A COLLABORATION DRIVEN THROUGH CRM STRATEGY

How Selux’s IT and Sales team joined forces to power sales success with SuperOffice CRM

This is the story of how Selux GmbH used SuperOffice CRM to:

1. Improve sales processes to work as one commercial team - on one tool and view
2. Get data-driven insights into sales performance and forecasts with Dashboards 
3. Improve internal workflows and communication
4. Increase user adoption of SuperOffice in a scaling and evolving organization
5. Integrate existing tools with one central CRM for managing customer relations, projects, sales, and customer service

Who we spoke to: Holger Doege, Head of IT and Information Management at Selux GmbH

ABOUT SELUX GmbH

In post-war Berlin, Hermann Bansbach started what is now Selux GmbH with the motto “Semper lux — always light.” Born in a war-damaged city grappling with a shortage of electricity, Selux emerged from this challenging landscape.

Company Size:

• Over 400 employees globally
• Dedicated team of 70+ sales representatives and support professionals

Locations:

• Operations across Western Europe, North America, and worldwide

Focus:

• Leading supplier of sustainable lighting solutions
• Specializes in delivering diverse illumination products and projects globally

Selux has brought to life a variety of notable projects from around the world. Some of their renowned global projects include:

• The East Bund, Shanghai, China
• Galeries Lafayette, Annecy, France
• Battersea Power Station, London, UK
• Lobo Rainforest Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA

Battersea power station, London, UK (Source: Selux)

THE CHALLENGE 

Before working with SuperOffice, Selux’s commercial team found themselves in a web of manual spreadsheets for managing customer data. This often slowed things down for the sales team, having to deal with tedious manual work that ate into their selling time. With a lot of their project and customer data stuck on spreadsheets, the commercial team found it difficult to share important information across departments.

What Selux faced:

• Manual sales processes: Reliance on manual input in Excel sheets leading to sales delays
• Difficulties sharing data: Growing across regions made sharing data complex
• Marketing efforts: Only had one mailing to all types of audiences without any segmentation
• Reluctance from Sales: Getting everyone, especially sales, to warm up to the idea of introducing a CRM wasn't easy

Getting everyone outside of the IT department onboard with the idea of a CRM was tough. Sales reps felt like IT was imposing more rules and procedures on them. It was also a struggle showing that getting a CRM would actually make their lives easier, not just for IT to get their hands on sales data to create reports with.

Source: Selux

What’s more: Convincing sales to move from paper to digital? Not a simple task – sales reps felt like the push to digital was taking away from their selling time. For the sales team, their main priority was to sell, and changing up their routines for new processes wasn't a popular idea.

Selux was looking for:

• Less complexity in their operations
• A place where all their data could be saved in and accessed from one place 
• A more targeted approach to sales and marketing

SuperOffice solutions:

•  Sales
• Marketing 
• Service

After years of successfully implementing and using Sales and Service, Selux recently started using the Marketing module.

Before introducing the Marketing module, Selux could only track responses to event invites or downloads. Now they can track mail performance in more detail, getting insights on what clicks with their audience beyond simple one-off responses.

“What we like most about SuperOffice – for us, is its simplicity. This simplicity makes it easy to handle and also easy to explain to our users”

THE IMPLEMENTATION 

The implementation of SuperOffice wasn't just about introducing a new tool; it was a cultural shift within the organization. Holger and the IT team recognized that user adoption was crucial for success, so they focused on training and support to ensure that everyone understood the value and benefits of using SuperOffice properly.

Their aim? Making life easier for sales and users while getting valuable data insights. It was all about simplicity – making work smoother without piling on complicated workflows. Holger, reflecting on the start, noted, "Our approach was basic. We guided sales reps to simplify their tasks, benefiting them first, which, in turn, benefited us with valuable data."

“Asking sales reps to fill in 50 customized fields isn't realistic. We've realized the importance of making their daily tasks simpler, benefiting them while also providing us with useful data for reporting. Initially, there was a push for complex fields and automation, but we learned that starting that way would limit its use. It's better to start simple and gradually expand.”

Source: Selux

Initial onboarding and training

Led by Holger, the IT department held weekly training sessions, keeping it short and focused (only 15 minutes each!) to make sure users were inputting CRM data with good data hygiene and quality. The training sessions also allowed IT to double-check the data accuracy with the sales team on a regular basis.

Shaping SuperOffice to match different ways of working

In Selux, the teams adjusted how they worked within SuperOffice CRM to fit each region's ways of working, collaborating with key users from each region to create specific SuperOffice processes locally.

Approval from sales heads was also crucial in making decisions on how to set up the CRM. The discussions between IT and sales helped to truly address sales concerns with onboarding a CRM – making sure sales felt their voices were heard.

“The users' support matters, but the head of sales' backing is crucial. They're busy selling, not just filling fields; every action in SuperOffice is seen as a project's basic need. If it's not essential information, it becomes an optional field [on SuperOffice]. The system shouldn’t be a burden; it's about equipping sales reps with important information on the customers. That's why entering data in SuperOffice matters.”

SHAPING THEIR CRM JOURNEY 

About three years ago, Selux, then having used SuperOffice CRM for 20 years, realized it was time to freshen up how they used SuperOffice CRM. They wanted SuperOffice CRM to better match their evolving ways of working and changing organizational structures across their locations. Holger, then having just taken on the role of leading Selux’s SuperOffice CRM strategy, saw the potential for Selux to once more optimize their sales and marketing processes with the help of CRM data on SuperOffice.

The company had been using the CRM system for quite some time, but data quality and user adoption in the organization was lagging behind, and greatly needed a refresh. Without enough clean data in the system, the insights provided to sales wouldn't be accurate or valuable enough to support their data-driven sales strategy.

One of the big moments in the implementation was when a new Head of Sales came on board, bringing a fresh take on how the team could use CRM data to make better-informed decisions. This shift really helped to ramp up efforts to clean up data and get everyone more engaged with SuperOffice CRM.

THE RESULTS

Selux GmbH's SuperOffice journey brought transformative changes to the commercial team and the wider organization. The shift of focus on SuperOffice CRM to essential day-to-day data needs greatly improved data quality, providing more accurate insights to aid their sales strategy and performance.

By implementing SuperOffice CRM, Selux was able to:

1. Improve sales processes to work as one commercial team - on one tool and view
2. Get data-driven insights into sales performance and forecasts with Dashboards
3. Improve internal workflows and communication
4. Increase user adoption of SuperOffice in a scaling and evolving organization
5. Integrate existing tools with one central CRM for managing customer relations, projects, sales, and customer service

From manual to digital and data-driven sales forecasts

Without having to rely purely on Excel anymore for sales data— sales teams now get more precise forecasts with data entered, hosted, and reported on SuperOffice. This improved Selux’s data quality and hygiene, making sales figures crystal clear and more actionable for Sales heads and reps alike.

“Three months after everyone from the European group was in [SuperOffice], we were able to stop throwing around Excel sheets for forecasting”

Source: Selux

The whole commercial team aligned in one process, on one view 

For Holger, the biggest plus with now adding SuperOffice Marketing on top of SuperOffice CRM is the true integration it can bring to the commercial team. Selux’s vision is to make marketing efforts into a crucial part of their pipeline creation, working not just together, but in a core partnership with Sales.

“In truth, Marketing and Sales in SuperOffice is one process rather than two, and that's how I see Marketing as well. So we need to develop this a little bit more…to use Marketing not as something only the marketing department is doing, but as an integral part of lead generation, opportunity creation and so on.”

With SuperOffice CRM, both parts of the commercial team will share and work from the same set of reliable data. In turn, the marketing and sales team will work towards the same strategy driven by better-informed decisions. And the best part? Both teams can work more effectively by relying on using just one tool - taking away unnecessary complications from their work processes.

When we asked Holger, his ideal future setup is one where marketing, ticketing, project management, and business intelligence all work as one unit, providing sales teams with important insights on data across the customer’s journey.

A user-friendly guide

What used to be perceived as more of a “top-down” sales operation style transformed into a more user-friendly guide with the addition of SuperOffice, improving sales reps' actual day-to-day tasks and quicker onboarding for new sales reps.

Today, SuperOffice isn't just a tool; it's a game-changer, aligning Selux’s internal knowledge sharing and communication to foster a smoother and more efficient way of working for the commercial team and beyond.

 

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