B2B CRM for an IT Solutions Distributor: How ITPOD Automated Its Partner Sales

ITPOD, an international distributor of IT equipment that also manufactures its own line of servers and data storage systems, has successfully automated its sales and marketing processes with SimpleOne B2B CRM. The project has impacted over 20 of the company's employees and more than 100 partners across 4 countries.

About ITPOD

ITPOD is a distributor of IT solutions. They supply their own custom products for building IT infrastructure as well as solutions they've created in partnership with other tech companies.

Today, ITPOD works with over 150 partners and is managing 1,500 deals with large B2B clients. They also run their own technical lab to test the performance and compatibility of different hardware and software products. In their line of work, the sales cycle for an IT solution can take anywhere from 3 to 12 months, which means careful planning and control are essential.

The equipment ITPOD offers is tried and true, having been put to the test in industrial data centers all over the world, including Tier III facilities. Beyond just supplying IT solutions, ITPOD's specialists also handle technical maintenance for both new equipment and equipment that is no longer supported by its original vendor.

Why They Needed a New CRM

The old system the company was using just wasn't keeping up with all of ITPOD's needs for sales automation:

• It was missing key features, which meant they needed to make time-consuming customizations.
• These customizations, in turn, caused the system to slow down and become less stable.
• Their sales processes weren't well-structured.
• They had no way to analyze how well their partners were performing.
• The connection between their sales and marketing efforts was weak.

To build more effective sales processes, the team at ITPOD decided it was time to find a new system.

Choosing the Right Solution

They needed a solution that could handle all of their main challenges, from managing partner sales and analyzing deal data to overseeing their marketing. ITPOD had a clear set of requirements for their new system:

• It had to be designed specifically for consultative, B2B sales;
• It needed to have Low-code/No-code tools so they could quickly make changes and customize the system to their needs;
• It had to be high-performing and reliable;
• It needed to provide strong integration between their sales and corporate marketing teams;
• It required powerful analytics and data visualization tools;
• It needed to include tools for managing certifications for their specialists, partners, and clients.

The company looked at the major players in the B2B CRM market and, in the end, chose SimpleOne B2B CRM. This solution offered comprehensive support for all their business processes related to managing deals and marketing. It not only helped the company grow its partner sales but also made its marketing activities significantly more effective.

SimpleOne B2B CRM

The B2B CRM product is built on the flexible SimpleOne low-code platform. This makes it easy to quickly customize the system to fit a client's unique processes. The system's features are designed specifically for the B2B segment, giving sales managers the tools they need to work within the CRM according to proven complex sales methodologies.

SimpleOne B2B CRM allowed ITPOD to automate their most critical business processes:

Sales Through Partners:

• Managing their partner funnels and programs;
• Registering and supporting deals that come through their partners.

Analytics:

• Quickly generating reports and interactive dashboards.

Marketing:

• Analyzing their content and seeing its impact on deals;
• Automating feedback loops to help them adjust their marketing strategies on the fly.

Content Creation and Use:

• Automatically getting the relevant content to their sales managers in the context of a specific deal;
• Analyzing how effective their content is and gathering feedback.

The ease of customization was a huge plus. According to the Commercial Director at ITPOD, "For a CRM to be really useful, it has to be easy to customize. Our needs are always changing, so sometimes we have to add a new field to a card and have it seamlessly sync with everything else. With SimpleOne CRM, we can set up new fields in just a couple of days. We don't have to spend a long time rewriting code or bringing in developers; we can do it all ourselves."

The CRM Implementation (Project Progress)

ITPOD started using SimpleOne B2B CRM in May 2023. The implementation was completed in just 2 weeks and included a full data migration from their previous system, which involved over 3,200 records of clients and deals. They were able to move so quickly because the out-of-the-box version of the CRM already had most of the features they needed.

The Result: An 80% Jump in Partner Sales Volume

A year after they started using the system, ITPOD is seeing a very positive impact from working in SimpleOne B2B CRM:

What's Next?

ITPOD is looking forward to the release of a new, even more powerful product for vendors from SimpleOne — the VCSM (Vendor Customer Service Management) solution. This will allow them to completely automate their partner sales. This system will bring together not just their marketing and sales processes, but also the support processes for their end clients.

With VCSM, the vendor will have complete information about their products and where they're installed, and partners will have access to information about their customers. The solution will help them automate their interactions with partners even further and get more data about the end users of the products.