The Challenge

Identifying opportunities for growth and business intelligence.

Interstate Batteries is the number one automotive replacement battery brand in North America, supplying 300 distributors who serve more than 200,000 retail outlets. Founded in 1950, the company has grown from a local battery supply company to having distributorships in all 50 states and seven other countries. Their principles remain the same: offer the best-quality product, provide impeccable service, and treat customers with respect.

Interstate Batteries engaged Credera to create a transformational solution to identify additional market share revenue growth potential, provide competitive advantage, and showcase secure, valuable, and insightful market intelligence for executive and battery distributor leadership. The market-driven strategy needed to ensure adoption and usage by a wide and varied audience from the field to the executive team.

The Solution

Defining a strategic vision and deploying a helpful solution.

Credera collaborated with Interstate to create a marketing-driven, strategic business intelligence platform and related business processes that helped Interstate Batteries transform a 60-year old sales process and gain better insight into its competitive market. This was made possible with an intensive, well-defined strategy and roadmap:

DEFINED STRATEGIC VISION

• Developed business-driven strategy and roadmap.

• Designed pilot solution that served as a strong foundation for future design.

• Conducted proof of concept and value proposition from approximately 50 key Interstate leaders.

DISCOVERY PHASE

• Validated vision and value drivers.

• Illuminated Interstate Batteries’ market potential.

• Developed a comprehensive data management strategy.

• Assessed world-class non-competitors to understand similar solutions.

• Developed an implementation strategy and plan.

BUILD AND DEPLOY

• Designed and implemented sales process based on best practices.

• Architected a solution to maximize overall value by focusing on high priority (i.e., mission critical) objectives.

• Designed technical architecture and implemented master data management, creating one version of the customer’s truth.

• Led vendor selection process, resulting in best-of-breed technical solutions for CRM, data enrichment, reporting, and maps.

• Designed and implemented optics/maps.

• Designed and implemented marketing plays.

• Created operating model including organizational design and job descriptions.

ORGANIZATION TRANSITION

• Launched market intelligence organization and built new functionality.

• Updated organization chart, job descriptions, and operating model.

• Defined and prioritized high-potential marketing plays.

• Continued market intelligence development, engagement and adoption, and optimization work streams.

• Developed a platform to be scaled for future business needs (e.g., dynamic routing, forecasting, data enrichment, etc.).

• Provided instructor-led, three-day training for 97% of distributors.

The Results

Transforming strategy into real business results.

Credera provided program leadership and management for the multi-year initiative. The initiative completed well within budget and several months ahead of schedule. The market intelligence solution provided a strategic marketing, sales and distribution platform, using proven/world-class technologies—preparing Interstate Batteries for future growth.

DECISION SUPPORT RESULTS

• Provided processes, tools, and analytics to make intelligent and informed decisions related to customers, prospects, suppliers, and competition.

• Created a central component for the marketing organization.

• Created processes, tools, and training to increase market share and reduce costs.

• Delivered analytics and market intelligence to create targeted plays for multiple enterprise divisions and distributors, using distributor data and third-party data enrichment.

• Provided a national view of competitive accounts and captured distributor-specific data.

• Designed and implemented world-class sales process, allowing prioritization and mapping of prospects, resulting in larger new account volume and increase in overall sales.

• Captured all customer, prospect, and competitive data as well as related account notes in near real-time, providing 24/7 web-based access.

• Provided detailed analytics on prospects, customers, and competitors, allowing the creation of targeted programs.

ORGANIZATIONAL AND TECHNICAL RESULTS

• Identified new market potential for the enterprise and field distributors.

• Designed new business intelligence competency center (BICC) for Interstate Batteries to link predictive and prescriptive analytics with customized marketing campaigns.

• Developed an implementation strategy that promoted user adoption and acceptance.

• 97% of distributorships attended training, and over 90% of distributorships use the solution.

• Master data management created a single repository for all customer, prospect, and competitive data, creating capability for one version of the truth.

• Developed a user interface that promoted security, usability, flexibility, and accessibility to mission critical data.

• Developed a solution that is built from proven technologies and leveraged existing technology investments made by Interstate Batteries.

The quality of the project actually meets the hype of the project…That’s pretty rare.