Steel Service Center Uses ACT! by&

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Steel Service Center Uses ACT! by Sage to Distance Itself

From Competitors

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Move Relationships Forward

“I love the product that I sell. And I love the face-to-face interaction that I get to have with my customers,” Coogan says. “ACT! helps me keep things professional, by having the details that my customers require at my finger tips, and personal, with the ability to record the contact-specific details that make all the difference in the relationship. ACT! is a great tool for moving your relationship with the customer forward towards positive growth.”

ACT! is more than a contact database for PDM. It’s a relationship tool that sets them apart from local competitors. Coogan concludes, “When my computer is down and I don’t have ACT!, I feel like I’ve lost my security blanket. Its reliability makes my job a whole lot easier.”

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PDM used their ACC to add the birthday field previously mentioned, but they also added financial fields that record credit limits and pricing terms of their customers. One of the most important fields for PDM is the “Physical Test Required” Field. Coogan explains that as steel is sold to customers, it goes through metallurgical testing. This evaluates the metal to make sure it adheres to industry regulations, as well as an examination of its rheology and purity. All of the details of this test—including metal age and origin—get recorded in the “Physical Test Required” field. From time to time a customer may experience a failure in their materials; something that’s just part of the process. If this happens, it is imperative to have those results readily available for a customer when they call. Coogan notes that tracking down that documentation in the past was a tedious endeavor.

“Any file that is more than a year old gets archived,” says Coogan. “And while we archive here at the office, it would often take anywhere from one-half to one full day to locate, copy, and send out the test results. With this added field in ACT!, I can speak with a customer and email them the report with a few clicks of the mouse.”

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Customize to Fit Your Needs

The user interface of ACT! is easy to learn and use. Plus, it’s easily customizable, so details specific to your industry won’t get lost in a vanilla system that doesn’t account for your business’ individual needs. PDM hired a local ACT! Certified Consultant (ACC) to implement and customize their solution. “We love our consultant,” said General Manager Vern Engbar. “He is eager to learn our business and understand our objectives. He’s helped customize ACT! to work the way we do. Whenever we need him, he’s readily available to meet over the phone or come down to our office to make sure we’re taken care of.”

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With ACT! the sales staff can now record notes into the individual electronic record of each customer.

The outside sales team can make notes as a customer dictates their need, and the entire PDM team can

pull up that record at will. This provides PDM with one central location for all customer details. Plus, it

allows the company to go the extra mile by recording personal details of contacts.

“One thing that helps set us apart from our competitors is we record our customer’s birth date. We use

the alarm feature to remind us when the day is approaching. Then we send a birthday card and cake

to the customer’s location,” says Coogan. “It’s just a little something, but it’s an extra that shows our

customer that we value their relationship with us.”

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Communicate Powerfully

Colleen Coogan, an outside sales rep at PDM, reflects on life before ACT!, “The outside sales rep is the

life line to the customer for the company and the inside staff,” she said. “The problem before is that I’d

record hand-written notes, but they wouldn’t get read. We’d pass the notes from desk-to-desk for all

to see, but inevitably they’d be stuck in one location. If a customer called with a question pertaining to

something that was in those notes and the person who picked up the phone hadn’t read the note, we’d

be lost. It was totally ineffective.”

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PDM Steel Service Centers distribute and modify carbon steel. For more than 55 years they’ve been

known for fast and reliable service. With sophisticated operations in multiple locations in the western

U.S., they have the ability to cater to the specialized needs of their customers—fabricators, welders, and

home building suppliers to name a few—accurately and efficiently. In the past, staying connected to these

customers and their needs meant a plethora of hand-written notes and seemingly endless paper files.

However, in today’s technology-driven business environment it was next to impossible to keep up in

a manner that reflected the reputation the company has worked so hard to build and maintain. So today,

PDM sales representatives rely on the robust functionality of ACT! to help grow customer connectivity

and internal knowledge of customer needs.