Success Stories
10 min Read
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John Apfel
Super Content Writer
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In the summer of 2022, Monada embarked on a transformative journey with a mid-sized logistics company operating in Spain, Italy, and Germany. The company faced significant sales management challenges in relation to its freight management activities. This case study highlights the remarkable operational shift the company achieved within a few months, successfully overcoming substantial obstacles.
Meet Angela Martinez, the Regional Inbound Sales Director, and David Rossi, the Ocean Export Team Manager. Angela oversees sales efforts in Spain, while David leads his team's operations. Their collective experiences shed light on the distinct challenges faced at various management levels.
Reflecting on their journey prior to Monada, Angela describes it as "running a marathon with weights tied to our ankles." David echoes this sentiment, emphasizing the time-consuming quoting process that hindered their progress. "We were so focused on generating quotes that we couldn't devote enough time to essential tasks like client follow-ups," David admits.
Angela acknowledges her part in exacerbating the situation. She enforced same-day quote delivery, a rule that was often challenging to meet despite her emphasis.
David recalls how their team used to handle prospects in a chaotic and inefficient workflow:
"Inquiries would come through emails or phone calls, but there was no proper documentation. They would then have to juggle between 10-15 different XLS price lists and multiple browser tabs, scrolling, copying, and pasting, trying to find something attractive for the customer - like searching for a needle in a haystack.
As if that wasn't enough, creating actual price quotes involved using a Word document that they had created once, and the team would repeatedly copy and paste, only changing tne fields. The whole process was tedious and time-consuming, leaving me, as the manager, constantly firefighting and getting bogged down in hands-on work just to ensure all price quotes were sent on time. It was far from an ideal situation."
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The impact of this disarray was evident to Angela. "Despite the managers' hard work, crucial data for our monthly roundtable meetings were often missing. The efforts of the team managers were not yielding the expected results," she admits. This misalignment led to strain between senior and mid-level managers, resulting in increased burnout.
Angela explains further: "I repeatedly encouraged the team managers to delegate more to senior members and focus on performance monitoring, but my disappointingly, it was rarely implemented." David, burdened with responsibilities, couldn't afford the time to onboard and train new members properly. "We were already overwhelmed, heavily relying on senior team members, so they couldn't lighten our workload," David states.
David's frustration grows apparent as he describes being asked to provide answers regarding team performance without a proper real-time track and trace system.
"This led to excessive micromanagement and temporary solutions. I asked team members to CC me on every quote or email sent to a customer, and I found myself manually creating Excel reports before every monthly management roundtable meeting, attempting to capture all performance metrics retroactively."
Upon reflection, Angela admits:
"We were pushing the team managers for results, yet we failed to equip them with the necessary tools to truly succeed. This stressful period highlighted the urgent need for a radical change."
Angela actively sought software solutions and turned to Monada for its freight-forwarding-specific pricing and sales management platform. Unlike common transport management systems, Monada's platform aimed to streamline quoting, provide pipeline management, and offer critical sales team performance reporting. With Monada's swift onboarding support, David's Ocean Export team started using the new platform within a week, with the rest of the teams following suit a month later.
Monada's platform introduced a pivotal shift in the company's managerial framework. "Monada's platform was a game-changer," David begins. "The automatic task breakdown for each team member empowered them to prioritize their work. The simplified quoting process freed up their time, and I started to see team members take initiatives like conducting follow-ups and supporting each other's tasks."
With team members functioning more independently, David could now focus on strategic activities. "The load on us managers substantially lightened," he continues. "I finally had the bandwidth to effectively onboard new hires, dedicate attention to employee satisfaction and morale, and establish standards within my team."
Angela shares the impact on their roundtable meetings. "With Monada, team managers now come prepared, equipped with real-time team performance data. The meetings have become more efficient, collaborative, and data-driven."
David adds:
"We don't have to prepare much, honestly. Our discussions during the meetings revolve around Monada's reports tab. It provides an overview of all prospects, quotes and client inquiries across the teams. We can filter it by team, member, or client, and we can clearly see a month-over-month growth trajectory."
"The platform has not only made meetings more effective but also more strategic," Angela continues. "We can now establish KPIs, identify bottlenecks, and develop strategic solutions. In our last meeting, for example, we discovered a client who hadn't ordered from us for a while. We discussed possible issues, validated them using the last note our sales representative had written on the platform, reached out to the client, and managed to mend the relationship. This level of insight and proactivity wasn't possible before."
Angela emphasizes the platform's impact on the larger strategy. "Monada's ability to consolidate all sales team performances in one place has been crucial. I can identify patterns and reasons why clients might not close deals, enabling us to adjust our procedures across the different teams and continuously improve."
Angela and David's accounts testify to the transformative potential of Monada's solution in refining team management and performance. By facilitating a shift from a reactive to a strategic, data-driven approach, the company experienced significant improvements in productivity, morale, and overall effectiveness.
Angela's department embarked on a transformative journey that empowered employees, relieved managers, and ushered in a new era of real-time, data-driven decision-making. As Angela describes it, the team transitioned from "running a marathon with weights tied to our ankles" to navigating the complexities of logistics with clarity and strategic insight.
