The market is filled with CRM vendors competing for greater market share. Despite the CRM market being crowded, the majority of solution providers have failed to meet the needs of mid-market organizations that typically have smaller IT budgets and limited in-house IT teams – but still require depth and breadth in functionality. Frustrated by the lack of good business applications for the mid-market, John Cheney, a serial entrepreneur, put a team together and created a business plan for Workbooks.
John Cheney (Co-Founder and CEO of Workbooks-UK) had experienced these issues first hand which made him realize that there was a market gap for a platform like Workbooks—a single SaaS platform that companies can utilize to run their business. Its services distinguish from others as they are cost-effective at 50-70% less than alternatives like Salesforce or Microsoft. Above and beyond typical CRM functionalities, Workbooks services include marketing automation, event management, order management and fulfillment, invoicing, and supplier management. Having extensive experience of tailoring the services to specific sectors, Workbooks has become one of the leading CRM solution providers for the mid-market in the UK.
Expansion and New Opportunities
Following successes in the UK, in 2018, the management team saw an opportunity to enter the US market. Based in East Hartford, Connecticut, the US operation is led by Dan Collins, an early Angel Investor of Workbooks. Dan is an ex-pat Brit who has lived in the US for over 20 years. Dan is supported by SVP – North America, Penny Lowe. Penny ensures the US team builds on the implementation best practices she helped develop whilst turning Workbooks into one of the UK’s foremost CRM providers.
Workbooks focus is the Manufacturing and IT sectors, as well as Professional Business Services, where they have extensive experience in tailoring its service.
The Unique Bouquet of Services
Workbooks unites the entire organization around data and processes, promoting teamwork and collaboration. It provides a single 360-degree view of customers, and the information is accessible at all touchpoints.
Products:
- Marketing Automation: Helps marketing teams segment and target, capture and managing leads, run campaigns and events, and track ROI. In addition to CRM, Workbooks offers integrated Marketing Automation capabilities: an advanced email marketing tool to easily and efficiently target your audience, a web analytics tool to identify anonymous website visitors, survey, and pop-up tools to increase engagement.
- Sales force Automation: Helps sales work more effectively, better identify and track opportunities, manage pipeline, forecast accurately, monitor performance, close more deals, and grow revenue.
- Order Management Processing: Enables businesses to better manage suppliers, quickly generate quotations, invoicing, credit notes, and track financial performance.
- Customer Services: Drive a positive experience, including support ticketing and case management, self-service, service metrics.
Services offered around the platform:
- Implementation:
Jumpstart:- An ‘out-of-the-box’ solution, Jumpstart is a quick way to get value from using CRM leveraging pre-existing templates and workflows.
Shared Success:
- Workbooks will discuss business outcomes, CRM requirements and help you draft your CRM project roadmap and budget. Once there is a a shared vision of success, they’ll match your investment in Workbooks licenses with free consulting days.
- Ongoing services:
- The Customer Success team focuses on time to value and drives proactive engagement with customers throughout their lifecycle.
- Seasoned consultants guide customers through the process of setup and implementation, and integrations with other business applications to ensure you realize the full potential of your investment in CRM.
- The Support team’s mission is to solve customers’ problems, from reporting issues to technical advice, they are your first point of call.
- Training (online videos, on-site and classroom classes etc.).
Team Driven by Core values
Workbooks has been successful in helping people become more successful, efficient, and effective, together as individuals and as organizations.
John and his team are driven by the core values, Customer First, Co-operative, Committed, Creative and Competitive, and their behavior or decisions revolve around these core values. Workbooks leadership team strives to embrace these values in life and inspire others. He adds, “It is vital to surround yourself with people that have experience of managing and building strong operations and stakeholder relationships.” John and Dan have undertaken the responsibility of operations in the UK and the US, respectively, and are leading with an effective leadership approach.
Effective Leadership Approach
Leadership plays an important role in the success of any enterprise. Being a serial entrepreneur and an influencing leader, Dan has a unique leadership approach. As a veteran tech enthusiast, he has been able to grow several businesses both nationally and internationally. He believes that an effective leadership approach is the blend of experience and determination.
Workbooks has a very strong product vision and development capability. Working closely with customers to understand their pain points and requirements, if not they provide the additional functionality customers need. The potential for Workbooks in the US is all too obvious for Dan: “I believe we can provide more value by providing Marketing Automation, Orders & Invoices and CPQ (Configure, Price, Quote) capabilities in a tightly integrated package.”
Looking Forward To Future Advancements
For years, Workbooks has been focused on delivering the best CRM services to mid-market organizations at an affordable price. Its ability to offer the same functionalities as some of the large enterprises’ platforms is allowing smaller, growing businesses to organize their business operations more effectively and be more successful. Looking at the advancements of technology, John predicts that the future is providing companies with the platform to drive increased revenue, improve customer experience, reducing their operational costs, and improved business decision making through better visibility of key metrics.
