Head office
Gateshead, UK
Established in 2012, Bloom is the exclusive delivery partner for the North East Procurement Organisation’s NEPRO³ framework, a fast and cost-effective model that delivers better outcomes for buyers in the UK public sector.
By offering straightforward, OJEU*-compliant access to its professional services network, Bloom provides an end-to-end marketplace solution for procurement, contract management, and payment.
Bloom’s marketplace presents an extensive choice of regional and national suppliers to the entire UK public sector, and ensures contractual, commercial, and delivery risk is monitored and managed.
Gateshead, UK
2012
Business Consulting and Services
January 2020
Sugar Sell and Sugar Market
Bloom’s commercial team was collecting a significant amount of information from buyers and suppliers, but without capturing it centrally. The information silos being created in spreadsheets and emails were making it impossible to identify where sales campaigns and commercial activity were generating business.
The information also needed to be shared with the wider business so that everyone could find accurate and updated information in one place, but Bloom lacked a defined process that could be used to build a bespoke system around its requirements.
Bloom’s commercial and technology teams formed a working group and commissioned market analysis to help find the best solution for its data capturing issues. After examining the options and watching numerous demos, they decided to onboard Sugar Sell and Sugar Market, implemented by Provident CRM’s expert team.
As Provident CRM began work on the training phase, it became clear that a project manager was needed to articulate Bloom’s requirements and facilitate company-wide access to the data now available. Victoria Elliott, Bloom’s project manager responsible for internal data and technology projects, was brought onboard to analyse what the internal teams needed to achieve, and translate that to Provident CRM.
Victoria helped the company roll out SugarCRM beyond the commercial function. Bloom’s teams started using the solution to inform stakeholder engagement for their buyer and supplier networks and to help manage contracts throughout their lifecycle.
Through Sugar Sell, the commercial team began recording and managing leads generated by the company’s website and contact forms, all the way through to opportunity generation. The solution enabled them to capture accurate customer information and monitor results by tracking interactions.
With Sugar Market, the marketing team replaced clogged inboxes with an internal enquiries tracking module integrated with the CRM.
Bloom’s engagement with the market has improved dramatically and the commercial team has been able to develop deeper relationships with stakeholders. SugarCRM provides the data and analysis the company needs to support an enhanced customer experience within a structured sales process.
The company has benefited significantly from flexible configuration that allows its teams to customise SugarCRM to their operational needs.
Our experience with Provident CRM has been excellent. The team has weekly support calls, and we know we can rely on Provident CRM’s Customer Success Experts to understand our business, respond promptly, and help us resolve any issues or questions.
– Victoria Elliott, Project Manager at Bloom
Bloom will shortly be implementing a process to manage revenue realisation and capture invoicing data. They will also roll out a project review process to gather intelligence from specific projects, and help with their delivery, instead of relying on information gathered from emails.
Catering to Bloom’s business’s particular needs didn’t stop after the consulting phase was over. We knew that Bloom needed an equally customised implementation solution designed to meet their unique needs, and we helped to implement SugarCRM in a way that fully armed their team with the tools they would need to attract, retain, and grow their customer base for life.
