Winning and retaining clients in a competitive market

Challenge: A business-critical process slowed by emails

The company routinely pitches for large multi-national contracts, which can be valued at over £100 million. As part of the negotiation process for this new business, the company often needs to make slight variations to its standard terms and conditions (T&Cs) or accept a higher financial liability. In such cases, employees have to gain approval from senior managers within the UK and Europe—and they need to secure this approval quickly so that they can pitch for the business before a deal is made with a competitor.

In the UK, the company’s process for gaining authorization for changes to standard T&Cs was well known, but not written down. While absolutely critical for the company’s sales success, the process relied entirely on the exchange of emails and there was no way of tracking the progress of approvals. When people were on holiday or out of the office, emails went unanswered, and it could take up to three weeks to get all the necessary approvals.

Solution: A faster response to new business opportunities

Now, employees use a Nintex K2 Five-based workflow to issue a request for authorization for a change to standard T&Cs. Each approver is notified and can review, approve, or reject a request online—whether they’re in the office, working from home, or in an airport lounge. “Having the ability to authorize requests on the move has been a revolution, not an evolution,” says the Innovation Team Manager at the real estate company “The new process has reduced the time required to secure approvals from up to three weeks to around five working days. This significant time saving puts the company in a stronger position to bid for high-value new business.”

The new Nintex K2 Five process is also more transparent and auditable. Managers can track the status of approvals and see who signed off each request.  If a fee earner needs to speak with someone about a particular contract, he or she can use Nintex K2 Five to find the correct person. Also, from a legal standpoint, K2 Software gives the company the capability to undertake audits of the process and provide evidence that the correct procedure has been followed.

Challenge: Lots of market intelligence to share

Throughout the company’s European operations, 35 teams of market researchers are constantly studying trends and events in the European real estate market. The insight they provide is vitally important to the business, as it helps the company’s directors to determine business strategy, evaluate risks, and identify new business opportunities.

Previously, each of the 35 research teams used to present market intelligence in a variety of spreadsheets, which were sent to a centralized team each quarter, by email. It then took five days of manual data processing effort to collate, standardize, and verify all of this data and create European market research reports, which were shared with senior directors throughout the business quarterly.

Solution: Frequent reports to support decision making

The company took the lead in developing a standardized way of working for the market research teams. Throughout Europe, all teams now use the same spreadsheet to present their market research, and all the data from all the different countries are automatically combined into one report centrally using a K2 Software process. A Nintex K2 Five app validates the data from the 35 teams, removing at least five days of manual data processing effort for every report generated.

Thanks to the new streamlined process and time savings, the company can now produce and circulate its market intelligence reports more frequently. “Removing the manual effort allowed data to be collected on a constant basis for the first time,” the Innovation Team Manager says. “Very quickly, the company moved from quarterly reports to monthly reports, and there is the opportunity to introduce weekly reports in the future. As a result, we can respond to emerging new market conditions and make strategic changes to the business much more quickly, to meet our clients’ needs and improve our profitability.”

Challenge: Limited information about key clients

Many of the company’s clients are large, multi-national organizations with property in hundreds of locations. In addition, the company often delivers a wide range of services for its clients, from multiple internal divisions, ranging from property management and sales to investment planning. It can, therefore, be quite a challenge to keep track of which team is delivering which service to which division or location of each client.

The company wanted to improve the depth and accessibility of its client information, to make it easier for the company’s senior leadership team to manage all aspects of the company’s relationship with clients. At the time, senior managers had limited, high-level visibility of client information, but couldn’t drill down to get detailed information about the status of the client relationship. This made it unnecessarily difficult for senior managers to manage key relationships and deliver a higher standard of service.

Solution: Secure, real-time information for senior managers

Using K2 Software, the company created an online app that allows employees to record and share information about client engagements, requirements, and services delivered. Highly secure, the Nintex K2 Five app is used on a daily basis as an operational tool, by teams across Europe, and it integrates data from other systems, such as data from lead generation systems and non-structured data such as telephone conversations.

This new Nintex K2 Five-based client relationship app gives the senior leadership team improved visibility of all client activities over entire regions and industry sectors. For the first time, senior managers can access real-time client relationship information from any location, via a browser, to gain instant access to up-to-date information. The accessibility and depth of the information provided by K2 Software helps senior managers to monitor client activities more closely and deliver an exceptionally high standard of service across multiple service areas and geographies.

This use of K2 Software for HR has delivered substantial time savings for all employees across the business, as new HR requests can be approved in just one day, rather than four to five days. Furthermore, HR processes are now much easier to manage as the HR team can see, at a glance, how many employee requests have been raised and how many are still in progress, awaiting authorization. Requests are no longer delayed due to misplaced pieces of paper, and employees have greater confidence in the process.