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NEWS
Continental Brings European Retreading Activities Under Conti360° Solutions Banner
Vipal Implements
CRM for International Team
In a move designed to push ahead with its evolution from tyre manufacturer and service provider into integrated solution provider, Continental has announced that it is bringing together its range of tyre related services for the fleet
comprising both digital solutions such as ContiConnect and ContiPressureCheck, and ContiLifeCycle – including the ContiRe and ContiTread retreading products and casing management. “By focusing more strongly on the
ContiLifeCycle concept in our Conti360° Solutions contracts, we are aiming to shift the emphasis to greater sustainability in the fleet business,” commented Ralf Benack, head of
Fleet Business EMEA.
“Conti360° Solutions makes us the go-to partner for sustainability in the fleet sector,” he added. Meanwhile, Continental says it is pursuing a systematic programme of investment in the research and development of new technologies,
alternative materials and environmentally compatible production processes. “Our aim is to offer our customers a ‘tyre of the future’ that is more energy efficient and kinder to the environment across
production, the usage cycle and retreading,” concluded Benack. “We are looking to gradually move to 100 percent sustainably produced materials in tyre production by 2050.”
Vipal has started 2021 with the implementation of a new CRM management tool (Customer Relationship Management) within its international sales units. Developed in partnership with Salesforce, a leading customer relationship management software company from the United States, the system gathers all customer information such as proposals, orders, characteristics and market potential onto a single platform. Oriented to Vipal's international sales team
and branches around the world (Africa, Argentina, Asia, Chile, Colombia, the United States, Europe, Mexico, Oceania and the Middle East) the CRM plans all commercial activities through quick and easy tools focusing on user experience to assist routines. Customer registration, access to the historical activities performed, access to opportunities, records, on-time enquires, and many other features are some of the functionalities of the CRM that helps improving efficiency and assertiveness allowing the Vipal team to provide a better service to customers using all the technological functionalities of the tool.
Moreover, all existing data on the platform is likely to become information, including phone calls and e-mail exchanges which allows the user to identify business opportunities and improve the relationship with their customers, as well as having a more realistic position on all demands in a simple and intuitive way. Throughout a management panel the platform gives an overview of all the opportunities allowing to check in which stage the opportunity have reached and the updated status.
For Cristine Rigon, Administrative Manager of Vipal’s
International Team, the establishment of the CRM by Vipal´s team fully satisfies the needs of the company, as it meets the main function that it is proposed, which is to gather the same information in one place. "Information is the biggest advantage in the corporate world today so that companies can strengthen their business", she said. “The team praised the quality of the tool functionalities, which is capable to speed up, update and assist customer
management data service,” she added.
Another advantage that this implementation brought was the integration between the branches' ERP (enterprise resource planning system), in addition to storing up five years of retrievable data. “Salesforce is the number one CRM tool in the world. In this way, we bring all this worldwide expertise in terms of bargaining power, communication strength and information control, already applied in many segments combined with our expertise in tyre retreading as leaders in this market”, explained Rigon. Besides that, by being able to get back the information of the activities from the past five years, plus the information that is constantly being entered in CRM, the company is building an extensive database. This will allow, in the near future, to apply Artificial Intelligence to perform analyses, projections and interpretations by cross-checking data, which will further increase and optimize the business expansion capacity and efficiency of the sales team.
sector under the banner of Conti360° Solutions.
With this measure, the company says it is responding to changing customer requirements in a market shaped by increasing digitalisation, data-driven management and cost pressure. The strategic pooling of
Ralf Benack
tyre services is also expected to help the haulage industry to successfully address the growing need for sustainability in the logistics sector.
Fleet solutions will in the future be offered as an overall package
Good Wheels Exits Tyre Sector
According to sources in Russia, the St Petersburg-based tyre dealership group Good Wheels (Chorosie Kolesa) has ceased tyre-related activities following series financial difficulties. The Group owns and operates a retreading and recycling plant in St Petersburg, which during the
best years was producing more than 20,000 retreads per year. According to our sources, almost all employees of the company were released with effect from April 9. The company’s Director and co-owner Anatoli Agashin was not available for comment.
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Retreading Business