"Illinois-based Sage Products, a 28-year-old leading global developer and manufacturer of medical devices to healthcare providers, is facing a fast-changing market. Sage decided to implement a customer relationship management solution to assist in tracking all aspects of its interactions with customers. Pivotal CRM’s solution has unified the sales force and allowed everyone in the business unit to have a consistent view of the customer base. Up-to-date information has allowed the management staff to have real-time data on all active sales opportunities, effectively flattening the communications hierarchy in the department."

1. CDC Software | The Customer-Driven Company™
CRM Case Study | 1
Sage Products
Bottom Line: Know Your Customer
Customer Details
Sage Products
• Leading global developer and manufacturer of medical devices for healthcare providers.
www.sageproducts.com
Industry
• Medical Devices
Challenges
• Company experienced tremendous growth and keeping track of contacts was a challenge
• Solution needed to provide the same consistent view of customer base for all employees
Benefits
• Sales reps can manage a greater number of accounts more efficiently
• Improved communication throughout the company
• Customer information is consistant and available at all times
Solution
CDC Pivotal CRM

2. CRM Case Study | 2CDC Software | The Customer-Driven Company™
Illinois-based Sage Products, a 28-year-old leading
global developer and manufacturer of medical devices
to healthcare providers, is facing a fast-changing
market. The global healthcare industry is evolving
and diversifying dramatically, compelling Sage to
change with it.
Part of that change has included a tremendous
growth in the number of healthcare outlets across
the nation. From clinics to hospitals to community
care facilities, Sage needs to support them all with its
medical devices. The
changing industry
has resulted in a
huge growth in
Sage’s customer
base, so that they
are now servicing
more than 150,000
customers in the
healthcare arena.
Keeping track of
contact with all of
those customers
in a consistent
fashion has proven
a challenge for
the company. As
a result, Sage decided to implement a customer
relationship management solution to assist in tracking
all aspects of its interactions with customers.
Pivotal CRM’s solution has unified the sales force
and allowed everyone in the business unit to have
a consistent view of the customer base. Up-to-date
information has allowed the management staff to
have real-time data on all active sales opportunities,
effectively flattening the communications hierarchy in
the department.
According to Bill Kale, Director of IS at Sage,
choosing Pivotal CRM to meet its needs has
dramatically improved company-wide communication
about customers. It has allowed sales staff to handle
a greater number of customers and has increased
the amount of time that sales staff can spend talking
to each customer. “Before Pivotal CRM’s solution,
we were like an eight-cylinder car that was operating
on only two cylinders,” he says. “When we jumped
into Pivotal CRM’s solution, there was an immediate
impact and we became more effective.”
A major challenge
Kale says that given the many major changes that
have taken place in the healthcare industry over the
past decade, it was important to develop a solution
that could keep pace with the sheer growth in the
number of customers Sage has been gaining.
“The sales reps used to handle 100 key accounts,
which they could keep in their heads—now they
are handling a lot more smaller accounts,” explains
Bill Howes, Director of Supply Chain Management.
“With Pivotal CRM, we are able to keep pace with
the changes in the industry. Our customer database
in the last five years has probably tripled. Of the
business that came from those 5,000 hospitals a few
years ago, much more is moving to the other 150,000
accounts we have. And we needed to keep track of all
information and demographics on all those customers.
Now we use Pivotal CRM to help us manage all
this and each sales person can take care of several
thousand accounts.”
Kale observes that the first task for Sage was to build
a coherent and consistent database of customer
information, which had to be pulled together from a
variety of existing databases within the company, to
include strategic partners as well as new sales leads.
Pivotal CRM’s system allowed Sage to combine this
information into one central database. “We had a lot
of accounts and account information from our own
databases that we imported into Pivotal CRM and
now we have a fully integrated system with all this
information in one place for the first time.”
Goals and returns on investment
Howes explains that the goal of their implementation
is to enable a diverse sales force (which consists of
close to 100 people in the field and 50 people inside
company headquarters) to effectively communicate,
With Pivotal CRM,
we are able to
keep pace with
the changes in
the industry.
Our customer
database in the last
five years has
probably tripled.
Bill Howes, Director of Supply
Chain Management, Sage Products

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CRM Case Study | 3CDC Software | The Customer-Driven Company™
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share info and present a cohesive face to the
company’s 150,000 customers. Sage’s sales force
needs access to the same data and must know
exactly what is going on with each of their customers.
Although Kale suggests there are still many more
benefits that his company expects to realize from
implementing Pivotal CRM, he says that Sage has
already enjoyed considerable improvements to
customer service and customer retention. He adds
that there have been unexpected benefits, such as
the ability to keep product literature in the system
in Adobe Acrobat format and automate how that
literature is distributed to customers.
Another unexpected benefit was the ability to get
salespeople up and running with Pivotal CRM’s
solution very quickly. “It has been a very simple
system to pick up and from my experience on other
packages, this is a very simple package for a rep to
navigate through once they know how to use it,” says
Kale. “The retention of learning is better because most
packages are linear whereas Pivotal CRM allows you
to jump laterally around the package.”
A huge benefit has been the ability to cut down on the
amount of pre-call research that sales people need
to make before they call a customer. Kale says that
sales staff can now quickly get a detailed history of
each customer’s interactions with Sage Products from
their Pivotal CRM system and either fit more sales
calls into a day or spend more time with its customers
on those calls.
In short, the solution has allowed Sage Products
to develop a team of more informed sales reps
and employees who have current and consistent
information at all times.
Return on investment
• Increased sales effectiveness by consolidating
lead and customer information
• Improved customer communication throughout
the organization
• Enhanced forecasting
• Reduced redundancy in workflow, allowing their
sales force to handle more accounts and manage
key accounts better