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CRM & Marketing Manager | Managing Director
Is your manufacturing business bogged down by manual data entry and slow processes?
You’re not alone—many manufacturers still use spreadsheets or legacy systems to run their operations.
Until a few months ago, Moduflex, a UK-based manufacturer, was among them.
In this episode of Closing Time, discover why Insightly is considered the best CRM for manufacturing and how Insightly CRM + AppConnect revolutionized Moduflex’s efficiency and streamlined its operations.
Join managing director Rich Blunden and marketing/CRM manager Megan Thomas as they share their journey with Insightly—from selecting the right CRM to swift implementation, smooth onboarding, and reclaiming valuable time to prioritize delivering exceptional customer experiences.
Selecting the right Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software is a pivotal decision for any business, regardless of its size or industry.
A CRM system serves as the backbone of customer interactions, centralizing data, managing relationships, and driving growth. However, navigating the vast landscape of CRM options can be daunting.
Megan Thomas, Moduflex’s marketing manager, was tasked with finding the ideal CRM solution for their manufacturing business. Megan has first-hand experience working with other CRMs like Salesforce and Hubspot at previous companies.
She emphasizes the complexity of Salesforce, more suitable for large enterprises, and HubSpot’s heavy focus on marketing, not ideal for Moduflex’s needs. In contrast, Insightly stands out for its simplicity and ease of use, making it perfect for integrating into Moduflex’s logistics and production workflows.
Rich Blunden, Moduflex’s managing director, praises Insightly’s dashboards and reporting features as a major reason for choosing Insightly over competitors.
By automating manual processes previously reliant on spreadsheets, Insightly saves Moduflex significant time and manpower, estimated at around 30 to 40%. This streamlined approach allows Rich to access crucial information in real time, enabling better decision-making and operational efficiency.
Guided onboarding is a critical aspect of adopting any new software or technology, especially when it comes to complex systems like CRM.
When done well, onboarding involves expert assistance and support from the software provider to help users navigate the initial setup and customization stages.
The goal: minimal disruption and fast time to value.
Megan highlights the professionalism and helpfulness of Insightly’s onboarding team during the process. She says, “Insightly’s willingness to address my questions and provide guidance every step of the way was invaluable, especially considering the size and complexity of the project.”
Despite the daunting nature of the undertaking, Insightly’s structured approach and simplified onboarding process alleviated any intimidation Megan felt. With clear steps laid out and continuous support from the Insightly team, Megan could confidently configure the CRM to align with Moduflex’s unique requirements.
The customizable nature of Insightly was another standout feature for Megan. Being able to tailor the CRM to suit Moduflex’s specific needs ensured a smooth transition for the entire team.
Megan states that “Insightly’s interface felt intuitive and familiar to Moduflex staff, most of whom were new to CRM systems.” This familiarity significantly eased the onboarding process, making it accessible and straightforward for everyone involved.
Megan and Rich both agree that Insightly CRM has been a game-changer for Moduflex—offering a multitude of benefits that enhance efficiency across various teams.
Rich emphasizes the platform’s impact on project visibility and workflow optimization. With Insightly’s thorough training, Megan can swiftly address issues and suggest improvements, all in-house, without the need for technical support. This newfound agility allows Moduflex to streamline project management, scheduling, and documentation, ensuring smooth operations from order entry to site installation.
From Megan’s perspective, Insightly revolutionizes how she tracks and analyzes workflow data. As a marketing manager, she gains real-time insights into sales pipelines, job statuses, and order values.
Insightly’s customizable reports and dashboards empower her to generate comprehensive analytics effortlessly, saving hours of manual work previously spent on spreadsheet management. This streamlined process not only boosts efficiency but also facilitates informed decision-making, vital for Moduflex’s growth ambitions.
Megan also highlights the impact on the accounting team, where manual Excel spreadsheets are replaced with automated reports, saving approximately a day’s worth of work each month.
Additionally, Insightly simplifies weekly intake processes, eliminating the need for manual data compilation and enabling instant report generation. These time-saving measures translate into tangible benefits for Moduflex, allowing teams to focus on value-adding tasks and driving business growth.
Integrating CRM systems with other business applications is when the real magic starts to happen in terms of value and ROI.
Traditionally, such integrations often require technical support, making them daunting and resource-intensive endeavors. However, Insightly AppConnect revolutionizes this process by providing a drag-and-drop, low code/no-code platform—empowering non-technical users to create seamless integrations effortlessly.
Moduflex reaps significant benefits from Insightly AppConnect integrations—for instance, at the initial pipeline stage, customer contact forms automatically feed data directly into Insightly, eliminating the need for manual input by the sales team.
Moreover, AppConnect facilitates seamless coordination in the backend operations. When booking engineer appointments, appointments are instantly synchronized with online calendars, minimizing data entry efforts and enhancing accuracy.
Rich underscores the broader impact of Insightly on business operations, “Automation and integrated data management enable Moduflex to consolidate customer data, expedite quoting processes, and improve marketing segmentation.” This translates into faster response times and better customer experiences across the board.
Ultimately, Insightly’s integrations contribute to operational efficiency and customer satisfaction, positioning Moduflex for continued success.
How can manufacturing firms benefit from using Insightly CRM? That’s the topic for today’s episode of Closing Time. Thanks so much for tuning into this customer. Spotlight edition of Closing Time. I’m Melinda Prescher Insightly’s director of product and customer marketing. And today I have the pleasure of welcoming two guests Megan Thomas and Rich Blunden of Moduflex. Thanks so much for joining me today. Hi. Thank you for having us. I’m Melinda,. Great to be here. So, Rich, I’d love it if you would take a moment first to tell the audience more about Moduflex. Sure, no problem. Moduflex are a manufacturing company based in the UK, we’re a specialist in the storage aspect of production. We manufacture specialist storage products. We’ve got two factories based in the southwest of the UK, and we try and manufacture all the products that we sell. So, Megan, your expertise is actually really unique. You’re a marketing manager with really deep expertise in CRM integration and user administration. I’d love for you to compare the process of implementing Insightly to other CRMs, including Salesforce and HubSpot, if you can speak to that. Sure. So I’ve used a ton of different CRM systems over the years. The very first system. I ever experienced was Salesforce. I used that for years as an end user and then moved on to an administrator role and always found it was very complex, very suited for big, vast enterprises with a lot of brand specific terminology that you had to have quite extensive training to really get familiar with. And it’s sort of well known in the industry as well that for Salesforce integrations, you need a full dedicated team, probably with an I.T. degree. Same for HubSpot. HubSpot always felt in my experience it’s very marketing heavy. Again, not really appropriate for our business. We needed something that we could easily incorporate into sort of industry specific processes involving logistics and production. From the beginning, Insightly was just so user friendly no need to overcomplicate anything. Yeah, nice and easy to navigate and yeah, could just fly with it straight away. Megan, that’s really great to hear you speak to how easy it is to use Insightly. I love it. Rich, Please tell us what you like about using Insightly dashboards and reporting to get a quick view of your business performance. Yeah, it’s a really interesting question. When we tasked Megan with finding a CRM for us, we had a very certain criteria that we wanted to look to. We used to be very spreadsheet heavy and we wanted to automate a lot of those processes to get all of that information flowing through the business in a timely manner. That gave me, as the managing director, a real insight into where we were at any one point. I think the Insightly system has proved to us that that information to hand in a timely manner is really is really key to running a business. We had a lot of spreadsheet going to spreadsheet, going to spreadsheet and a lot of data entry and a lot of copying and pasting and reentry and more entry so that actually being able to streamline that whole process has saved us huge amounts of manpower. Really difficult for us to put an exact number of hours, but I think we’re saving 30, 40% on our manpower. Rich, that is so great to hear. 30 to 40% savings on manpower and time is really impressive. So, Megan, back to you. We know that speed of implementation is really important, but so is the actual onboarding process. How is your onboarding experience with the Insightly team? So from working with their onboarding team, they were incredibly professional at all times. Very helpful. And personally,. I like to ask a lot of questions and kind of cover the same topics, but I never felt like it was too much for them or I was asking too much. It’s very open communication. It’s always really daunting taking on a project of this kind of scope for, this is the biggest one I’ve done, because we’re a medium-sized enterprise, bigger manpower, so a lot more departments to kind of try and tie together. But they really took that kind of intimidation away, I guess, because they really simplified the onboarding process. You guys structured it all for me, laid out all the steps and then made sure I was comfortable with configuring everything myself, running all the administration and supporting me through that and just seeing the level of customization that Insightly has was just so brilliant for onboarding our team onto Insightly because all the language on there was a home from home for them. They didn’t have to suddenly learn a whole new, you know, language to use a CRM. Pretty much every single member of staff here apart from me, had never used a CRM system before. So it was really important that it was really straightforward and familiar to them. And that was that was one of the key things that made the onboarding process really really great. Rich, When you think about the biggest benefits that Insightly brings to your business, what would you say are most important to you and your team? A great question. We’ve had a good few months of using Insightly now and the benefits are really starting to shine through. Just before this meeting, myself and Megan went into a meeting with our contracts team and they had an issue with the way that one of their workflows was not allowing them to see certain data. Now, with the training provided, Megan was able to update that report, adding fields that they previously hadn’t thought about suggest things the way that we could improve that process flow for them. The thorough training allowed us to do that all in-house, which was just amazing. The other benefits, it gives us a lot more visibility of where our projects are. We can get things things through to manufacturing quicker. We also have a site installation service that goes along with our manufacturing. One of the things that we’ve been able to do is schedule installation engineers from the back of the Insightly entry of the order, and that allows us to keep all of the documentation continuous through the project. It allows us to know who is where any one time as it all brings it into one central resource. I can go into that management tool and look at what installation engineers we have on site at any one day, what jobs are going out for what customers in the next day, the next two days, the next week, what the value of these projects are, how much load we put into our manufacturing, all of that instant insight is now at my fingertips, which as a business owner is crucial. Rich That sounds really great. I’m so happy to hear it. Megan, From your perspective as a user, what would you say are the biggest benefits of Insightly? So for me, being a marketing manager, it’s been really great to just have a visibility on the, you know, the entire workflow of a job from the minute it comes through the sales pipeline to the minute that that job is completed. I as a marketing manager, have a visibility on that to, you know, for example, if I wanted to track a job to do a case study or if I wanted to track what stuff’s coming in from new business or from existing customers, again, order value, of that stuff is just accessible straightaway. You’ve got access to all that live data. It’s part of my job to build the reports and the dashboards that the business use, and they’re just fantastic. Just before, we didn’t have any kind of system for that other than sort of pulling from a spreadsheet which took our sales and accounting teams probably a day of work a month to put together. And now we can come in to the sales meetings, click a button and have this really in-depth dashboard with all the key metrics that we need to see as a business. And our target this year is to grow as a business. So it’s just been such a massive help with that. That’s great. Megan, What else is your team seen in terms of time savings and efficiency? So there’s definitely been some really significant savings across a few different departments. So our accounting team as well has seen a huge benefit. Again, all manual Excel spreadsheets, but I’ve been able to create them several reports that quickly tells them what needs invoicing. And again, it’s just so much easier for them to track, keep track of jobs and it’s saving them about a day a month as well, and pulling all that data together. There’s also a weekly intake. So when I started, a member of our audit processing team would again pull all the data manually and do a weekly summary of what orders had come in that week, break it down by products. And so with Insightly, now all that data is set up, instant reports. And now all I have to do is pop the link into an email every Friday and send it out to everyone in the business and it’s there ready to go. Rich,. I know that you’re also using AppConnect to help your teams with time savings on integrations and connecting Insightly to the other apps that you use to run your business. Tell the audience a little bit about what you’re doing there. Sure. The very start of our process, we’re getting our customers to fill in contact forms. The benefit to us is it brings the information direct from the customer into Insightly without our sales team having to do anything so that has been a huge saving of inputting of data. What we’re doing is effectively pushing that data input into our customer’s hands. Also, we’re making sure that the integrity of that data is correct because the customer’s putting their own data in. Also back end of the business. When we book an engineer appointments AppConnect is then pushing that out to people’s online diaries and those appointments are going in straight away. Those two things have saved us a huge amount of data entry and improved our accuracy in data entry as well. This is all the great. Is there anything else that you’d like to add about how Insightly has helped you run your business more effectively and deliver better customer experiences? Yeah, I think there’s a few things that have been unforeseen benefits. The integration of automation into the business has allowed us to bring all of our customer data together. It’s allowed us to fulfill quotes more efficiently, more effectively, get the marketing to individual customer segmentation areas correct, our response times are down. So we’re getting back to customers quicker. Benefit has gone all the way across the business really. Megan, Is there anything that you’d add to that from your perspective? No. I mean, yeah, No, that’s exactly it. It’s, ultimately improving and will continue to improve the customer experience, the automation in particular. You know, we’ve started to implement things like contact forms that if the customer fills it out, it’ll go straight into our system. Whereas before it was all sort of manually tracked through email. So it’s really going to just streamline that quotation process and we’ll be able to deliver quicker lead time to our customers, which is great. All right. Megan and Rich, that’s all the time that we have for this episode. Thanks so much for these insights and for joining the show. Rich, If our audience wants to learn more about Moduflex how can they reach you? Sure, they can go to our website. www.moduflex.co.uk, fill in one of the forms and it goes straight into our Insightly CRM. Such a great conversation. Thank you so much for having us on. Thank you very much. And thanks to all of you for tuning in. Remember to like this video. Subscribe to the channel and ring the bell for notifications so you don’t miss an episode. We’ll see you next time on Closing Time.