Earle M Jorgensen Company Achieves Mobile Success with Pivotal
VANCOUVER, British Columbia--(BUSINESS WIRE)--June 8, 2005--Pivotal Corporation
and CDC Corporation (NASDAQ:CHINA) - Pivotal's latest mobile technologies increase
performance and reduce the TCO of managing a mobile sales team; email integration
provides seamless connectivity to Microsoft Outlook
Pivotal Corporation, a leading CRM solution provider for mid-sized enterprises,
and a subsidiary of CDC Corporation today announced that Earle M. Jorgensen
Company, a leading North American metal distributor, is using Pivotal's latest
mobile technologies to significantly reduce the time and resources required
to keep EMJ's mobile sales users up-to-date and productive.
Headquartered in Lynwood, California, Earle M. Jorgensen is one is one of the
leaders in North American metal distribution. With 35 service and processing
centers, EMJ inventories more than 25,000 different bar, tubing, plate and various
other metal products, and specializes in cold finished carbon and alloy bars,
mechanical tubing, stainless bars and shapes, aluminum bars, shapes and tubes,
and hot-rolled carbon and alloy bars. In the metals industry, customer loyalty
is related to a supplier's ability to have the right products available at the
right time, and the supplier's ability to provide value-added service on-site.
To help accomplish its customer loyalty goals, EMJ selected Pivotal in 1999
for its robust sales features, mobile functionality and customization capabilities.
EMJ is now using Pivotal's latest mobile and email integration technologies
to enhance its mobile performance, administration and synchronization capabilities.
EMJ's sales representatives are distributed across the country and responsible
for approximately 350 customer accounts each. With more than 90% of sales coming
from existing customers, and a program called "on time or free", in
which customers are guaranteed to have the product they ordered on the date
agreed or it will be free, the ability to provide fast, responsive and accurate
service is imperative. Using Pivotal, field sales personnel have an intuitive
mobile system and quick access to up-to-date customer information and inventory
data, even while visiting customers on-site.
"Our salespeople are on the road for long hours, often traveling for days
at a time to meet with different customers and prospects," said Dennis
Thomas, senior IT manager, Earle M. Jorgensen Company. "Our Pivotal system
is designed to give our salespeople easy-to-use access to customer and prospect
data, inventory levels, quotes, orders, and financial information relating to
each account including sales, profits, margins and account balances. All of
this information is at their fingertips, even when they're on the road."
Pivotal significantly reduces the time and resources required to keep EMJ's
mobile sales users up-to-date and productive. When sales users connect to the
corporate network, the system automatically synchronizes in the background -
allowing the user to continue working while their system is updated. New customer
data, application updates, platform upgrades, Service Packs and Hot Fixes are
updated in the same session - eliminating the need for EMJ to bring laptops
back to headquarters for upgrades. New administration capabilities and diagnostic
tools give the EMJ IT department the ability to view mobile systems from a central
location, including synchronization status; identify potential synchronization
issues; and resolve issues early.
In addition to adopting the latest mobile technologies, EMJ also chose to upgrade
to the latest Pivotal system to further improve productivity by integrating
Pivotal with Microsoft Outlook. Thomas adds, "Our salespeople make extensive
use of Microsoft Outlook to keep in touch with clients and other members of
the extended team. Having the ability - with a single click - to link Outlook
email messages to Pivotal company and contact records was a very compelling
productivity feature for us. We were excited to participate in the Pivotal Early
Adopter Programs for Pivotal 5.1 and Pivotal 5.7 and we are currently in the
process of rolling out email integration to our salespeople."
According to Bruce Kenny, senior vice president of products, Pivotal, "Earle
M. Jorgensen is a great example of a company that is winning in the market by
taking advantage of CRM functionality, mobile technologies and integration with
Microsoft Outlook to improve customer service, increase sales productivity and
differentiate itself from the competition. We are thrilled that the Pivotal
system is making a difference in the way EMJ interacts with its customers."