DemandGen Report

With a widely dispersed client base and many sales offices around the world, getting its sales team on the same page is a challenge for UK-based GeoSpa Fitness, a global distributor of spa and fitness equipment. With sales teams in the UK, Germany, South Asia, Croatia and the Middle East, GeoSpa ends up sharing documents with nearly 100 people for any given account.

The company has 80 offices located in cities around the world, with US headquarters in Seattle. For GeoSpa, sharing all kinds of documents and graphics effectively and quickly among disparate teams is critical to driving business efficiency. After using a combination of email and SalesForce.com to share and store documents, GeoSpa recently implemented the ShareNow solution from ShareMethods, which was integrated as part of the SalesForce.com AppExchange.

GeoSpa uses it as a portal to share data among partner teams, sales teams and customers. It serves an online library where associates can upload or view various documents and data, including allowing sales teams to retrieve a document in real-time during a sales presentation to show a prospect.

“We have many different offices and many different countries,” says Pav Mahal, CEO, GeoSpa. “There are technical people out in the field, goods being shipped— there are many different types of documents required by the different people involved and the biggest problem is how to share documents. We would have to have a team continuously tracking documents, recognizing people and forwarding documents via email.”

Mahal says having the ability to upload documents into the ShareNow library streamlines the operations for various members of the GeoSpa team, from sales to marketing. Because there are documents related to the individual clients, billing statements, insurance documents and banking documents, there are approximately 50-60 documents for any one account opportunity. Before ShareMethods, Mahal says sharing these documents with the appropriate parties via Salesforce was a frenzied activity.

Once documents are available, these people upload the documents to the particular site, and GeoSpa creates a link inside Salesforce. For a given opportunity, any one from the GeoSpa team can look at all the documents, including invoices, from inside ShareMethods. All of these documents are kept in a single place.

GeoSpa recently finished setting up its GeoDesign Company, working on 2-D and 3-D layouts for clubs and spas for 80 companies worldwide. On average, the company could be creating 1,200 to 1,600 various drawings per month worldwide, which is very difficult to share.

Optimization Wins Deals
Over a nine-month time frame, GeoSpa attributed 12% of its wins to the ShareMethods solution. GeoSpa has found that the primary benefits of using ShareMethods are time and cost savings, along the ability to drive more effective sales efforts. Mahal says most importantly, it’s a tremendous time saver.  “It’s a very positive experience for all of our users because they can easily upload or access documents they need very easily and quickly,” he says.

The  time efficiency of GeoSpa’s sales team (in terms of document searches, order placements and searches, order confirmations for sales and accounting documents for accounts, etc.) has improved by 20%. Mahal estimates the company would have to employ 8-10 more people if it weren’t working with ShareMethods.

GeoDesign will soon be using ShareMethods’ newest product, ShareSpaces, which combines social networking capabilities with collaborative document management, finally enabling document collaboration, between companies, customers, partners and anyone else, in private, secure online workspaces.

They develop an average of 400-600 drawings a month total across its 80 global offices. The process is coordinated from the main office in Bangalore, India. ShareSpaces will be the platform for the exchange of drawings. Each office will have its own private ShareSpaces to manage all the projects between architects, designers and engineers, and coordinate with the main office.

“From a sales point of view, every piece of advertising or marketing or press coverage is uploaded into Salesforce, so the company can track the information,” says Mahal. “In the past, press items would have to be sent individually through a marketing executive. With all information uploaded into the

ShareMethods library, everyone who subscribes to that particular folder of the library gets an alert email about new press coverage.” Mahal says this is advantageous for representatives are with clients, as this enables them to share GeoSpa’s accolades, which is productive from a sales perspective.
 “ShareSpace works very effectively all over the world with different clients we can share drawings and documents very effectively—it’s a great collaboration tool.”