Electrolux Outdoor Products is in the final stage of a five-year business improvement plan to enhance customer service and streamline processes.

The company is working on the second part of the implementation of a new customer relationship management (CRM) system, which will go live at the beginning of next year for its supply chain team.

The first phase went live last November in the customer services department.

The Outdoor Products division sells one and a half million of the Electrolux group's 55 million annual product sales.

It is using Computer Software Limited's Talent CRM application to increase efficiency and analyse trends more effectively, says head of customer services Brian Wytcherley.

With high volume sales, it's important to record faults, trends and enquiries and use that information more effectively, he says.

'We can now spot trends and feed them back into the design process. We couldn't do that before. We can now turn grey data into real information,' he said.

The business has eight core applications, and previously customer services could not link to them. Talent now integrates with the company's bespoke software running on an AS/400.

The CRM initiative is the final part of a long-term initiative, he says.

'We wanted to put a system in place that would take into account our market growth and product broadening over the last decade. Our customer contact was increasing but our back office was lagging behind our market position, so we wanted to improve.

'It's part of a planned improvement programme. In 1998 we started looking at where we were and setting objectives. We improved our telephony first. Then we had a few online initiatives for trade customers such as an EDI, intranet and then internet and self-service. The last piece of the jigsaw was customer services,' he said.

Wytcherley says other parts of the group are interested Outdoor Products' CRM project. He anticipates many will adopt similar strategies, budgets permitting.