Aquila, a large electric and natural gas distribution company, based in Kansas City, MO serves over 900,000 customers in Colorado, Iowa, Kansas, Nebraska, and Missouri.
When Aquila’s older Lotus Notes application proved incapable of providing efficient data access and retrieval for the company’s 40 users across five locations, the company hired Gartner, Inc., a leading information technology research and advisory company, to analyze potential solutions. Gartner recommended three candidates: Sage SalesLogix, Saratoga Systems’ iAvenue and IBM’s Domino. After reviewing proposals and demonstrations from all three vendors, Aquila selected Sage SalesLogix, represented by Sage SalesLogix Business Partner, Strategic Sales Systems as the clear winner. Price was not the determining factor the company reported; rather the solution’s overall functionality and the support of a competent, conscientious business partner drove the company’s decision.
“We could tell during our first meeting with Strategic Sales that we wanted to do business with them,” said Lisa Franklin, manager of economic development at Aquila. “The other companies came in and demonstrated their software, but Strategic Sales came in, listened to our users, took an interest in our project, and showed us what the future could look like.”
Strategic Sales fully implemented the software, including the required customizations in less than three months. The return has been immediate, and significant. A vital report that took three days to compile before now takes a minute or two to generate. Users across five states all access the same data, real-time, across the company’s secure Citrix server.
“To have the data in one secure database is a tremendous asset for us,” says Franklin, “Before, we all kept data in spreadsheets or other applications. With those individual data silos, collaboration and coordination was difficult, and the company ran the risk of losing data if an employee left.”
Five distinct departments now rely on Sage SalesLogix: Economic Development, Community Relations, Government Affairs, Corporate Affairs, and Consumer Accounts. Strategic Sales designed the solution to track the data specific to each of these departments, allowing each department communicate effectively, nurture its relationships, and remain accountable to the community.
“We consider Sage SalesLogix a best practices tool,” said Frankin. “It eliminates wasted efforts, saves time, increases data security, and allows us to be more customer-focused. It is well on its way to paying for itself during the first year alone.”
