CRM adoption for a construction materials supplier
Use case
A specialty building products supplier serving high-end custom home builders, luxury residential projects, and commercial contractors operates across three branches in the United States. Their outside sales team manages builder partnerships, tracks quotes, handles follow-ups, and converts opportunities into orders.
Before implementing a CRM, the company had no centralized system. Each outside sales representative tracked activity in their own way, creating blind spots for leadership, missed follow-ups on high-value quotes, and no reliable reporting across branches.
The company already used an ERP system for operational functions such as quotes, orders, inventory, invoicing, and accounting. What they needed was not a replacement for that system but a dedicated layer for sales intelligence. Bigin was introduced to manage what the ERP could not: lead tracking, pipeline visibility, and rep accountability.
Requirements
As a first-time CRM adopter, the team needed a solution that was simple enough for immediate adoption while structured enough to support multi-branch operations. Their key requirements were to:
- Centralize sales tracking across all three branch locations
- Give leadership real-time visibility into pipeline and revenue performance
- Track and follow up on quotes above a defined value threshold
- Capture leads from referrals, industry events, and builder associations
- Report on lead sources, quote-to-order conversion rates, and won versus lost deals
- Complement an existing ERP rather than replace it
- Support automation for follow-up reminders and stage-based notifications
Solution
Bigin was implemented as the sales intelligence layer sitting above the company's existing ERP system. The setup focused on pipeline structure, rep accountability, and leadership visibility across all three branches.
Pipeline design for a multi-branch team
The sales pipeline was configured to track deals from lead entry through to order conversion. Sales reps enter leads, track quotes above a set threshold, create tasks, log follow-ups, and move deals through defined stages. The structure gives every rep a consistent process regardless of which branch they work from.
Management dashboards
Custom dashboards were built to give branch managers and the VP of Sales real-time visibility into performance across the organization. These dashboards track:
- Monthly and cumulative sales goals per rep
- Total revenue performance by branch
- Product performance trends
- Lead sources and origin channels
- Quote-to-order conversion rates
- Won versus lost deal breakdowns
Lead source tracking
The team captures leads from existing customer relationships, industry events, word of mouth, referrals, custom home builder associations, architectural connections, and vendor partnerships. All lead sources are tracked in Bigin so the team can identify which channels drive the most value.
CRM and ERP working in parallel
Bigin operates alongside the existing ERP system rather than replacing it. The ERP continues to handle inventory, point of sale, purchasing, customer orders, and accounting. Bigin takes ownership of everything upstream: lead tracking, pipeline management, rep activity, and sales reporting. This separation keeps operations clean while closing the gap in sales visibility.
Automation roadmap
With pipeline visibility and team adoption established, the company is now moving into the next phase: automation. Planned automations include task creation on deal stage changes, follow-up reminders on open quotes, and notifications to ensure high-value opportunities are never overlooked. Zoho Flow has also been evaluated for lighter integration needs between Bigin and other tools, and Zoho Analytics is on the roadmap for advanced cross-branch reporting and trend analysis.
A message from the customer
"It's been great. It's easy to use and very user-friendly. You can't really break anything. Everybody seems to be enjoying it. We've only scratched the surface of what Bigin can do, and it can only get better from here."
Results
Since implementing Bigin, the company has established a structured, accountable sales operation across all three branches. The impact has been visible across the team and in leadership's ability to manage performance.
- Sales visibility improved across all three branch locations for the first time.
- Leadership can track rep-level performance and revenue goals without manual reporting.
- Follow-up discipline on high-value quotes has strengthened across the outside sales team.
- Lead sources are tracked and measurable, giving the team data to prioritize outreach.
- User adoption across 26 team members was achieved without significant friction.
- Bigin and the existing ERP now operate as complementary systems with no disruption to operations.
- The team has a clear automation roadmap to reduce manual work in the next phase of growth.
Today, the company manages its entire sales pipeline from a single platform, with the structure and visibility that a growing multi-branch operation requires. Automation and advanced reporting are next, building on a foundation that is already delivering results.
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