Klabin adopts SKIM and improves efficiency of Sales Force

Business intelligence tools allows collecting and articulation information, selected all over the country, in real time, to improve sales force efficiency and take full advantage of business opportunities.

The business unit of packaging manufacturing at Klabin, local leader in paper and cardboard packaging, is already using SKIM (Klabin System of Market Intelligence) at its fullest extent, a tool created by Klabin and technically developed by InfoSERVER, to control market information and generate internal knowledge for the company. “SKIM has taken market vision into the company. Previously, important strategic information was scattered in Excel spreadsheets, Word documents and e-mail messages. Adopting the tool allowed the consolidation in a customized way, in order to build a unique platform of knowledge for the sales force. Today, the information about clients are recorded in a single system where everyone can access”, says Robson Alberoni, responsible for Market Intelligence in Klabin’s Business Unit.

The solution comprises the entire process of market intelligence and analysis, competitive analysis, positioning the industry about its demand, competition and service rendering. “Klabin operates in a point of the value chain where it is necessary to supply and anticipate needs and specific opportunities in each client. In addition to an extensive data base, selected in real time by the sales force, SKIM applies business rules programmed by the users, who define the most efficient answers to events, according to the strategy to every client’s profile”, explains Leandro Lopes, Pre-Sale Manager at InfoSERVER. “The knowledge shared delivers earnings in the answer time and improves the synergy at work among the employees. If the company has to serve a stove manufacturer in the South, it can use similar solutions to the ones adopted for a client in the same segment in the Northeast”, he illustrates.

Unlike most of BI (Business Intelligence) projects based on information already consolidated in the operation supporting systems, SKIM, appraised and created by Klabin according to its business needs, developed by InfoSERVER Software Factory by means of Klabin’s IT team, makes use of information gathered in real time, by around 100 users who interact with the system via web. This way, Klabin takes advantage of the capillarity of its sales force as a strategic intelligence tool. The project set Klabin’s Packaging unit in a leading position with regard to the use of Competitive Intelligence systems. “We realized that, in many CRM and BI cases, there is no full integration to the business objectives. We used the system to have a view of the market in real time. Other industries can view the past (with BI tools), and we can anticipate the future”, defines Alberoni. “SKIM’s range is much wider than the classical BI tools, both in terms of information wealth and the universe of users benefited directly with the system availability”, adds Leonardo Henrique Lopes, Project Manager at InfoSERVER.

Klabin’s Packaging unit operates all over the country and counts on 9 plants, 11 sales offices and a distribution center in Vale do São Francisco. The company supplies packaging to industries all over Brazil and export clients in the segment of fruits, food, textile, drinks and tobacco. Each sale implies a customized cardboard production for every product. Some clients operate nationwide and are served by several sales representatives and manufacturing units of Klabin. “The strategy in our company needs to be perfectly in tune with the market. With an integrated knowledge base, we were able to understand the trends, associate the growth, or the withdrawing to certain events, and to direct actions in the company”, asserts Alberoni.

The commercial team has been trained to refine information implying on new opportunities, changes in the demand expectation, or change in the association of strengths among the competitors in a specific market segment. The system also allows the “information signature”. That is, each user received by e-mail, the most subsidies possible to perform his activities and decision making. Besides serving for the consolidation and standardization of information, SKIM encloses business rules allowing sizing the opportunities of new sales for a client, previewing the impact of competitors’ actions, and quickly adjusting the strategies according to market behavior.

SKIM solution uses Microsoft platform CRM 1.2 as the base to apply Market Intelligence, where all the functionalities of the CRM concept are combined with a systemic structure of information of competitive markets and products/services. “Klabin’s IT area, within its knowledge of Microsoft’s CRM tool, recommended checking the product as a development platform”, remarks Paulo Alvino, from Klabin. “We realized that the combination would be perfect, since it already included most part of SKIM functions, such as client list control. But our approach of using CRM software as a Market Intelligence application was pioneer”, tells Leonardo Henrique Lopes. “The Market Intelligence differentials have been specifically developed for our needs”, explains Alberoni.

Leandro Lopes reminds that the project was initiated less than two months after the launch of Microsoft CRM 1.2 in the foreign market. Even so, all the demands in the project have been accomplished, with no delay in the expected terms. Klabin now intends to start using the product in its native, relationship management functions as well. In addition, it’s being analyzed the SKIM extension to other units in the company.

Paulo Alvino says that InfoSERVER was already Klabin’s partner in other projects, and based on the knowledge of the methodology of the company and personnel, the industry decided to increase the partnership.

InfoSERVER also took care of SKIM integration with SAP R/3 and another legate system to support the commercial area. InfoSERVER’s application extracts information from these corporate systems and uses it in activities of analysis and strategic planning.