SUCCESS STORIES / CASE STUDIES
Following are summaries of some of our achievements. For detailed case studies, please email jeanette@e4marketingco.com.
Rebranding for ROI
The Client
A Private Equity company asked e4m Growth Partners to rebrand three acquisitions into one company with diverse offerings.
The Challenge
A PE company acquired three manufacturing automation companies that were struggling to grow. They asked e4m to rebrand the three into one brand that represented all of their offerings from machine shops to robotics for highly automated processes for manufacturing, packaging and more. Beyond branding the team was tasked with developing a new sales process for adding value to existing clients and acquiring new companies in order to quickly grow revenue and market dominances for the new brand.
The Opportunity
Many manufacturing companies have names that are meaningless to customers and do not define what they offer with acronyms or founders last names as prominent choices. e4m wanted to come up with a name that immediately told customers what they deliver, setting them apart from the fray. To do this required understanding the emotional and influences behind partnership choices. The team deep dived into the decision processes and criteria for manufacturing partnerships by talking to clients, prospects and influencers' in the space to find out what really mattered most for this big decision that needed to serve companies well for years.
As a result, they built a brand that stood out as an intelligent partners for helping clients reach complex goals around optimizing manufacturing efficiencies. Marketing programs were set up to generate new leads across target industries and increase value for existing clients. Sales strategies and programs were executed that successfully moved qualified leads through a funnel and generated record levels of opportunity and revenue in just months.
The Outcome
The newly formed business achieved a highly productive and profitable sales funnel which produced high levels of revenue, allowing the company to expand into new markets and facilities. Sales leadership nurtured and closed contracts with global manufacturers and secured additional revenue from existing clients.
ERP Consolidation Decreases Operating Cost 55%
The Client
A Private Equity firm collapsed 13 global companies into 5 business units, each operating with separate enterprise applications.
The Challenge
During the acquisition process, there was no focus on enterprise application consolidation. Due to this, Finance was left to reconcile 5 ERPs and various spreadsheets on a monthly basis to close the books and generate financial statements.
This manual reconciliation process meant that Leadership waited up to two weeks after month-end to see the health of the business and up to a month at quarter and year end.
Without real-time, consolidated reporting, Leadership was unable to…
· Take quick, decisive action during changing market events
· Respond to questions raised by the Board and the Private Equity firm owners on the health of the business
· Determine strategic steps for growth and cost efficiencies
The Opportunity
With five separately operating ERP systems, the client decided to consolidate into a single system. After a thorough vendor selection process, the team decided to implement NetSuite. The project started. And restarted. After 2 years and $1.9M, no significant business deliverables were realized and the 5 ERP systems were still in use.
Leadership decided that a new approach was needed to move the project forward. So, the decision was made to break the NetSuite implementation into two phases: North America and APAC/EMEA. The goal of creating phases lasting no more than 4 months was to increase the chances of success, improve adoption and ensure focus for the project team. With this new plan, business requirements for each phase were clearly documented and approved by Finance – the primary stakeholder –, and the project started for a 3rd time.
The Outcome
The team completed a 4-month phase 1 APAC/EMEA deployment, followed by a 4-month phase 2 North America deployment at a cost of $548,000 (71% less than the previous attempts combined). With the successful completion of the program, the client was able to eliminate 4 ERP contracts (one business unit was using NetSuite prior to the program) and operate their global financials for $405,000 – a 55% cost reduction.
In addition to operating cost reductions, the client realized the following immediate improvements:
· Automated foreign currency reporting translation and transactional revaluation
· Immediate global consolidated reporting, including custom options
· Visibility into transactional level for all business units
· Automated revenue recognition
· Consolidated global chart of accounts
Application Integration and Automation Improves DSO 38%
The Client
Client was a portfolio of globally respected learning, development, and performance improvement brands – cultural transformation and communication, sales transformation, democratized leadership development, project implementation and credit risk management. Brands that collectively generated hundreds of millions in revenue, serving thousands of organizations, including several Fortune 500 companies. Brands also included several New York Times best-selling books and award-winning training and development products used by millions of people in over sixty countries.
The Challenge
DSO (or the Days Sales Outstanding metric) is the measure of the average number of days that it takes a company to collect payment for a sale – or – how long it takes a customer to pay. The client’s DSO calculation was the ratio of accounts receivable over revenue times the number of days in the period.
Client had a DSO of 73 days due to inaccurate invoicing. Working with their finance team, it was determined that over 40% of first-time invoices were returned or contested due to these inaccuracies.
Client team members were manually translating the simplified CRM product catalog to coincide with the complex ERP product list, then manually moving this data to the ERP for invoice creation. These transfers of data were inconsistent among team members and the primary root cause of their extended DSO. The CRM and ERP systems were both capable of managing these processes, however, they were not installed or managed properly to assist with the business’s needs.
This problem remained for years, and client had no strategy to address it. Although a business process appeared to be followed, team turnover and lack of routine training created unmonitored issues. In fact, until the client’s customer alerted client of these errors, the client was unaware. Automated revenue stream monitoring did not exist.
There are many ways to reduce or improve DSO. This paper and example will focus on technology enhancements and automation from a recent client to achieve efficient cash collection.
The Opportunity
CRM to ERP Application Integration
The CRM and ERP systems of the client held separate silos of data and movement between each was manual. Cloud integration brought these systems together and two-way data flows were mapped to meet business objectives. Sales order data within the CRM moved to the ERP for invoicing without any human intervention and updates to an invoice were reflected in the CRM. As example, when an invoice was sent or fulfilled, the CRM order record was automatically updated with the change in status. The measurable impact to DSO replacing manual data movements with application integration was a 21% improvement. With a $10.2M account receivable balance and a 15-day improvement in cash collection, our client collected an additional $500,000 in available cash for the period.
Order-to-Cash Business Process Automation
Further steps were involved to remove other manual processes for complete automation. Business processes were documented and used to create these data flows between CRM and ERP. Final automations included sales leads to orders to final revenue recognition and invoicing. Another 23% DSO improvement was realized because of these automations with an additional $2M in cash flow for the period. Complete revenue stream monitoring was deployed with real-time error handling and reporting. The client was able to maintain the 45-day DSO through the remaining year monitoring and measuring the KPIs for the project.
The Outcome
In five months, our client realized a DSO improvement of 28 days or 38% and an additional cash flow of $4.9M of $10.2M in collectible revenue for the period. Due to the business outcomes of the program, the client awarded us several opportunities to automate other business processes. Business value was increased and further prepared the client for a successful exit.
HOW WE CAN GROW YOUR BUSINESS
Winning Strategies!
We are a marketing and sales agency proven to build marketing and communications strategies around ESPs - Emotional Selling Propositions - that focus on the psychology of choice for all your customer segments. Our unique approach for and small business marketing involves identifying the emotional values you deliver beyond products and services, crafting your ESP positioning statement, and building profiles for each of your customers segments. Once we know what conscious and unconsciously moves your customers we can build campaigns and programs that elevate results across all channels.
Results include:
- 600% revenue boost for single campaign
- 200% increase in sales in A/B test
- 3000% ROI for direct mailer
- Doubled sales revenue for B2B company
Beyond providing marketing support, we've literally written the book on marketing with the latest version of Marketing Dummies, 6th Edition.
Growth-Oriented Programs
Our team has the expertise to grow all aspects of your business. This includes Go-to-Market plans for launching new products, services and new releases, and setting up e-commerce store fronts on Amazon and e-Bay, or your own page.
we can also help you craft funding campaigns to help you get what you need to keep growing. We've worked closely with Private Equity and Venture Capital firms and know what matters to investors. We can help you develop plans for funding, pitch decks that work, and
Industries in which we've worked include:
- SaaS - for fleet management, content management
- Manufacturing
- Automation
- Financial Services
- Health care and hospital systems
Custom Training and Workshops
Our workshop and training participants praise us for delivering what others don't. GIVING THEM SOMETHING NEW!
New ideas. New leads, New revenue. New Life.
We customize workshops for in-house sales and marketing teams. Please email us and let us get a conversation started about your specific needs. We also offer programs for local Chambers of Commerce and other groups to offer their customers and price them to be not just value added for members but new revenue for sponsors.
Organizations for whom we have conducted customer training programs include:
- Xerox
- Sony
- Country Financial
- Fisher Investments
- Denver Chamber of Commerce
- Direct Marketing Association (now ANA)
Email us at Jeanette@e4marketingco.com to discuss specifically what we can do for you!
Marketing for Dummies
Marketing for Dummies 6th Edition is a comprehensive resource guide that strategies, tips and step by step guidance for all areas of marketing - SEO, e-commerce, email and CRM, website building, sales enablement and Account Based Marketing, and so much more
Right now you can get our flagship product, Marketing for Dummies 20 - 30% off at
Amazon. You can also find it at Target.com, Walmart.com and local bookstores.
SME Expertise
Personal Comeback Stories
Principal Jeanette McMurtry is a frequent speaker at global events on psychology-based marketing, presenting on five continent in recent years, and is a frequent guest on Podcasts and webinars.
Check back often for upcoming presentations and appearances.
Personal Comeback Stories
Personal Comeback Stories
Our personal stories are as important, actually more so, than our business stories. If we don't believe in our ability to comeback from setbacks other impose on us, like losing a job, hostile work environments, betrayal, and those we create ourselves when we fall short to meet our goals, we can't thrive professionalize. This section is all about sharing stories of inspiration for coming back from challenging times to thriving and living again.
Share Your Story. Learn from Others.