A look at Occurrence, a research and communications firm with around twenty employees. The company has been using Anaba for over a year as a CRM to streamline the management of its contacts (adding contacts, follow-up, client relations, etc.).
Occurrence maintains close relationships with its clients and partners. This requires complete visibility of their contact details and diligent tracking of interactions. The challenge: before Anaba, 40% of clients were missing from the tool used to manage the company's contact database.
After implementing Anaba as contact management CRM software (CRM standing for Customer Relationship Management), 90% of clients are now included — virtually all of them. Contact management has also become a "highly valuable" activity, which once seemed almost inconceivable.
We look back on this transformation with Pierre Chavonnet, Director of the Brands and Transformation division at Occurrence and Head of Communications. He explains how contact management evolved into an intuitive and engaging process for every employee in the company.
1. Moving away from a "painful and restrictive" tool
1.1: The previous contact management solution: "the last priority"
A significant effort required
The previous tool used at Occurrence required considerable effort to save and update contacts.
"In a working day, entering contact data is honestly a task you don't want to waste time on. Unfortunately, with the tool we used before, it was always the last priority."
Limited accessibility
Another bottleneck: the tool was only accessible to managers. The per-user licence pricing model was not cost-effective and restricted access to a limited number of people.
This was a problem: "employees had to systematically ask their manager to get in touch with someone. But the cumbersome nature of the tool discouraged us from getting all employees involved in the solution."
These management challenges ultimately drove the decision to adopt Anaba.
1.2: From a painful process to a smooth and intuitive one with Anaba
Fast and seamless onboarding
The thousands of contacts stored in the previous solution were transferred to Anaba "with great ease," reports Pierre Chavonnet. The Anaba team ensured the process ran smoothly and organised deployment sessions with the teams where needed.
Onboarding was highly intuitive: "the ease of access to the tool, directly from Outlook, and the fluidity of its operation made deployment straightforward. Nobody missed the previous version."
Simplicity proven by all
The enthusiasm of employees when discovering the tool comes down to its simplicity.
"With Anaba, I intuitively manage to do what I need to do, he explains. It changed everything for me, because I don't have any particular aptitude for computer or digital tools."
1.3: From restricted access to a CRM open to all
Bringing the database to life through sharing
"The much more flexible interface of Anaba and its competitive subscription pricing allowed us to open the solution to all employees," recalls Pierre Chavonnet. This was essential to improving the quality of the database, as all employees at Occurrence are in contact with clients.
"Our database is today than when it was reserved for managers, who have very little time to dedicate to day-to-day contact management."
Benefits at every level
The gains are significant for all employees. New users are the first to benefit: they now have easy, instant access to all of the company's contacts.
Managers, who were already using the previous tool, benefit from a "very significant improvement in usability" which, for example, gives them access to background information on contacts directly in Outlook.
2. “So simple” with anaba
”"With Anaba as a CRM, everything in the tool is straightforward and requires no explanation or training," describes Pierre Chavonnet.
This ease of use translates into benefits at multiple levels:
2.1: A marked improvement in database quality
90% of clients in the database
After a quick and simple setup and a year of using the tool, Pierre Chavonnet notes: "Anaba gives us the most up-to-date CRM we have ever had since I joined Occurrence 6 years ago."
A view confirmed by Johann Damen, Systems Manager at Occurrence, who led the implementation of Anaba.
"With our old CRM, we only had 60% of our clients' contacts. Today with Anaba, we're approaching 90%!"
More contacts, better qualified
The richness of the database is reflected both in the increased number of contacts recorded and in their quality.
"I can see it at my own level, confirms Pierre Chavonnet. The number of contacts I've added to the database has increased by at least 15 to 20%. The quality of the tool also helps us avoid missing out on new clients."
The ease of use is at the root of this quality improvement.
"Even though we're all committed to the growth of the company, as managers we have little time to dedicate to CRM matters," recalls Pierre, adding with a smile: "Except that with Anaba, entering information into the CRM has become so simple that forgetting to do it feels almost criminal!"
2.2: Meaningful time savings every day
Syncing Anaba with Outlook, combined with automatic CRM capture of information from the company's professional emails, enables Outlook contacts to be retrieved with instant updates.
"The time spent entering contacts in other CRMs makes it a time-consuming and tedious activity, even when you want to dedicate as little time as possible to it. Anaba, on the contrary, significantly reduces this by eliminating the vast majority of manual data entry."
"For people who don't type particularly fast, saving time on data entry makes a real difference."
From manual entry to simply verifying information
Contact details (email and postal address, phone number, etc.), linking the contact to an existing client account, most recent activity with the company... The essentials are already captured in Anaba, which retrieves and filters information directly from the company's Outlook business account.
"The fact that the information to be added for each contact is pre-filled is a genuine game-changer. All that's left is to verify the details, make minor adjustments where needed, and organise contacts by category, which takes no time at all."
2.3: More value from the contact database
Better reach for communications
Newsletters, event invitations, season's greetings... the number of contacts, and in particular clients, who receive the right information at the right time has significantly improved.
"Anaba makes life much easier for our business development manager, who handles the distribution of these communication campaigns."
This distribution is managed automatically in seconds from Anaba, which integrates directly with the main email marketing platforms such as Mailchimp, Sendinblue, and Sarbacane.
The tool also allows each team member to check directly in Outlook whether their contacts have received the latest communications and to add them to the mailing list if not.
Less time spent, better return on investment
"I used to spend more time managing contacts in our old CRM, with less efficiency, because everything had to be entered manually. With Anaba, it's the opposite. I spend less time on it, yet the return on investment is clearly better."
This frees up each employee to focus on Occurrence's core business.
It also drives continuous improvement of the contact database: "The interface gives me the feeling that I can do everything. This encourages me to use Anaba as often as possible and to get my colleagues to do the same."
A culture of continuous improvement now firmly embedded in the company's practices — and set to continue, now that all employees are comfortable using Anaba.
Occurrence can also count on the ongoing support of the Anaba team: "We're planning a Q&A session around which new features to use, so we can continue to enrich our database and get the most out of it."
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