MasterMine for Goldmine Case Studies

A provider of voluntary employee benefits programs for small businesses in California, this highly customized GoldMine installation takes advantage of MasterMine's flexible analysis options and easy access to many (over 40) custom fields, in a database of over 400,000 contacts. With five offices throughout California, plus others around the nation, the sales manager of this 60-plus employee firm uses MasterMine to oversee sales activity nationwide.

"Within a few days of installing MasterMine, I discovered how to gain total control over my business..."

The Client

Employers' First Choice Insurance Services of Citrus Heights, California (near Sacramento), was founded in 1986. They market voluntary employee benefits programs to small businesses with fewer than 10 employees. These programs enable employees to pay for their own disability, retirement, life insurance, and other benefits through payroll deductions, offering an affordable benefit package option for employees whose employers cannot afford to offer them company-paid benefits.

With five offices throughout California, and additional offices in Evanston, Illinois and Phoenix, Arizona, EFCIS employs 60-plus sales agents, a dozen telemarketers in its call center, and 4-5 administrative personnel.

The Challenge

Patrick Miller, general partner at EFCIS, has used GoldMine since 1996. His raw database includes over 400,000 records, with 40-some user-defined fields, and his client database includes approximately 15,000 records. "I always knew that there was a ton of useable data in my database, but I did not have an effective way to mine those resources from GoldMine CRM. Before MasterMine, I had a good idea about what was happening throughout our company, but I couldn't pinpoint it or document it," said Miller.

The Solution

"Within a few days of installing MasterMine, I discovered how to gain total control over my business by mining GoldMine CRM Data from the call center, sales department and administrative department," Miller said.

"For example, when we enroll a client, we build an organizational tree in GoldMine CRM. We record the customer's initial enrollment date, their contact person, the products they signed up for, the premiums for those products, whether they handle payroll internally or outsource it, whether their paycycle is weekly, bimonthly or monthly, when payroll deductions start, and all kinds of other data."

Increase sales effectiveness

"Lead result information from my sales force can be analyzed quickly, in meaningful ways to allow me to monitor which agents are closing the greatest percentage of appointments, and which are wasting expensive resources. We use MasterMine to look at our results office by office, and agent by agent, and to determine how efficient our sales agents are. We know the percentage of "no shows" by client, percentage of "no shows by agent, the "pitch-miss" percentage when an agent presents to a prospect but does not get the sale, what percentage of an agent's sales are sold on the first call, what percentage progressed to enrollment.

Now I know exactly which agents are most efficient, and which ones aren't showing up for meetings. Now I know if my average "no show" is 22 percent, and a particular agent's average is 30-35 percent, that agent is probably arriving at the meeting too early or too late. This information allows me to work with the agent on specific issues to help improve performance."

Increase telemarketing effectiveness, administrative ease

"With MasterMine, call center statistics are available instantly to let me monitor the quality of appointments by individual telemarketers. I can analyze by telemarketer who has the highest percentage of first time sales. If a telemarketer's "no shows" are too high, I can listen to their calls to see if they are being specific enough and firm enough about meeting arrangements, and if not, train them. Some telemarketers will book appointments only for the best sales people, which makes their results look better, when in fact, they may not be operating as efficiently as they should be. MasterMine will show me what's really going on. And, I save at least two to three hours each week verifying call center production, a huge value since call center employees are paid on production."

Increase marketing efficiency

"I also use MasterMine to segment my prospects to identify the most promising leads. We analyze our user-defined fields that tell us the SIC code, the kind of company, the numbers of employees and their average ages, the owners' average ages and other such information, to set appointments with companies whose profiles match those most likely to buy. With this kind of information we have an excellent success rate and an 80% participation rate within our enrolled customers."

Increase operating efficiency

"Before MasterMine, if an agent's meeting with a prospect was cancelled, we would ask the agent if he or she would like to reschedule that meeting themselves. They always said yes, but typically, would never reschedule the meeting. I learned this by having accurate stats on leads and analyzing them with MasterMine. Now we don't give the agents that choice. We simply rebook the appointment for them. Given that each lost appointment costs us money, this change in operational process alone saves us about $5000 a month."

"Now that I know what it's like to use MasterMine, I feel as if I had been working with one hand tied behind my back before I had it. I don't just like MasterMine it is essential to my business. If you run a sales organization and use GoldMine as a contact management tool, your toolbox is only half full. GoldMine is a fantastic tool, but you need MasterMine to unleash its full potential."

The GoldMine Solutions Partner

Joe Cottle started Database Marketing, a GoldMine consulting business five years ago after helping Employers' First Choice Insurance Services use GoldMine more effectively. Operating out of Sacramento, he serves primarily northern California clients. Database Marketing has enjoyed a 30% growth rate over each of the last couple of years, a testament to the services Cottle provides and the products he recommends to his clients. "I help successful companies become even more successful," says Cottle. "It's all about trust, which is why I like to provide great solutions like MasterMine."

This non-profit contractor to the state goverment of North Carolina provides support services to low-income,working families to assist in job search and career advancement. Work Central used MasterMine to prove definitively the value and effectiveness of its programs. Director claims MasterMine saved days of manual calculation EACH MONTH, required to provide adequate reporting to government funders.

The Client

Work Central is a Rocky Mountain, North Carolina, call center providing support services to low-income, working families that assist them with re-employment, career advancement through training and job search support, job retention help through obtaining needed support services such as daycare and transportation, and financial asset guidance such as opening bank accounts, purchasing a car or house.

The Challenge

Reliant on federal funds doled out by both the state and the counties they serve, Work Central had to find a way to report on 91 different criteria monthly, quarterly and annually, in order to continue to remain in the budget and serve their targeted population. Prior to using MasterMine, reports Work Central's Executive Director, Mary Mallory, compiling such reports involved extensive manual calculation and took days.

The Solution

Today, using MasterMine, Mary prepares her quarterly report in several hours. The information was so good, she said, that the Legislature questioned the validity of her data . . . they couldn't believe anyone could analyze the data for nearly 10,000 families so thoroughly and accurately! In a time when many budgets were cut, the Work Central budget remained intact.

Mary also raves about the flexibility of the software. Not only can she report results county by county, but when directors of counties call and ask for specific information, for example, data on housing, how many constituents own, rent, live in public housing, etc., she can create a new report in 30 minutes to deal with that request, and include it in all future reports for that specific director.

With MasterMine, Mary has been able to help her social workers be more productive. When they need to target a specific population for a specific service, Mary runs a report that pulls out all the appropriate names for that group. The worker then focuses on the social work they were trained to do rather than spending time searching for the right people to serve.

The GoldMine Solutions Partner

Harry Shaughnessy of Relevant Automation says that they enjoy helping clients help themselves. He adds that even though Mary can now create the reports she needs, she still turns to Relevant Automation for additional consulting needs and major adjustments. It's a win-win partnership.

Relevant Automation is a GoldMine reseller headquartered in Raleigh, North Carolina. In business since 1993, they became strictly GoldMine resellers in 1997. A firm of five, they focus on the central North Carolina region, but have clients as far away as Dallas and Switzerland.

A purchaser, refurbisher, and seller of medical equiment uses MasterMine to track outstanding business, bids for future inventory, and past sales performance. The speed and flexibility with which professional-looking and informative reports are generated for outside business partners, some very large companies with substantial IT departments, helps Topline Medical to beat out the competition.

The Client

Topline Medical, with offices in Fargo, North Dakota, and Long Lake, Minnesota, sells refurbished and new patient monitoring equipment, such as heart monitors and EKG machines, to hospitals, clinics and surgery centers, as well as to hundreds of brokers across the nation.

Before Topline Medical can sell the equipment to hospitals or others, it must purchase the equipment, new or used, from manufacturers. The Topline staff deal with approximately 180 sales reps for a multitude of medical equipment manufacturers. Topline places bids on hundreds of pieces of equipment to purchase or trade-in, but may not hear from the manufacturers for months or even years about whether those bids have been accepted.

"When we make an offer, we are committing to spend major dollars," said Neil Little, Topline Medical vice president. "We need to be able to keep track of our commitments in order to gauge our cash flow needs, as well as to know what's available to sell, either directly or through our brokers." Neil Little has been using GoldMine at Topline Medical for about four years.

The Challenge

"We were having a real struggle trying to keep track of it all. The GoldMine CRM Reports were very coarse, and weren't giving us what we wanted to show. Plus, there was no way to change anything there. In addition, we couldn't e-mail reports, which made it difficult to present to large players.

The solutions in front of us were not attractive. If we used Crystal Reports, which is very expensive and cumbersome, we would have had to hire someone for tens of thousands of dollars to create the reports we wanted. And then, if we needed a modified or new report, we would have had to do the same thing all over again. But clearly, we had to do something."

The Solution

"MasterMine gave us a way to easily and affordably keep track of all our bids to all of our manufacturing reps, and all of our deals with brokers, hospitals and clinics," said Neil. "Now, at any moment, we can quickly pull information out of our database. We can look at the status of our bids, purchases, and sales every week or every month, or every afternoon if we choose to."

Through MasterMine reports, Topline Medical also provides their manufacturing partners with business-critical information about estimated profits, sales rep effectiveness, and the effectiveness of the trade-in equipment program.

"For our own use, we created an "Incoming Inventory" report that shows pending and completed deals, how much we've bid on, how much we've committed to spend, how much we've spent, and the lead time. Our report also identifies what bids closed this month, and who closed them, by rep, and which purchases we have buyers for and who sold them, by salesman or broker. When a deal is closed, we know who's getting new equipment, and when it is installed, so we can plan to pick up the old equipment and get it refurbished for the next buyer."

"MasterMine is a very effective way to keep track of all that information," said Neil. "But, it's also important that we present the information in a professional manner. We are a small company, but when we're entering into large purchase agreements with major manufacturers, we need to act like a large, organized company. Our vendors' and clients' perceptions of us are critical. We need to be able to demonstrate that we have thorough follow through, and that our records match their records."

"With MasterMine, we have been able to easily create very slick proposals to present to those large companies. It's been very important to our credibility and to our overall success as a company. MasterMine has helped us keep our good standing with major manufacturers. We look better than our competition because we're more organized, more informed about the status of our business, and can help them be more informed about the status of their business with us."

Topline Medical has been using MasterMine analysis and reporting software for about two and a half years.

The GoldMine Solutions Partner

"When I told Eric Turnipseed of Automation Station in St. Paul, Minnesota, about our dilemma, he told me we needed MasterMine," recalled Neil. "As soon as I heard what it could do, I felt certain it would solve our analysis and reporting problems. I bought the software, received Basic Training, and now periodically consult with Rob Machalek, MasterMine Software president, when I have questions or need to refine or modify my analysis and reporting solutions.

"MasterMine has saved us thousands of dollars by providing us with an affordable, yet extremely flexible analysis and reporting solution," said Neil. "But, even more important, MasterMine has helped us keep track of and analyze business-critical information that gives us a competitive edge in our market."

The sales manager of this regional mortgage banker used MasterMine to produce daily variations on reports of call-center activity. Quickly determined best of his 65 sales reps and 15 telemarketers, what they were doing well, and what others were doing wrong.

The Client

Gateway Financial Services is a northwest regional mortgage banker based in Portland, Oregon. They have approximately 80 employees, with a sales force of 65, and 14-15 telemarketers. They have been using GoldMine for about four years, and MasterMine analysis and reporting software for about two years.

The Challenge

Believing that motivated adults do the best work when you stay out of their way, Gateway president Scott Everett, ran his business with a great deal of employee freedom and flexibility. And of course, he was right . . . some of the time. No matter how much freedom they had, the best producers were working hard and successfully closing deals. Those employees might come in early and leave early; or they might come in late and stay late; or they might be in and out of the office all day long.

The problem was that other employees began to emulate the best employees' hours, but not their results. Scott needed to find a way to correlate and track employee time and dollars generated so he could give his employees a measurable revenue goal while retaining his flexibility policy.

The Solution

Scott's GoldMine Solutions Partner, Larry Betz, helped him set up his GoldMine system to log out after 15 minutes of no additional activity. This would provide an estimate of how much time employees were working in the office. They then used MasterMine to tap into the Users table to track the number of hours sales reps were logged into GoldMine and the Conthist table for revenue dollars by rep.

A report was created that correlated revenue generated with the hours worked by sales rep. Interestingly, Scott found, despite appearances to the contrary, that the top three revenue producers had the top three numbers of hours worked. He printed off copies of the report and drew a bright yellow line separating acceptable productivity from unacceptable, and shared the report with his sales staff.

A straightforward manager, Scott told his employees: If you're above this line, thank you very much! If you're below this line, then get above it in the next 90 days. The result? Sales immediately kicked up a notch, and Scott got commitments from some previously less-committed sales reps. Now, every two weeks he asks them how they are doing on the goals they've set for themselves.

"MasterMine gave Scott the opportunity to make his employees and staff accountable for their actions and time worked," says Larry.

In addition to using MasterMine in many of the generic ways, Scott also uses MasterMine actively to challenge his telemarketers. During the evening hours from 4 p.m. to 8 p.m., Scott posts an hourly report showing numbers of calls made, warm call transfers and leads to sales by telemarketer. He provides table information and graphs, then holds contests during particular hours to motivate the telemarketers.

"My business has been made hugely profitable by our ability to collect valuable data in GoldMine and analyze that data with MasterMine," says Scott. "I tell my sales force, if it isn't in your GoldMine CRM Database, it didn't happen."

The GoldMine Solutions Partner

Larry Betz, is president of Gateway Solutions, based in Portland, Oregon, with a branch office in Seattle, Washington. He has been designing and implementing advanced automation systems for GoldMine CRM users for four years, and offering MasterMine for two years.

The executive assistant to the CEO of a leading computer-telephony integration provider needed to have a reliable means of forecasting income, both from customers and from prospects. "GoldMine wasn't meeting my needs for analysis and reporting," said Lisa. "I was spending all my evenings and weekends downloading information from GoldMine into spreadsheets." She couldn't use the regular GoldMine "Forecasted Sales" option because it is structured for a one-time payment at a specified future date, yet Voxeo bills its clients monthly for services received.

The Client:

Voxeo is the leading provider of integrated voice solutions that extend Web technologies to the telephone, enabling companies to have real-time access to data through the telephone. Voxeo customers use a variety of voice-enabled applications, including interactive voice response and notification systems, call center integration, supply chain management, customer relationship management, e-mail, and calendaring.

Voxeo, with offices in Orlando and San Francisco, has been using GoldMine for a little over a year.

The Challenge:

Lisa Turner, executive assistant to the CEO, needed to have a reliable means of forecasting income, both from customers and from prospects. "GoldMine wasn't meeting my needs for analysis and reporting," said Lisa. "I was spending all my evenings and weekends downloading information from GoldMine into spreadsheets." She couldn't use the regular GoldMine "Forecasted Sales" option because it is structured for a one-time payment at a specified future date, yet Voxeo bills its clients monthly for services received.

When they make a sale and gain a new customer, they record a projected one year high, medium, and low income from that client in custom GoldMine fields. They also factor in potential income from prospects that are gauged at 50 percent or better to become clients.

Voxeo's unusual sales forecasting need involved entering dollar figures in 36 custom fields for every sale. Correlating these fields across their whole client base, using any reporting option, would be a challenge. In order for Voxeo to be able to record future payments and potential future payments as potential future income, and to analyze future income against a variety of demographic and other key customer information records, they needed the flexibility of MasterMine.

They had built a very complex series of Excel worksheets that required lots of formulas and lots of manual transferring of data. Lisa estimated that she spent more than 25 hours per week dealing with just this one reporting issue. "I was working overtime for months and months until we found MasterMine," said Lisa. When she had a chance to see a demo of MasterMine, she knew that was what she needed. However, the complexity of her custom fields required customization of MasterMine in order to get the reports she needed.

The Solution:

Working together, Lisa and Rob Machalek, MasterMine developer, determined that it would be possible to build custom reports for Voxeo that would give them all the natural flexibility of MasterMine's standard reports. These custom reports required a more complex SQL query than usual, including the union of multiple SQL queries. Not only did they have this challenge, but also they needed to synchronize to their SQL server in Orlando and have it translate from SQL to dBase in San Francisco.

With MasterMine, Lisa was able to take an unwieldy and time-consuming task and turn it into a part of her job that for a very small input of time yields very big rewards -- reports that forecast Voxeo's future revenues more easily and accurately than ever before! In addition, for all the work Lisa was putting in before MasterMine, she was getting only one inflexible and static view of Voxeo's forecasted sales. Now she can see the big picture, or break it down by region, by sales rep, or any other criteria. And when needed, she can drill down from the MasterMine report into the GoldMine CRM Database for more detail.

"It was a huge project," said Lisa. "Our earlier forecasts were very complex; now they seem simple. I can run customer forecasts and prospect forecasts at 50%, 70%, 90% -- whatever I want at the touch of a button. MasterMine just gave me my life back!"