Company: Geeks on the Way, Calgary, AB Canada
Entry Submitted By: Schwartz Communications
Company Description: Geeks on the Way is the leading technology support provider to residences and small offices in Western Canada. The firm was incorporated in October of 2001 and has grown from just a few employees to now having three locations with 20,000 unique customers serviced and over 45,000 service calls made to date.
Nomination Category: Sales Achievement Categories
Nomination Sub Category: CRM Implementation & User Adoption Program of the Year

Nomination Title: Geeks on the Way's Use of SugarCRM's CRM System

1. Tell the story about how your organization implemented and/or promoted user adoption of your CRM program since the beginning of July last year (up to 500 words). Focus on specific accomplishments, and relate these accomplishments to past performance or industry norms. Be sure to mention obstacles overcome, innovations or discoveries made, and outcomes:

Geeks on the Way is Western Canada's premier technology support firm, and has
grown from a two-employee company into a 30-person company that supports
nearly 30,000 customers. With such growth came a renewed focus on customer
support, which involved the deployment of a new CRM system to support the
company's sales and customer support organization.
That system was SugarCRM. For the customer support department, SugarCRM was
integrated with Asterisk, an industry-leading open source telephony platform.
By doing so, Geeks on the Way was able to quickly roll out an integrated voice
and CRM system that allows its call center to more effectively manage high
call volumes across multiple geographies, and reduce call handling times from
between two to three minutes down to 30 seconds.

Leveraging SugarCRM's open source architecture, Geeks on the Way was able to
integrate its call center environment powered by Sugar with other
technologies, which has added to Geeks on the Way's ability to deliver
superior service. Integrations with mapping technologies, for example, allows
more efficient dispatch and scheduling - getting the closest available agent
to handle newly logged service calls.

Geeks on the Way has also integrated SugarCRM with its accounting and e-
commerce systems, which has helped to automate a variety of complex and manual
processes across various departments resulting in improved efficiencies. For
example, Geeks on the Way can now process payroll for all of its agents across
Western Canada in five minutes; a process that previously took the firm's
accounting department 24 hours. In addition, the sales department has
automated the company's lead flow and ecommerce processes to improve sales
efficiency and productivity.

In support of this new technology, refined customer support processes were
developed to allow customer support and sales staffs to react to incoming
customer inquiries more quickly and to allow other customer-facing departments
to provide support and sales with the information they needed in a more timely
manner.

Moving forward, Geeks on the Way is looking to continue to roll out Sugar to
more departments, as well as leverage the power of Sugar as it enters new
geographies. Geeks on the Way plans on growing tenfold in the next several
years, thanks, in part, to having such a flexible CRM system and refined
processes that allows it to meet its customer needs in a fast and cost-
effective manner.

2. List hyperlinks to any online news stories, press releases, or other documents that support the claims made in the section above. IMPORTANT: Begin each link with http://, and enclose each link in square brackets; for example, [http://www.youraddress.com]:

http://www.sugarcrm.com/crm/customers/geeksontheway.html

http://www.sugarcrm.com/crm/about/press-releases/20071128-Geeks-on-the-Way.html

3. Provide a brief (up to 100 words) biography about the leader(s) of the nominated sales organization:

John Leishman is the CEO of Geeks on the Way, and as such, quarterbacked the
selection and implementation of SugarCRM and development of refined customer
support and sales processes. Under John's leadership, Geeks on the Way has
grown from two-employees answering phone calls in a coffee shop with a cell
phone and a laptop to a technically sophisticated call center with highly
trained technicians able to be dispatched usually for same day service.