Lindner

Challenge

The Lindner Group is Europe’s leading specialist in interior fitting, facade engineering, and insulation technology. As the company employs around 6,000 workers globally, an efficient enterprise resource planning (ERP) system is essential for its success. In particular, it’s necessary for sales data housed in its CRM system to be integrated with project and master data stored and managed in the ERP system.

When Lindner Group’s existing CRM system reached its limits in this area, the company decided to implement a completely new solution. It also wanted to employ social business software to improve customer interaction and follow-up through improved collaboration across the organization.

Solution

Lindner Group chose Sugar since it was already successfully implemented in the company’s German headquarters as well as in its production facilities and subsidiaries in 20 countries. The company worked with SugarCRM partner Insignio to complete its Sugar implementation and integration with Share2B, a suite of social business tools that empowers colleagues to easily structure projects and teams, find specialist know-how, track common topics and activities, and map the working environment to fit business needs.

Lindner Group likes Sugar’s friendly, intuitive user interface, which closely resembles the interfaces of popular social media sites like Facebook and Google Plus. It also wanted a solution that could be hosted on premise as well as in the cloud. Having its solution on premise is a key requirement in the construction industry where data security plays an important role, especially when sensitive design data is used. Should Lindner decide to host its solution in the cloud, the migration is easy and can be implemented by a Sugar partner.

Results

Linder’s Sugar solution integrated with Share2B offers centralized, easy access to important information on potential customers such as product interests, price ranges, and likely competitors. It has gone far beyond a data aggregation tool and is used to map all sales processes and provide up-to-date sales opportunities. As a result, employees who engage directly with customers, such as those in sales, marketing, and customer service, benefit from improved coordination of tasks and projects, a significantly reduced volume of internal email, and can support each other more effectively through transparent project

“Sugar integrated with Share2B is a sophisticated, reliable, and flexible application for our complex business processes,” concludes Arno Sonderfeld, CEO of Lindner Insulation and Industrial Services GmbH. “With new, easier communication, we create more room for creative collaboration.”

Intro

SugarCRM Partner Insignio Integrates Sugar with Social Business Software, Optimizing Customer Relations and Communication.

Story

About Lindner Group

The Lindner Group is Europe’s leading company for interior fit-out, facade construction and insulation engineering with more than 50 years experience in ‘Building New Solutions’—the development and implementation of individual, high- quality project solutions.

With a workforce in excess of 6000 worldwide, Lindner manages production plants and subsidiary companies in more than 20 countries from its head office in Arnstorf, Germany. Since it was set up in 1965 by Hans Lindner, his aspiration has been to offer clients the seamless construction of an entire building. Today, ‘Concepts – Products – Service’ makes up the most comprehensive range on the market to meet all possible project requirements.

About Insignio CRM GmbH

Insignio CRM has partnered with SugarCRM Inc. since 2007; the company attained Gold status in 2009 and is now one of Sugar’s largest partners in Europe. Insignio has represented Germany on the Global Partner Advisory Board since 2011. As a participant in the global excellence program, Insignio adds German and European requirements to the system’s enhancement process. In 2010, Insignio won a Most Valuable Partner in Europe accolade in recognition of its customer loyalty rate of 98 percent. Insignio maintained this performance in 2011 and was again granted the MVP award. Insignio has already helped customers win the coveted CRM expo Best Practice Award three times. CRM professionals Mirco and Jan Müller have recently published the first German manual on the planning, implementation, and practical application of Sugar. insignio-crm.de/en/sugarcrm.html

Integrations

The Share2B integration also allows partners to be included in work processes via special groups. Working in teams, around 600 employees use the integration to manage and monitor customer activities. For example, this benefits the user help desk because Sugar users and external partners can have access to a substantial pool of Lindner expertise.

“Sugar’s ability to integrate with Share2B fulfills all of Lindner’s requirements: deep systems integration, a simple interface, and many useful functions,” notes Micro Müller, CEO of Insignio CRM GmbH. “And that appeals to the employees.”