Geofabrics

Digital evolution at Australia’s largest Geotextile manufacturer drives sales and marketing growth

Website: https://www.geofabrics.co/

“We have used Symphony 3 for a number of digital projects over the last few years. The team are innovative, supportive and really know how to help businesses undertake digital projects with an end goal in mind - they really helped us map out our long term digital plan and are now helping us deliver it as a staged project”

Sarah Dawson, Marketing Manager, Geofabrics

Overview

Geofabrics is the largest geosynthetic supplier in Australasia and the only Australian manufacturer of geotextiles. With branches throughout Australia, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea and the Pacific, the company provides solutions to thousands of engineering, construction and infrastructure clients including industry leaders like Lendlease, John Holland and Fulton Hogan. In a market where lower quality products are flooding the market, Geofabrics prides itself on its world class solutions and its commitment to providing the best customer service in the sector.

The Challenge

Geofabrics has been an undisputed market leader in Australasia for over 35 years. In the past decade, the geotextile market in the region has experienced disruption. Increased globalisation and the proliferation of digital technologies enables overseas suppliers to flood the market with sub-standard products.

The challenge for Geofabrics is to continue to maintain its market leadership. This means continually differentiating itself from lower cost and lower quality providers.

Geofabrics is committed to doing this by maintaining excellence in manufacturing and production, and improving customer service. Geofabrics required a scalable, flexible solution that could be delivered in ongoing stages in accordance with internal resources.

The Solution

Digital technologies enable manufacturing and customer service excellence. Geofabrics identified that better use of these technologies would enable it to evolve and adapt the business to the new competitive world.

Over the course of four or five years, Symphony3 has become a trusted digital advisor to Geofabrics, working in partnership with its marketing and IT teams.

Working together the project team has systematically implemented digital transformation initiatives that have benefitted the bottom line, by streamlining the sales process, opening new channels, and providing better information to the management team.

Digital service delivery has become increasingly central to the customer experience with customers encouraged to support themselves and to access and order their own products.

Symphony3 has helped the organisation with the following:

• A digital roadmap - helping Geofabrics to develop an actionable strategy for digital transformation.
• Implementation of a flexible, scalable digital platform over various stages.
  • Developing a smart, interactive website.
  • Using middleware to integrate the web front end with the CRM (customer relationship management).
  • Developing a new eCommerce channel.
  • Full digital integration - providing the framework and architecture to systematically integrate all digital and internal systems.
• An improved, integrated digital marketing strategy, incorporating social media strategy, email marketing and search engine optimisation
• Assistance with set up and measurement of analytics to drive ongoing improvement.

The Outcome

By focusing on customer-centric solutions, premium quality products and exceptional customer service Geofabrics continues to stand out from the competition and maintain the loyalty of its best customers.

The Symphony3 platform provides the underlying foundations and systems to achieve this.

Geofabrics digital maturity has grown significantly over the last 3-4 years. Led by Marketing Manager Sarah Dawson and Business Systems Manager Azmaan Sayed, the organisation has developed a digital first mindset. Today, digital technologies are right at the heart of the Geofabrics’ operations.

Having a digital platform that is flexible and open provides the foundation upon which to innovate and to implement new digital services, contributing to business growth.

Geofabrics now:

• Delivers an enhanced and more consistent user experience to customers and partners (with personalised online features and functions available to clients). For example:

  • DIY and independent tradies can order and pay online and have goods delivered anywhere in Australia

  • Large customers can access their accounts and basket of goods and pricing and order and reorder directly from their mobile device.

• Communicates and differentiates itself as a premium provider against lower cost competitors. 

• Segments communications and messages to different market segments, via integrated email marketing and social media and access to relevant website information

• Streamlines business processes - by integrating systems and data, resulting in:

  • Improved sales processes and reduction in response times.

  • Elimination of errors as manual processing and double handling of data is reduced.

All of the above contribute to continued growth and profitability.

For more information get in touch.

Key Takeaways

• Improved customer service through online engagement

• Consolidation of websites to drive better brand message

• Better understanding of key customer segments to drive sales

• Online access to orders and re-orders for major accounts

• New eCommerce channel for DIY and trade

• Fully integrated website, CRM and ERP eliminates manual handling and captures customer touchpoints end to end

Services

• Digital strategy
• Digital platform
• Integration services
• CRM (customer relationship management)
• eCommerce