Fastened to the Future

For most consumers, the fastener aisle at the local hardware store—with its hundreds of screws, nuts, bolts and washers— is daunting enough. For Uneeda Bolt & Screw Company, that miniscule inventory hardly represents a sample.

Family-owned Uneeda Bolt & Screw was founded in 1954 in a New York City sub-basement. In its current 40,000-square-foot warehouse just across the Hudson River in New Jersey, the company is a one-stop supplier for more than 4,000 commercialcustomers. The company sells more than 80,000 specific items, adds 30-50 new items every day and carries an inventory of more than six billion quality fasteners.

In addition to being an authorized distributor of premium brands like Apex, ACT, POP, Marson, Recoil, Brass Craft, Heyco and DTI, the company has built its reputation on the ability to produce custom products in virtually any quantity using any material. Its computerized system can match all painting and powder coatings, and its electronic bagging and boxing equipment can create a wide variety of customized packaging, including instruction sheets, custom labels and bar codes.

“It’s a very complex business,” said Ron Tantillo, the company’s Director of Sales. “It’s not just ‘Here’s a screw.’ There may be two different screws and the only difference between them is the spacing in the threads. That’s a huge difference.”

Falling Through the Cracks

Managing a business this complex takes an extraordinary amount of attention to details. When Tantillo joined the company, he realized the CRM software the company was using was not up to the task.

“We were using a product called Q&A, which is a Symantec product,”Tantillo said. “It was DOS-based, and we couldn’t find or search anything. We weren’t able to follow up, and too many things were slipping through the cracks.”

Tantillo knew the company needed a powerful CRM tool to better service its customers and stay on top of the business. At first, he was open to any solution, but quickly narrowed the search. “I wanted a Web-based solution because our salespeople are out on the road all day,” Tantillo said. “I figured it would be easier to access from there. And we’re still on a UNIX-based server, so I knew that implementing an enterprise CRM in here would have been a nightmare.”

Comprehensive, Easy to Use

Entellium eSalesForce met the company’s need for a comprehensive, Web-based solution that was easy to use even for the least technically savvy on the staff. Once eSalesForce was implemented and configured, which took a minimal amount of customization, data from the legacy DOS-based system was imported into eSalesForce, so none of the information they had gathered over the years was lost.

Finally, the company’s sales team was trained on the new solution. “Each of the staff took two Webinar training classes, which were pretty good,” Tantillo said. Now the sales team is required to input all their activities and conversations with customers into eSalesForce, giving Tantillo much better visibility.

“A big advantage of a sales management tool is being able to know what’s going on, what’s in the pipeline,” Tantillo said. “The main reason why I like this is that it makes my salespeople accountable and their time management is much better. Another advantage is quotes aren’t falling through the cracks anymore. ‘Oh, I forgot to follow up.’ That’s gone.”

Managing Complexity

Uneeda Bolt & Screw’s business is all about managing the details. Entellium gives the company a central repository for customer information that anyone can access, simplifying ordering and improving customer service.

“The problem is we have 80,000 SKU’s (Stock Keeping Units) and each part might have one little thing that’s different than the other,” Tantillo said. “You could take one size screw and have seven different types of that screw. If you look at our fastener catalog, you’ll see we have washers, flat washers, split washers, lock washers, hex heads, high-tech heads, low techheads . . . it’s just mind boggling.”

“With Entellium, the entire organization knows our customers and knows what that customer is about. They have all the notes about that customer. Now when we do quotes, the billing department goes right into Entellium, takes a look at the notes, finds out what’s up, and sees what the account might be worth so they can quote accordingly. Before it was just a piece of paper that was faxed over.”

Entellium also serves as a two-way communication channel. If a customer calls in, they use eSalesForce to communicate back to the salesperson what happened during the conversation so that they’re always in sync with their customers.

Accountability, Follow-up, Knowledge

In a matter of a few months, Uneeda Bolt & Screw has transformed its sales processes from an antiquated system with no ability to share information to a streamlined operation where customer information is easily shared and there’s greater visibility of sales activity. “Entellium makes the entire sales process accountable,” Tantillo said.

“Before Entellium, there wasn’t any accountability, now everyone in the process is accountable. Sales follow-up has improved and the entire organization now has access to customer information so they know their complete history.

“Entellium helps us manage the complexity of our business.”