Redfern Flinn transforms traditional business processes and operations with Zoho CRM

The company

Established in 1977, Redfern Flinn Lifting Equipment has been helping businesses of all sizes, across different industries, by providing lifting and moving solutions. It offers end-to-end material handling solutions that include designing, manufacturing, supplying, and servicing industrial cranes and hoists.

Redfern Flinn offers customized design and in-house engineering to address the specific lifting requirements of its customers within their scope of budget and timeframe. It started its operation in Victoria, Australia, and has now expanded to Sydney and Newcastle.

Redfern Flinn has five areas of focus:

• Consultation: Visiting and understanding the requirements.
• Sales: Finalizing sales and planning the manufacturing.
• Installation: Installation of the equipment and testing.
• Repair and maintenance: Conducting regular servicing per AS 2550 every three months.
• Lifetime analysis: Inspecting access for the suitability of continued and safe operation of equipment.

The challenge

The maintenance and repair of assets are critical aspects of Redfern Flinn's business operations. Before implementing Zoho, the maintenance and repair operations were managed using a paper-based system by the service technicians and administration team. Service technicians would write maintenance and servicing reports in the field, which would then be consolidated manually by the administration to prepare asset maintenance and job reports. This manual process resulted in decreased productivity and made it difficult to keep track of all activities, resulting in unreliable records. Furthermore, manually prepared reports were prone to human errors and lacked professionalism.

Also, with the company's continued growth, it became imperative for Redfern Flinn to adopt a business software suite that could manage the entire business process, from asset sales to maintenance. Additionally, the need for a centralized client and asset database was critical in ensuring efficient business operations.

Why Zoho

Redfern Flinn sought a comprehensive business suite that could cater to its multi-faceted requirements while providing better integration. Despite the abundance of options available in the market, the company chose Zoho for the reasons described below.

First, Zoho's platform was easy to set up and use. The suite provided excellent customization capabilities, allowing Redfern Flinn to modify the tools to align with its specific business processes. The mobile application and offline accessibility features of Zoho further added to its appeal.

Moreover, data privacy was a major concern for Redfern Flinn, as the company dealt with multiple government projects. Therefore, it was imperative to have a business solution that adhered to strict data privacy policies and stored the data within Australia while complying with Australian data privacy regulations. Zoho fulfilled all of these requirements, making it the ideal choice for Redfern Flinn.

The solution

Implementation with Squirrel Business Solutions

Squirrel Business Solutions is Zoho's authorized partner in Australia. It implements CRM systems to resource and enhance the capabilities of businesses across Australia. Its services include consultation, implementation, customization, integration, automation, training, and support.

Kylie Harker and Jonathan Young from Squirrel were directly involved in the implementation of the Zoho suite for Redfern Flinn. The team customized Zoho CRM and build an asset maintenance app using Zoho Creator to address their requirements for handling asset maintenance operations.

Centralized data for better accessibility

Redfern Flinn had a vision of centralizing all of its client and asset data to enable easy accessibility. With the implementation of Zoho CRM, all client and asset information is now stored in a single platform, eliminating the need to search through various systems and papers, as was done previously. The centralized data storage, combined with role-based restricted access, allowed the team to access data at any time, reducing dependency on individuals, and eliminating the possibility of data manipulation. Today, the data stored within the CRM is much more reliable and free from bias.

Custom CRM modules to meet business requirements

Along with the standard deals, accounts, and contact modules, Redfern Flinn has customized assets, jobs, and job reports modules within the CRM. The asset module has all of the records of the different assets installed for different clients. Job modules are used by the administration to assign maintenance jobs to the service technicians, and the job reports module is used to store the records of every job assigned to the service technicians. All of these modules are integrated with each other, i.e., an asset record can be pulled from the asset module as well as the account module.

Optimized client journey management

Redfern Flinn utilizes Zoho CRM to manage the entire client journey, from capturing leads to conversion. Blueprints are used to map out the business processes, while workflow rules automate repetitive tasks, update fields based on performed activities, and send reminders.

As Redfern Flinn works with larger companies that have multiple sites, the CRM's parent-child account functionality enables the team to create multiple child accounts under the same parent account, and tags assets to each child account separately. This ensures better organization and clarity.

In addition, the sales team at Redfern Flinn uses templates to create consistent and branded sales quotes for their clients. These new sales quote templates are visually appealing, look professional, and have proven to be efficient in the team's sales process.

Streamline asset management and maintenance jobs

Zoho CRM, along with Zoho Creator, has been used to streamline the asset maintenance operation at Redfern Flinn. Zoho Creator is used to create an asset maintenance application, which is interlinked with Zoho CRM. This integrated system is mostly used by the administration to assign maintenance jobs to service technicians.

The jobs module is used to create a new job by adding the job number and associating it with a particular asset and account. Once the job is created, the data is automatically pushed to the asset maintenance application and is assigned to a service technician. The service technician then performs the assigned job and enters all of the details in the application, which is automatically pushed to the CRM. This data flow from the application to the CRM helps the administration team assess if the assigned job is completed.

The administration also uses CRM data to prepare a report using the job module. The reports prepared are much more reliable and professional and allow the team to share them with their clients. In case the client requires in-depth maintenance and repair, a quote is provided for repair work. A deal record is created automatically based on job status, and the reviewer generates a quote for client approval.

One reliable source of truth

The automatic flow of data from the asset maintenance application to the CRM has proven to remove all human errors. The data entered by the service technicians, once finalized, cannot be edited. This eliminates the scope of any data manipulation. The reports are pulled using the data entered by the service technicians, and approved by the administration, which is available in the PDF to facilitate an easy and professional way to share the reports with the clients.

Benefits and ROI

Following their successful digital transformation, Redfern Flinn's team is proud to have saved a total of 58 hours per week. Their achievements include:

• Transitioning from a paper-based job maintenance checklist to an efficient online system.
• Eliminating time spent on repetitive data entry and organizing maintenance reports.
• Eliminating time spent on restructuring their organization to repurpose employees' time for professional development.
• Significantly reducing printing costs.