Heli-Tek Keeping its Eye 'On the Ball' - Q&A with Jordan Bush, Heli-Tek's Marketing Director
Jordan tells us how a small ball screw manufacturer finds 'big' online business successDate: July 11, 2011 Posted by: i-MARK, Inc.
1. Describe your business.
Heli-Tek is a division of Precision Screw Thread Corp., located in Muskego, WI. We manufacture high efficiency linear motion products specializing in precision rolled ball screws, components and quality custom thread rolling solutions and services. We have 50 employees.
2. What was the business trigger that got Heli-Tek started on a search for an intuitive product ‘self-service’ functionality for your website?
It’s no secret that everything and everybody is online now, but our website was not ready for online users. We wanted to take catalog ball screws to the next level. We saw an opportunity to kick-off a new and profitable online business venture. This meant providing an outlet (our website) where users would get a high-touch self-service experience finding and configuring the right ball screw assembly for their needs. In our opinion, the easiest way to do this was via an online eCatalog with user-focused tools and capabilities. We also saw the opportunity to compliment and enhance the high-end product and brand image that our parent company, Precision Screw Thread, has always put forth.
3. What was the project goal?
The main project goal was to create a user-friendly environment that will not only offer specialized features for jargon-friendly engineers but also for the end-user who has limited ball screw/linear motion knowledge. We wanted to make people feel comfortable when they browse our site and offer an eCatalog with all users in mind to provide the confidence that is needed not only in researching our products, but also for purchasing!
4. Briefly describe the solution.
The new eCatalog integrates customizable ball screw selection wizards that guide different user-types through a series of questions and calculations, in addition to a variety of visual product selectors, which include help with ball screw assembly configuration (smart part number generation) and then display the specific products or components for purchase or RFQ. Soon we will be adding a number of user-friendly engineering calculators to further assist during the online selection process.
5. Did you meet any resistance with upper management? We ask because more often than not, we run into an SMB manufacturing company that doesn’t yet see the online business channel as a priority or just doesn’t quite ‘get’ what a true eCatalog can do for them. For them, traditional marketing and sales is all they know.
No, I didn’t have trouble. Our management knows that everying is online now and that is where we have to be too. What I did need to do was be mindful of their comfort level because they didn’t quite know how we would go about this endeavor. Likely this is what i-MARK runs into when the company doesn’t have a champion for online business or simply doesn’t prioritize it. It’s often a ‘comfort level’ thing. I was able to give very detailed presentations to help management understand the process: the end goals; and let them know exactly what we were doing while demonstrating the payoff (ROI). i-MARK also was quite helpful during this process because they were able to connect me with a number of their long-time customers who have been enjoying the ROI of Internet business, some for nearly 12 years.
6. Why did you choose i-MARK?
Simply put, i-MARK offered the most complete online eCatalog and eBusiness package with everything we needed to meet the various standards we had in mind, plus, i-MARK had the strong engineering-acumen to back it up.
7. What were some of those ‘standards’?
Be able to intuitively present very detailed ball screw information online and then give the user an option to buy online or submit an RFQ.
Robust product side-by-side comparison, with visable highlighting of the differences.
Generate, view and download CAD models for each part.
Detailed visit capture to allow us to generate quality web leads while also providing strong back-end analytical tools to track visitors’activities and product preferences, among other key marketing stats.
8. What results have you seen since launching your online eCatalog?
We have seen the great results that we had hoped to achieve as well as unexpected ones. The website eCatalog has generated many new leads as well as new business for us. Since we launched in December of 2010, we’ve seen about one new customer per week (online sales transactions) and many RFQ’s have since turned into sales.
Additionally, and this was not expected, we have seen much Chinese interest in our products, particularly from a distributor standpoint. And, we have been shipping internationally, which wasn’t the case before we launched this online business venture.
9. What was your revenue goal in terms of generating new business via the online system? By this we mean online sales transactions + online leads/RFQs that turned into a sale.
We put out a goal of $500,000 in the first year. We launched in December of 2010 and we are on-track to meeting this goal. Also, we have easily and quickly paid-off the i-MARK system cost with new web orders!
10. Any results in the way of internal process efficiencies related to the online eCatalog?
Many of us internally use the eCatalog if we have to look something up quickly and want a bird’s-eye view of all the products we offer. For our CSRs’ who may be on phone with a prospective customer, they are finding it helpful to type the specs from the customer into the eCatalog to quickly identify and narrow down what is available. Having said that, we’ve noticed that we don’t get as many incidental repetitive phone calls since our very detailed product information is self-service, on our website. When we do get calls, the callers have already decided what they want - they are ‘ready buyers’ that may have a few more questions or requests. In the past they would call and have us start from scratch with what they need.
11. Are you seeing any trends among your peers (SMB industrial manufacturers) to employ folks that are more attuned to web technologies, ecommerce and digital marketing?
Yes. I think the people being hired into the marketing positions of SMB industrial manufacturing companies or performing the marketing function are definitely trending to digitalizing their product catalogs and putting their products into a user-friendly experience online. I think they are finally coming to realization that you need to be online!
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