Johannesburg, 11 Aug 2021
Helderberg Village in Somerset West, one of the largest sectional title developments in South Africa, has streamlined the provision of maintenance services to the 800 homes in the village by implementing the Sage CRM (customer relationship management) software. The solution was implemented by AWCape, one of South Africa’s foremost Sage Business Partners.
Beneath the village’s tranquil façade, Helderberg Village now runs a slick maintenance services engine that caters to burst geysers, electrical faults, leaking taps, other maintenance and repair issues for residents in the village. Before implementing Sage CRM, the village used manual processes to capture job cards, assign technicians and close jobs.
The management team decided to find a field service management solution that would streamline workflow across the five specialist teams that provide maintenance services to the village and its residents. After evaluating a range of products, they chose the Sage CRM solution because it offered a highly configurable solution, tailored to the village’s needs.
Says Helderberg Village CEO Vagn Nielsen: “Before we implemented Sage CRM, we ran a manual system, where jobs were assigned and tracked via pieces of paper on a clipboard. We recognised that we would better manage our technicians’ time and gain more visibility into service delivery if we introduced an electronic system with a full audit trail.
“After an extensive investigation of the offerings on the market, we found that Sage CRM would be the best fit for our needs. Sage CRM offers tight integration with Sage 300cloud, the accounting solution that we use for our finances. We also had a well-established relationship with AWCape as our Sage Business Partner, giving us reassurance that we could expect a smooth implementation.”
Nielsen says one of the major benefits of Sage CRM is that it’s easily customisable to the needs and processes of nearly any organisation. Helderberg Village could adjust information fields, screen layouts and menus in the application to accommodate its business processes.
Electronic processes for managing service requests
With Sage CRM in place, Helderberg Village now has a fully electronic process for capturing service requests, assigning them to its technicians, and tracking job progress. When a resident calls the dedicated onsite call centre with a service request, Sage CRM provides the services ambassador with the resident’s details and allows for the capture of detailed information about the job, so the right technician can be dispatched, often with the tools and parts they need to do the job.
Furthermore, the system facilitates more accurate job scheduling and provides insight into which technicians are available, enabling Helderberg Village to make the most of its maintenance team’s time. The audit trail and management reports are also helping to drive a culture of accountability in the business.
In the near future, Helderberg Village will be able to automatically post maintenance expenses to the Sage 300cloud accounting solution, automating yet another step in the process. Village management is also considering implementing Sage CRM for its customer portal to streamline interactions and improve satisfaction among its residents.
Jeff Ryan, MD of AWCape, says automation of field sales and customer service processes via Sage CRM can help any business reduce duplication of effort, empowering teams to work faster and smarter. “This implementation at Helderberg Village highlights how CRM can be used to refine and automate customer services processes, giving customers and management better visibility of current customer engagements and delivering a better service to the customer.”
Gerhard Hartman, Vice-President, Medium Business, Sage Africa & Middle East, adds: “In today’s competitive environment, customer service is one of the key factors that can set an organisation apart from the rest. Sage CRM is customisable and helps businesses to rapidly resolve customer service cases and optimise the performance of their customer service teams.”
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