The heart of a successful company is its sales force; the men and women who bring the product face–to–face with the buying market. Agri–Sales Associates brings the power of a top–flight sales team to a wide range of independent manufacturers in the agricultural, home–and–garden, hardware, and veterinary fields. Agri–Sales Associates provides experienced, professional, personal service to both clients and consumers in every state, and the full suite of FileMaker Pro products plays a vital role in keeping that service organized.

Business Challenge

Headquartered in Nashville, TN, Agri–Sales Associates depends on efficient information–management technology to stay up–to–date on the activities of its sales representatives in the field, as well as to provide up–to–the–minute service to its clients. "There are three major bodies of data which I am trying to connect to each other," explains Agri–Sales technology consultant David Simmons. "They are the field sales reps, who are the core of the business, the vendors who provide the products that are sold, and us — at the management office — the clearinghouse in the middle. We manage sales and marketing campaigns and monitor performance. Today we have a number of different vendors, with between 2 to 200 products each. We service over 70,000 potential customers, which may have anywhere from 5 to 50 personnel each. And we run a full sales reporting and forecasting database for the past rolling 25 months encompassing hundreds of thousands of transactions."

It's a complex arrangement, with vast amounts of data streaming in and out of headquarters every day: transactional data such as what's been sold to whom and how much commission is due, as well as qualitative data such as competitive information and market intelligence on their ever–changing customer base.

Successful Solution

Agri–Sales began using FileMaker Pro a decade ago. "Why FileMaker Pro?" offers David. "Cost and ease of modification, hands down — as well as the confidence that I'd be able to throw just about any challenge at FileMaker Pro, and find a way to meet it. I'm absolutely convinced that is NOT the case with many other products."

David's database system is kept simple and efficient. "My aim is to keep our database system as small as possible, and the migration to FileMaker Pro 7 really allows me to consolidate some of the workarounds I had to do in the past," he explains. "We've got multiple data types and data sets, At any one time we may have a quarter million transactions, across twenty to fifty thousand active customers, 80,000 or so field sales reports, broadcast faxing, emailing, and internal reporting on the whole thing. I am so thankful for the added robustness and security of FileMaker Pro 7 because virtually all of our system is 'Business Critical."

My aim is to keep our database system as small as possible, and the migration to FileMaker Pro 7 really allows me to consolidate some of the workarounds I had to do in the past. We've got multiple data types and data sets. At any one time we may have a quarter million transactions, across twenty to fifty thousand active customers, 80,000 or so field sales reports, broadcast faxing, emailing, and internal reporting on the whole thing. I am so thankful for the added robustness and security of FileMaker Pro 7 because virtually all of our system is 'Business Critical'.

— David Simmons, Consultant, Agri–Sales Associates Inc.