Labophar is a fast-growing company that offers a wide range of self-care products with two own brands, namely Laboratoire Artisanal (LabArt) and Natural Energy. Labophar also has a number of strong distribution brands in its portfolio, including Alpine and Horizane. Labophar combines the scientific strength and intensive product knowledge of the two main actors in the healthcare sector, namely doctors and pharmacists. This results in effective self-care products under its own brands. From its head office in Ghent, Labophar continues to work on national and international success with a very dynamic team of pharmacists and doctors who focus on the well-being of the patient.
CEO Bram Van Peteghem is responsible for General Management, Sales and Operations. He decided to work with SmartSales and modernise the entire sales flow. He explains us how this was done.
"Our representatives have much less administration in the evening. The orders come in much more efficiently. Our sales management has a very nice tool to maintain contact with our customers through the representatives." Bram Van Peteghem, CEO Labophar
Why did you choose SmartSales?
"We have chosen SmartSales because of four criteria that are really important for us. First of all our representatives are on the road with the most recent sales tools. Secondly, they have the most recent price catalogue with them at all times. The third one is the fact that they can easily place their orders in real-time and pass it on to our back office. And finally, they now have a tool that works online and offline, which is a huge advantage for us. Sometimes there is not enough 3G or 4G, so we could not continue with our previous tool.
What are the biggest advantages of the app?
"Our representatives have much less administration in the evening. The orders come in much more efficiently. And our sales management has a very nice tool to maintain contact with our customers through the representatives."
What made SmartSales stand out from other competitors?
"In our sector, we often have to deal with transfer orders. Some pharmacists do not want to buy directly from us, but they do want to order our products through a transfer order. SmartSales made it possible for our representatives to indicate whether the customer wants to order directly with us or if his order should go through as a transfer order. These orders are an expansion of our customer database so the fact that we can now easily process these transfer orders was a definite condition when choosing SmartSales."
Has SmartSales changed your way of working?
"Yes, with the implementation of SmartSales, our entire workflow has radically changed. The workload for our back-office was reduced and everything is now structured. In the past, e-mails, calls, faxes... arrived with all kinds of orders from everywhere. Now everything enters our system almost semi-automatically. The entire inbound flow for the processing of the orders has become a lot more efficient. With a few clicks, most of it goes all the way straight into our accounting software.
But we see that our sales reps benefit as well. Their way of working with their doctors, pharmacists or their physiotherapists has become a lot more interactive. By going through the questionnaire they use their presentations a lot more. We also see that the built-in 'map' in the app that shows their biggest customers in the region is used a lot."
How would you describe the relationship with EASI?
"The relationship with EASI is very efficient. You always have the combination of the commercial person and the technical person who rolls out the project. The combination of those two is very good and very efficient. They are very transparent in their invoicing. And even if there is something that we don't like or that we have questions about, we get great feedback and they take it our message into account."
