Eliminate Cold Calling and Increase Sales with Advanced Lead Management and SugarCRM
Flat World Knowledge Eliminates Cold Calling and Increases Sales with Advanced Lead Management in Sugar Professional
“Sugar Professional was the best product to execute on our complex data model. Because Sugar is an open source solution, it gave us the control and flexibility to adapt as we go and facilitate our sales driven model, all at a price that made sense to us.”
Eric Frank, Co-founder, President, CMO, Flat World Knowledge
Quick Facts
- Company Description:
Founded in 2007 by senior textbook industry executives, privately held Flat World Knowledge is a leading publisher of commercial, openly-licensed college textbooks.
- Headquarters: Irvington, NY
- Founded: 2007
- Solution: Sugar Professional
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Implementation Partner: ApexTwo
Case Study 
Business Issue:
Flat World Knowledge is the largest commercial publisher of open source college textbooks in the world. It strives to redefine the college textbook industry by publishing expert textbooks in the traditional model, yet makes the textbooks open and free by using a creative commons open license that gives professors legal control to customize their textbooks.
To create awareness of its new books, Flat World realized it needed to focus on creating relationships with the professors who are responsible for course materials and curriculum. And with over 280,000 professors and instructors throughout the U.S. university market, Flat World knew they would need a robust CRM solution to create, nurture and manage those relationships.
Requirements:
- A flexible, data driven sales management system capable of modeling the structure of private and public universities in the U.S.
- Cloud-based solution that could scale with business growth and support a geographically diverse sales organization.
- Highly user-friendly interface to encourage strong user adoption across the organization.
- Able to drive its direct sales, email marketing and public relationship efforts.
Solution:
Flat World completed a rigorous assessment of CRM solutions and narrowed its options to Microsoft Dynamics, Salesforce.com and SugarCRM. Sugar Professional was ultimately chosen for its openness for customization, its ability to handle complex data models, full relational database access, and cost.
During its first selling season using Sugar Professional, Flat World realized that 85 percent of its faculty business originated from web traffic and only a small number spoke directly with a salesperson. As a result, Flat World refocused its efforts on website lead generation while its Sugar integration partner, ApexTwo, developed a “lead management engine” that creates alerts when prospects respond to direct mail, public relations and email marketing campaigns.
Benefits:
- Reduced cold calling by 100 percent with a total shift in sales efforts from outbound cold call prospects to warm lead responses.
- Gained 100 percent increase in year-on-year sales with the development of its web lead generation engine in Sugar Professional, thus turning web traffic into sales leads.
- Decreased customer response time by 50 percent with a custom lead scoring module that prioritizes high-scoring leads.
Full Case Study
Case Study About Flat World Knowledge
Flat World Knowledge is the largest publisher of free and open college textbooks for students worldwide. Committed to making higher education more affordable and accessible, the company provides students with free online access to complete, peer-reviewed textbooks, with options to purchase affordable print and digital formats, including e-books, audio books, PDF downloads and interactive study aids. Flat World’s open license and online editing platform enable professors to modify the content and create the “perfect book” for their course. To date, more than 1600 professors at over 900 colleges in 44 countries have used Flat World open textbooks. Backed by top venture capital firms, Flat World Knowledge was named, along with Apple, Facebook and Google, as one of the information industry’s “30 to Watch” in 2011 by Outsell, Inc.
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About ApexTwo Inc.
ApexTwo creates best-in-class business solutions that deliver competitive advantage and ROI by exploiting the power and flexibility of SugarCRM. Our unique Lead Management Engine, integrated with SugarCRM, delivers additional marketing automation, lead scoring and a 360 degree view of prospect activity, all within SugarCRM. Speak with us and you’ll learn why clients trust ApexTwo to bring the best people, methods, and business knowledge to ensure the success of their project.
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