Graco implemented RightNow Sales to support its Contractor Equipment Division, which sells through distribution. RightNow Sales provides the division’s inside sales reps with up-to-date information on active distributors and the company’s constantly changing end-user marketing programs. It also provides them with quick links to standard business forms. In addition, RightNow makes it easy for the reps to tailor their desktop environments to meet their individual needs — with little or no support from IT.

With RightNow, Graco’s inside sales reps have each distributor’s complete contact history at their fingertips. They can see what the topics of their preceding conversations were and what outstanding issues still require action. They can also create their own “ticklers” to ensure they stay on top of each account by scheduling calls on a regular basis and/or in conjunction with limited-time promotions.

RightNow Sales also automates communication tasks such as creating letters or sending emails, saving reps time and enables them to increase the number of calls they make.

Because Graco’s inside sales reps are dependent on these desktop tools and data to do their jobs, continuous uptime is a must. Graco’s previous sales automation software did not fulfill these requirements. It crashed frequently, causing both unacceptable downtime and data loss. With RightNow Sales, on the other hand, Graco has experienced zero data loss.

“We’ve been able to easily adapt RightNow Sales to both our business model and our individual work styles,” Jeanne Habstritt, Graco’s sales automation project lead, said. “With it, we’ve increased the productivity of our inside sales team and the level of service we provide to our distributors — while gaining a system that’s extremely reliable and easy to manage.”

As an on demand solution, RightNow Sales has provided this comprehensive functionality and rock-solid reliability without requiring Graco to devote internal IT resources to systems management and maintenance.

“RightNow’s high-performance hosting environment provides far more redundancy and scalability than any of our individual customers could practically afford to build internally,” Peter Dunning, President of Field Operations at RightNow, said. “That’s why, in addition to its many other economic and technical benefits, our field-proven on demand delivery model also offers a very effective way of ensuring business continuity and reducing IT-related risk.”