The customer/company
Tungsten Network is a global e-invoicing, invoice financing and analytics company that services Fortune 500 companies and the world’s largest BPO providers. It is based in the UK and operates globally.
The assignment
Former Tungsten Network CEO, Luke McKeever, retained Triangular World to design and establish a new Customer Relationship Management function in the Tungsten Network organization.
The overall objective was to improve how Tungsten manages its relationships at multiple organizational levels within its client base. The intention was to seek feedback as well as provide information about new products, services and ways of improving outcomes in order to create more value from the relationship
The starting point for this tailor-made assignment was to understand and document the ‘as is’ and to present the way forward to define a ‘to be’ to the Executive Committee.
Through our work we identified opportunities to improve customer focus, reduce implementation times and establish relevant contact points on the client side. We also uncovered significant business development prospects through building a better client understanding of the products and capabilities on offer from Tungsten.
The response
Within the first four weeks we completed the ‘as is’ and defined the problem statement. We did this in close collaboration with the Tungsten employees involved in servicing existing clients at all levels of the organization. From a series of interviews and site visits, we learnt about issues associated with earlier and similar projects, so we encouraged maximum involvement and participation to design the ‘to be’ scenario.
We also encouraged the involvement and buy-in of the COO, Head of Sales and Delivery EMEA & APAC and his counterpart in the US to ensure their visible support and leadership as well as company-wide alignment.
Following Board approval, we proceeded to implement the new approach. We created a new Customer Relationship Management (CRM) team and developed the underlying management systems to facilitate their deployment and integration into Tungsten Network.
The team is located in the Europe and Asia Pacific. Our role was to hire and train 13 people and then to lead and manage their initial deployment in servicing existing clients and partners. Most were new to the business though some were promoted internally. An essential component of this was to find the right balance between the ‘Tungsten way’ and the need to adapt to the geographies and cultures of the individual clients. This included putting in place an organizational structure and appointing a long-term Tungsten employee to lead the team.
By working closely alongside the team and the now team manager, Gary Benson, we built on their collective skills and experience to help them to create a set of team deliverables that they believe in and own, and which are aligned to Tungsten’s corporate goals.
Says Gary Benson, VP Corporate Development “we are now through the initial period where we established new relationships and we are seeing real growth in our clients’ understanding and use of the full transformational Tungsten service-set.”
The result
The CRM teams are working well with the clients and appreciate the positive impact of their new way of working. They are seeing new supplier releases, which means more e-invoicing which in turn results in cost savings for the client.
Our 18-month assignment is now complete. In the words of the current CEO of Tungsten Corporation plc, Rick Hurwitz in a recent organizational announcement: “Tungsten now has a high-performing client relationship team.”