of selling opportunities to the various AGS Solar sales team members.
* Faster deal closing.
* Improved order tracking & management

AWCape's managing director Henri Hattingh said "the impact of the sales- and support-related benefits provided by Sage CRM in today's challenging economic environment cannot be overstated. Conservative estimates of the cost of winning a new customer relative to maintaining an existing one put the figure at around four times the amount. Sales and marketing teams are not the only ones to benefit directly from their CRM deployments, as business processes should also see improvements with CRM reducing duplication and time wasting across the company through centralisation of customer information".

Mr. Ori Saban, MD of AGS Solar said, "the CRM deployment should also have an effect on the management decision making processes within AGS Solar, with improvements in the quality of information available for strategic management decision making. We are also looking forward to the benefits that superior forecasting will have on the cash flow of the company." 

Ruan de Bruyn commented, "it was possible to install and deploy an opportunity workflow within a few days from installing the software, as Sage CRM comes standard with a number of basic workflows including opportunity workflow. Other features included in standard Sage CRM are Sales Force Automation, Call Centre & Marketing Automation. In AGS Solar's case, a customised opportunity workflow was created in consultation with the customer."

Mr. Ori Saban concluded, "It was wonderful to travel to Europe last week and be able to log into our CRM from anywhere in the world. Sage CRM's mobile integration and the number of apps available for various mobile devices is of particular value to our roaming sales force. The hosted virtual server from AWCape makes CRM simpler and very cost effective at less than R2,000 per month, including the daily on-line backup service."