Agriconomie cultivates a seamless customer experience with SugarCRM

In 2014, when three farmers’ sons founded Agriconomie, no one suspected the impact the company would have on the agricultural sector. The first website dedicated to farmers’ needs, it now offers every product a farm requires: fertilizers, seeds, animal feed, equipment, and spare parts. Thanks to Agriconomie, farmers could finally buy their supplies online with full price transparency. A revolution at the time!

If the company is so successful today, it is because it has been able to meet farmers’ real needs. No surprise, given that its founders come from farming families. Having seen farmers’ difficulties firsthand since childhood, they are well aware of the many challenges they face, including the long-term viability of their farms, competitive pressure, the economic crisis, and price transparency.

A commitment to transparency

Price transparency is a challenge Agriconomie tackled from day one. Every year, farmers plan the purchase of the products they need for their work several months in advance. The problem: prices depend on a wide range of criteria and vary enormously throughout the year. That made it impossible for farmers to forecast their spending and budget accurately. Agriconomie gave them access to this information in real time and let them buy in advance with precise knowledge of prices.

Collecting, storing, and structuring customer data

“Because the foundation of an excellent online customer experience is customer knowledge”, David Horain points out. This is where data becomes so important. “This information has to be collected, available, and easy to read for customer-facing teams, so they can best prepare their conversations and interactions with customers, whatever the channel”, explains David Horain.

And there is no excellent customer knowledge, and no effective use of relevant data, without a CRM! Agriconomie understood this from the start. To meet this challenge, the company bet on the Synolia/SugarCRM duo. “We chose a CRM solution that would let us capture data, make the most of it, and deliver it back to our teams efficiently to address our specific challenges”, says David Horain. In early 2016, Agriconomie brought in Synolia to implement SugarCRM. The teams were particularly won over by the tool’s ergonomics, ease of use, and scalability.

Aggregating customer data

With Sugar, Agriconomie first aims to collect a large amount of information about its customers. To do so, it set up a funnel system that lets its teams first gather information, then define a precise profile in order to meet each customer’s needs precisely. “There are several types of farmers, for example grain growers, livestock farmers, winegrowers, and market gardeners. Each has very different challenges that we absolutely need to understand in order to be relevant”, says David Horain.

At the very top of the funnel is the information farmers share spontaneously: declarative data. “But most of the time, they don’t give us all the information we need. So we gather it over the course of our conversations with them by asking specific questions”, explains David Horain. “Then we add the behavioral data generated by farmers’ interactions with our channels.” Examples of data: farm size, type of products, location…

Step by step, Agriconomie’s teams increase both the quantity and the quality of their customer data. All of this information is aggregated in Sugar. It is then structured in the tool and served up to the teams whenever they need it. A significant gain in both time and relevance.

The retention challenge

Thanks to SugarCRM, Agriconomie knows its customers inside out and gives them a personalized, tailored experience. The benefits are clear: a higher conversion rate, a larger average order value, better overall business performance, customer satisfaction and, above all, loyalty. And given the limited number of customers and prospects in farming, customer retention is a particularly important challenge. “We absolutely have to take care of our customers to keep them, because we won’t be able to find new ones indefinitely”, confirms David Horain. “Retention is essential in this sector, and it depends on striking the right balance between making good use of data and knowing farmers in depth.” An ambition the CRM made possible!

A CRM at the heart of the business

“From the start, we wanted our CRM to support our growth and be at the heart of our development! Our website is the face the public sees, but our CRM is the core the whole company revolves around”, says David Horain. And thanks to Synolia, the tool was deployed and up and running in just a few months. “We had lots of ideas, and Synolia helped us streamline them to find what we really needed to get started. Together, we delivered a realistic project that was operational right away.”

During the rollout, SugarCRM adoption was also a central concern. “It had to be easily accessible to the whole company. Adoption was essential, because a CRM can be excellent, but if teams don’t use it, it’s useless.” Today, all of Agriconomie’s teams have adopted Sugar and understand its benefits. It is a tool that evolves as the company grows, to keep meeting customer needs ever better. Proof of a successful project!