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Simplifying CRM Adoption

What if the Customer Relationship Management (CRM) technology your organization invested thousands of dollars in to streamline operations and boost revenue is sitting unused by the very people it was designed to help?

Projects with strong change management and user adoption initiatives are seven times more likely to meet their organizational objectives, yet many organizations treat CRM implementation as a technical rather than organizational challenge. This gap between proven methodology and common practice represents one of the most costly oversights in modern business technology.

In this article you will learn:

Why leadership disengagement hinders CRM success across entire organizations
How AI-driven automation eliminates the administrative burden that drives user resistance
The two leadership strategies that consistently deliver high user adoption rates
How one implementation approach delivers 3x faster ROI than traditional automation-focused methods
The specific framework that transforms CRM from administrative burden to strategic asset

The Leadership Crisis: How Executive Disengagement Kills CRM Value

When executives fail to actively use CRM data for decision-making, they create a cultural message that reverberates throughout the organization: this tool is optional. As Bill Hoffman, CRM Practice Director at Net at Work, emphasizes, “If leaders don’t reference CRM in quarterly reviews, employees won’t prioritize it.”

This leadership gap has measurable consequences. Research demonstrates that projects with strong change management and user adoption initiatives are seven times more likely to meet their objectives. This statistic should concern any executive whose CRM investment isn’t delivering expected returns, as it suggests the problem lies not with the technology but with the implementation approach.

The solution requires two specific leadership interventions that consistently drive adoption. First, executives must lead by example, requiring themselves to use CRM for quarterly reviews and strategic planning rather than delegating this responsibility. This visible commitment signals organizational priority and sets expectations for all levels of the company.

Second, leaders must tie CRM usage to performance metrics. When managerial performance reviews and compensation include team adoption rates as a component, it transforms CRM from a compliance exercise into a competitive advantage. This approach creates accountability while demonstrating that CRM usage directly impacts business success.

The AI Revolution: Eliminating the Administrative Burden That Drives Resistance

The second critical breakthrough in CRM adoption comes from addressing a root cause of user resistance: administrative overload. Traditional CRM systems have long struggled because users perceive them as “just more work.” The most common complaint, as Hoffman describes, captures this perfectly:

“Imagine this: I’m a salesperson in the field. I go around, I talk to customers, I talk to prospects, and then what do I have to do? I have to go back to the hotel room and retype all of my notes into Salesforce.com. That is not a good employee experience.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) can help address this issue through automated data capture and entry. Modern AI-powered CRM systems can now process calls, meetings, or conversations and automatically transcribe, summarize, and log relevant information directly into the system. This technology shift addresses a fundamental user experience problem that has plagued CRM adoption for decades.

AI-driven transcription can go beyond automatically creating call summaries and follow-up tasks. It can also help generate contextual insights that prepare comprehensive meeting summaries by aggregating emails, past interactions, and purchase history, and automated task creation that generates next steps based on conversation content or customer status.

As Hoffman explains the transformative value:

“I can simply type into AI, ‘Please summarize a quarterly business review for account XYZ for my meeting on Thursday,’ and it spits something out… imagine having to do that from scratch in five different systems versus something getting me 85% of the way there, and then me just tweaking it. It just saved me three hours—three hours I can serve customers.”

This approach fundamentally changes the value proposition of CRM systems. Instead of adding administrative burden, AI-enhanced CRM systems reduce workload while improving data quality and completeness. The result is higher user satisfaction, better adoption rates, and more accurate business intelligence.

The Implementation Framework: Beyond Technology to Transformation

While leadership engagement and AI integration represent the most impactful strategies for CRM adoption, they’re part of a broader framework that addresses the human, process, and organizational factors that determine success. The complete approach recognizes that CRM adoption is fundamentally a change management challenge that requires systematic methodology.

Successful implementations focus on co-creating workflows with end-users rather than imposing top-down processes. This involves service teams in prioritizing quick-access ticket histories over sales-focused pipeline views, introduces recognition systems for achieving CRM milestones, and replaces traditional lengthy training sessions with embedded microlearning approaches.

The process optimization extends beyond basic automation to include role-based dashboards that provide relevant information for each function, integration with existing business workflows to eliminate duplicate data entry, and focus on essential features that deliver immediate value rather than comprehensive functionality that overwhelms users.

Advanced Strategies and Comprehensive Methodologies

Our white paper details additional critical components including specific change management techniques that address behavioral inertia, data quality improvement strategies that create trusted single sources of truth, cross-departmental collaboration approaches that break down organizational silos, and continuous improvement methodologies that ensure long-term success.

These complementary strategies work together to create sustainable adoption that evolves with business needs.

Moving Forward: From Resistance to Revenue

The transformation from CRM resistance to greater revenue generation requires specific leadership behaviors, thoughtful AI integration, and systematic change management that addresses human factors alongside technical considerations.

For organizations ready to move beyond failed implementations, this represents an opportunity to build a foundation for sustainable growth, higher user satisfaction, and measurable return on investment—but only when implementation follows proven methodologies rather than hoping technology alone will drive adoption.

Ready to implement the complete framework for CRM adoption success?

Download the full white paper, “Simplifying CRM Adoption: Strategies for Overcoming User Resistance and Enhancing ROI,” for detailed implementation roadmaps, specific measurement frameworks, change management templates, and step-by-step guides for transforming your CRM from administrative burden to strategic asset.

Key Takeaways for Business Leaders

Change management is the primary success factor: Projects with strong change management and user adoption initiatives are seven times more likely to meet their objectives, making systematic implementation methodology more important than technology selection.
AI transforms the adoption equation: Companies aligning AI with human workflows achieve three times faster ROI by eliminating administrative burden rather than simply automating existing processes.
Leadership engagement drives organizational adoption: Executive modeling of CRM usage and tying adoption to performance metrics creates cultural change that technology alone cannot achieve.
User experience determines long-term success: Addressing the fundamental complaint that CRM creates “more work” through AI automation and workflow optimization directly impacts adoption rates and user satisfaction.
Comprehensive strategies multiply effectiveness: While leadership and AI represent the highest-impact approaches, sustainable success requires the complete framework of behavioral, process, and organizational strategies detailed in our white paper.

When Your ERP and CRM Finally Talk: AI Fills the Gap (X3 + Creatio)

How CRM Integration Boosts Manufacturing and Distribution Efficiency and Customer Retention

Your ERP system transformed back-office operations, but it addresses only half of your business equation. While ERP excels at post-sale management, it leaves a critical gap in managing relationships that determine customer loyalty versus defection.

In B2B manufacturing and distribution, acquiring customers through industry relationships is often straightforward. The real challenge lies in delivering exceptional customer experiences that prevent defection and maximize lifetime value. This article explores how integrating CRM with existing ERP creates a unified customer experience platform protecting your most valuable asset: customer relationships.

In this article you will learn:

How customer defection costs compound in manufacturing beyond immediate revenue loss
The specific operational gaps that fragment customer experiences in manufacturing environments
Why ERP systems, despite their operational strengths, cannot address modern customer experience requirements
Key integration strategies that transform transactional data into relationship intelligence
Measurable outcomes from companies that have successfully unified their customer data systems

The Customer Retention Crisis in Manufacturing

The Hidden Cost of Customer Defection

In manufacturing and distribution, losing a customer extends far beyond losing this quarter’s orders. It represents losing years of relationship investment and future revenue potential. According to the National Association of Manufacturer’s 2025 survey, only 55% of manufacturing executives maintain a positive business outlook, representing the weakest sentiment since 2020. This challenging environment makes operational efficiency and customer retention more critical than ever.

Consider these critical realities facing today’s manufacturers:

High Switching Costs Work Both Ways: While customers face expensive switching costs when changing suppliers, manufacturers face equally expensive replacement costs when losing established customers. The process of understanding customer specifications, quality requirements, and operational preferences represents significant investments that disappear with customer defection.

Relationship Dependency: B2B manufacturing relationships often span decades, making each customer exponentially more valuable over time. Unlike transactional B2B sales, manufacturing partnerships deepen through shared problem-solving, custom solutions, and operational integration. This relationship depth creates compound value that grows with tenure.

Referral Impact: One dissatisfied customer can influence multiple prospects within your industry network. Manufacturing industries are typically tight-knit communities where reputation travels quickly. A single negative experience can close doors to entire market segments through word-of-mouth influence.

Service Expectations: Today’s B2B buyers expect B2C-level service experiences, even in complex manufacturing relationships. The Amazon effect has raised expectations for immediate information access, proactive communication, and seamless problem resolution across all business interactions.

Why Customer Experience Gaps Develop

The root cause isn’t poor intentions or inadequate resources. It’s fragmented systems that prevent your team from delivering cohesive customer experiences despite best efforts.

Scenario 1: The Service Breakdown

Your customer calls with an urgent quality issue affecting their production line. Your service representative can access the complaint history and previous resolutions but cannot see the customer’s current order status, payment terms, or recent interactions with your sales team. Meanwhile, your sales representative remains unaware of the service issues when they call about the next order opportunity. The customer experiences this as poor coordination and questions whether your organization truly understands their business importance.

Scenario 2: The Proactive Opportunity Missed

Your ERP system clearly shows that a long-term customer’s order patterns have changed significantly. They’re ordering 30% less than their historical average over the past six months. This could signal budget constraints, competitive pressure, changing market conditions, or evolving business needs. Without integrated systems, this early warning signal sits invisible in your ERP database while your customer relationship slowly deteriorates. Your sales team continues operating under outdated assumptions while the customer evaluates alternatives.

Scenario 3: The Escalation Failure

A customer’s payment is delayed beyond terms, triggering automatic hold procedures in your ERP system. However, your sales team isn’t automatically notified of the credit hold, and they continue promising delivery dates that operations cannot meet. The customer experiences mixed messages and begins questioning your organization’s reliability and internal communication. What started as a simple payment timing issue escalates into a relationship-threatening credibility problem.

The True Cost of Disconnected Customer Management

Quantifying the Customer Experience Gap

Disconnected systems create measurable impacts on customer relationships across multiple dimensions:

Service Response Delays: When customer service representatives cannot immediately access complete order history, current shipping status, and previous interaction context, average response times increase dramatically. According to a recent Net at Work white paper, organizations typically achieve a 75% reduction in resolution time after implementing integrated CRM-ERP systems. This improvement directly correlates with customer satisfaction improvements.

Missed Retention Signals: Early warning indicators of customer dissatisfaction exist throughout your systems but remain invisible to customer-facing teams. Changed ordering patterns, increased service calls, payment delays, and complaint frequency often predict customer defection months in advance. Without integrated visibility, these signals go unnoticed until competitive displacement occurs.

Administrative Overhead: Net at Work’s white paper, “Simplifying CRM Adoption,” reports that customer-facing teams typically spend 12-15 hours per week switching between systems, manually transferring data, and reconciling conflicting information. This represents time that could be invested in relationship building, proactive problem-solving, and strategic account development. The opportunity cost extends beyond efficiency to relationship quality and competitive positioning.

Reactive vs. Proactive Service: McKinsey B2B Growth Research reports that “Only 29% of executives actively use CRM data for strategic decision-making, leaving critical customer insights untapped.”

Disconnected systems force organizations into reactive mode, responding to problems after customers complain rather than identifying and addressing issues proactively. This reactive posture damages customer confidence and positions your organization as a vendor rather than a strategic partner.

The Compounding Effect
These individual touchpoint failures compound over time, creating cumulative relationship damage. A customer who experiences one service breakdown might forgive the incident as an anomaly. However, when multiple departments seem uncoordinated and uninformed about their business, customers begin questioning whether your organization truly values their relationship and partnership.

 “The solution isn’t replacing your ERP investment. It’s connecting ERP capabilities with purpose-built customer relationship management tools that create a unified view of each customer relationship. This integration transforms transactional data into relationship intelligence.”

Why ERP Alone Can’t Deliver Modern Customer Experience

ERP Strengths and Limitations

Your ERP system excels at operational efficiency: managing inventory levels, processing orders accurately, tracking financial performance, and maintaining data integrity. These capabilities form the operational foundation of successful manufacturing businesses. However, ERP systems weren’t designed for relationship management or customer experience orchestration.

ERP Handles Transactions, Not Relationships: ERP systems track what customers buy, when they buy, and how much they pay. However, they don’t capture why customers buy, how satisfied they are with your service, what might cause them to switch suppliers, or what opportunities exist for relationship expansion. This transactional focus misses the relationship intelligence that drives long-term customer value.

Limited Customer Communication Tools: ERP systems typically lack the communication tracking, automated follow-up capabilities, and relationship management tools that modern customers expect. They cannot orchestrate multi-channel customer communications or maintain comprehensive interaction histories across touchpoints.

Departmental Silos: ERP data often remains within operational teams while customer-facing teams work in separate systems. This creates information gaps at critical customer touchpoints where relationship decisions are made and customer perceptions are formed.

The Integration Imperative

The solution isn’t replacing your ERP investment. It’s connecting ERP capabilities with purpose-built customer relationship management tools that create a unified view of each customer relationship. This integration transforms transactional data into relationship intelligence.

The Net at Work Creatio Advantage: Manufacturing-Focused Customer Experience

Why Generic CRM Falls Short for Manufacturers
Manufacturing customer relationships require specialized approaches that generic CRM platforms struggle to deliver effectively:

Complex Product Configurations: Manufacturing often involves custom specifications, technical requirements, and multi-component orders requiring sophisticated data management capabilities. Generic CRM platforms lack the flexibility to handle these complexities without extensive customization.

Long Relationship Lifecycles: Manufacturing relationships span years or decades, demanding different relationship management approaches than transactional B2B sales. The customer journey includes multiple phases: specification development, pilot programs, production scaling, ongoing support, and continuous improvement initiatives.

Service Integration Requirements: Manufacturing customers expect seamless coordination between sales, service, and operations teams. They need unified visibility into order status, service history, technical specifications, and relationship context across all interactions.

Net at Work Delivers Manufacturing-Grade CRM Integration

Net at Work delivers manufacturing-grade no-code CRM workflows with Sage X3 integration. Net at Work’s proven implementation methodology is managed by a team with 25 years of CRM implementation experience.

Deep ERP Integration: Our Sage X3 integration provides bidirectional data flow for orders, accounts, contacts, and service requests. Current production deployments demonstrate seamless real-time synchronization, with full workflow automation capabilities available for immediate implementation. This integration eliminates manual data entry and ensures consistent information across systems.

Manufacturing Workflow Automation: Pre-built processes for quote-to-order management, RMA handling, vendor relationship management, and service request automation eliminate the manual coordination that creates customer experience gaps. These workflows are based on manufacturing best practices and proven implementation experience.

No-Code Customization: When your business processes change or you need new automation capabilities, your team can modify workflows without requiring development resources. This ensures your CRM evolves with your customer needs and business requirements without ongoing IT dependency.

Proactive Relationship Management: Automated alerts and workflows help identify and address potential customer issues before they impact relationships. Early warning systems trigger proactive outreach when customer behavior patterns indicate risk or opportunity.

Wondering how your team can get ahead of customer defection before it starts?

When systems don’t talk to each other, critical signals get lost and relationships suffer. See how leading manufacturers are using integrated CRM to equip their sales teams with the visibility, automation, and intelligence needed to strengthen retention and drive growth.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: Why can’t ERP systems handle customer relationship management effectively?

A: ERP systems excel at transactional data management but lack relationship intelligence capabilities. They track what customers buy and when, but cannot capture satisfaction levels, relationship health indicators, or communication histories across touchpoints. This creates gaps in customer experience delivery despite strong operational performance.

Q: What early warning signs indicate customer relationship risk in manufacturing

A: Key indicators include declining order volumes, increased service requests, payment delays, reduced communication frequency, and changes in ordering patterns. When these signals exist across disconnected systems, they often go unnoticed until competitive displacement occurs.

Q: How do fragmented systems impact customer service response times?

A: When service representatives cannot access complete customer context immediately, they must gather information from multiple systems before responding. This increases resolution time and creates frustration for customers expecting immediate assistance with urgent issues.

Q: What makes manufacturing CRM requirements different from other industries?

A: Manufacturing involves complex product configurations, multi-year relationship lifecycles, technical specifications, and close coordination between sales, service, and operations teams. Standard CRM platforms require extensive customization to handle these manufacturing-specific requirements effectively.

Q: What should manufacturers prioritize when evaluating CRM integration options?

A: Focus on bidirectional ERP synchronization, manufacturing workflow automation, service request management, and no-code customization capabilities. The solution should handle complex product data while providing immediate access to complete customer context across all touchpoints.

Works Cited

McKinsey. (2022, February). McKinsey & Company, The new B2B growth equation. Retrieved from https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/growth-marketing-and-sales/our-insights/the-new-b2b-growth-equation

National Association of Manufacturers (NAM). (2025). 2025 Second Quarter Manufacturers’ Outlook. Retrieved from nam.org: https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/growth-marketing-and-sales/our-insights/the-new-b2b-growth-equation

Net at Work. (2025). Simplifying CRM Adoption. Retrieved from https://www.staging.netatwork.com/resource/simplifying-crm-adoption/?rt=whitepaper

Net at Work Named Creatio SMB Partner of the Year

Award Recognizes Net at Work’s CRM Depth for Mid-Market Companies Running Connected ERP and Customer Operations

Net at Work was announced as Creatio’s SMB Partner of the Year at No-Code Days Florida 2026. The award recognizes our mission to partner with small and mid-size businesses by putting Creatio’s AI-native CRM and no-code platform to work across sales, service, and connected ERP operations.

Key Takeaways

Net at Work received the Creatio SMB Partner of the Year award at the No-Code Days Florida 2026 awards ceremony in Orlando, Florida.

The recognition reflects Net at Work’s work helping small and mid-size businesses adopt Creatio’s AI-native CRM and no-code automation.

Net at Work positions CRM as part of a connected ERP environment, serving manufacturing, wholesale distribution, energy and utilities, life sciences, and non-profit organizations.

The award follows Net at Work’s recent designation as one of only eight Creatio Premier Partners worldwide.

Plenty of mid-market companies own a CRM their sales team barely opens. The records don’t match what’s in the ERP, service has its own version of the customer, and leadership ends up reconciling multiple systems to answer one question. Choosing CRM software is the easy part, but implementing it to strengthen how the business really runs is where many projects stall.

Closing that gap is the work behind Net at Work’s latest recognition. Creatio recently named Net at Work its SMB Partner of the Year, a nod to results delivered for small and mid-size businesses.

About the recognition

Creatio presented the SMB Partner of the Year award during the No-Code Days Florida 2026 awards ceremony, held at The Ritz-Carlton Orlando, Grande Lakes. The event brought together business and technology leaders to look at how AI agents and no-code tools are changing CRM and workflow automation.

Creatio recognizes partners by category, and the SMB designation points to a partner that consistently helps smaller and mid-size organizations get measurable value from the platform.

The award builds on a busy stretch for Net at Work’s CRM practice. The firm was recently named one of only eight Creatio Premier Partners worldwide, a designation Creatio reserves for organizations that show strong technical performance and close alignment with its AI-native and no-code direction.

“Being recognized by Creatio is an incredible honor for Net at Work and a reflection of the work our team is doing to help organizations rethink how technology supports growth and customer experience,” said Bill Hoffman, CRM Division Practice Director at Net at Work. “We work across many industries, with a particularly strong focus on manufacturing, where speed, visibility, and connected data are essential to staying competitive.

“Together, Creatio and Net at Work give organizations a faster path to value and a lower cost of entry than traditional CRM platforms. What excites us most is that this is bigger than CRM. AI and business process automation are becoming the foundation for end-to-end business management, the layer that connects people, processes, and decisions across the entire organization.”

What this means for mid-market buyers

Net at Work works with CRM implementations and integrations with ERP across manufacturing, wholesale distribution, energy and utilities, life sciences, and non-profit organizations. The firm’s background in ERP gives its CRM work a particular shape: customer data, workflow automation, project management, and service operations are set up to share one version of the truth rather than sit in a system of their own.

For a small or mid-size company, that connection is the difference between a CRM that reports on the business and one that reflects it. Net at Work pairs Creatio’s no-code platform with its work across ERP, HCM, and CRM so customer engagement, internal processes, and AI-driven automation line up with how the company already operates.

About Creatio and No-Code Days Florida 2026

Creatio is an AI CRM and workflow platform where people and AI agents work together, with no limits on users, agents, or scale. No-Code Days Florida 2026: Agentic Leadership ran June 11–13 at The Ritz-Carlton Orlando, Grande Lakes, with keynotes, hands-on sessions, and a dedicated partner day, plus an awards ceremony recognizing partners and customers across the Creatio community.

Put your CRM to work

If your sales team has stopped trusting the CRM because it doesn’t match operations, that’s a fixable problem. Talk with Net at Work’s CRM team about connecting Creatio to the systems your business already runs on.

About Net at Work

Founded in 1996, Net at Work is one of North America’s largest technology advisors and solution providers for small and mid-size businesses. Our award-winning consultancy offers a rich portfolio of AI enabled next-generation technology, industry expertise, implementation and managed services to help organizations derive value from the transformative benefits of technology. Through the integration of ERP, HCM and/or CRM solutions, Net at Work offers unique, industry-specific solutions and operation platforms that enable companies to compete more effectively in today’s digital economy. For more information, visit www.netatwork.com.

About Creatio

Creatio is an AI CRM and workflow platform where people and AI agents work together with no limits on users, agents, or scale. We help midsize and large organizations run customer workflows in the AI era. Headquartered in Boston, MA, with a global team and a large ecosystem of partners, Creatio serves thousands of customers in over 100 countries and automates tens of millions of workflows daily. Genuine care for our clients and partners is at the heart of our DNA.

Your CRM Could Be Solving Problems Across Your Entire Manufacturing Operation

Is your CRM software helping your sales team while holding back the rest of your business?

In many manufacturing companies, Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software lives in a clearly defined box. It’s where the sales team tracks leads, manages pipelines, and closes deals. Marketing might use it for campaigns. Perhaps customer service logs support tickets there. But this narrow definition may be costing you opportunities you don’t even know you’re missing.

In this article you will learn:

How market-leading vendors have shaped a narrow definition of CRM that limits what manufacturers think is possible
Why disconnected systems create specific risks to margins, cash flow, and customer experience in manufacturing operations
How modern relationship management (CRM) platforms can serve as connective tissue across sales, marketing, finance, operations, customer service, and supply chain
What capabilities distinguish truly integrated CRM platforms from sales-focused tools with add-on modules
Which cross-functional workflows can be automated to improve efficiency and customer experience simultaneously

According to the most recent Outlook survey conducted by the National Association of Manufacturers, only 55% of executives have a positive outlook for their companies. This represents nearly a 15-percentage point drop from Q1 and marks the weakest sentiment since the height of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. With rising raw materials costs, growing skills shortages, and significant regulatory uncertainty, manufacturers face intense margin pressure that demands efficiency improvements across every function. Yet many are overlooking their most powerful tool for creating these efficiencies because they’ve been trained to think about it too narrowly.

The Hidden Cost of Conventional Thinking

The dominance of a few major CRM vendors has created something subtle but significant in the manufacturing world: a failure of imagination. When a small number of players capture the lion’s share of any market, they gain the power to define the category itself. Their language becomes the industry’s vocabulary. Their feature sets become the boundaries of what’s considered possible.

This market concentration has shaped perception for decades, implicitly communicating that CRM is a pipeline management and sales automation tool rather than enterprise-wide infrastructure. The very vocabulary used to describe these platforms suggests they weren’t built to help finance, operations, customer service, or supply chain teams. This perception creates blind spots that can directly impact your bottom line.

When you think about relationship management broadly rather than customer relationship management narrowly, a different picture emerges. Nearly everything a manufacturing business does involves relationships: with customers certainly, but also with prospects, employees, vendors, partners, and financial backers. Each interaction across these relationships represents an opportunity to create value or an inefficiency waiting to happen.

The Opportunity Hidden in Plain Sight

There are five reasons organizations invest in business software:

Increase revenue
Decrease costs
Decrease risks
Improve customer experience
Improve employee experience

A modern relationship management system delivers on all five simultaneously, but only when stakeholders stop thinking of it as sales software and start viewing it as connective tissue that unifies operational and business processes at enterprise scale.

The disconnected systems that plague many manufacturers create predictable problems. When customer service, sales, and marketing teams don’t access the same information simultaneously, efficiency suffers across all three functions. When front office and back-office systems aren’t integrated, production plans get made without considering the entire sales pipeline or late-stage opportunities, creating critical misalignment between sales forecasts, actual orders, and inventory planning. And when supply chain and vendor management operate separately from procurement and quality assurance data, sourcing decisions become ill-informed and compliance risks emerge.

These challenges can become margin killers in an environment where profits are already under attack.

What Modern Manufacturing Actually Requires

Today’s manufacturing business models demand more customer collaboration than ever before.

“Manufacturers who want to be able to add more value for their clients are helping them develop new products or formulations by leveraging the manufacturer’s in-house R&D expertise,” explains Samantha Marshall, Sage X3 Practice Director with Net at Work. “This requires a much more collaborative process than the traditional workflow in which a pre-produced product was sold for a fixed per-unit price, demanding more interactions with customers across more parts of the business than ever before.”

This shift creates an opportunity that conventional CRM thinking can’t capture. When a customer calls support with a question about their invoice, resolving it immediately instead of transferring them to sales creates a measurably better experience. When a shipment will be delayed, proactively reaching out with alternative solutions before the customer notices the problem turns a potential relationship damage point into a loyalty builder. When returned materials are immediately accounted for in inventory systems while simultaneously triggering support team workflows, you’re capturing efficiency that disconnected systems make impossible.

The capability to orchestrate these interactions exists right now. Modern CRM platforms built with true integration at their core can connect sales, marketing, customer service, project management, ordering, invoicing, and ERP data into unified business logic. But capturing this value requires rethinking what CRM is for.

“Today’s CRM isn’t just about customers,” says Bill Hoffman, CRM Practice Director at Net at Work. “It’s about prospects, partners, vendors, internal stakeholders, and frontline employees. A relationship management solution can provide business process automation and activity and task management capabilities that layer across all departments. It can be the glue that holds everyone together.”

Practical Benefits Across the Manufacturing Enterprise

Unlike Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software, which was designed mainly to handle core financial and operational functions, a modern CRM can present key information on customer needs to support, sales, service, production, and finance teams. Whereas ERP was designed to give the front office visibility into operational and financial flows, CRM software can contain invoices, orders, service-level agreements, warranties, and information about customer preferences along with opportunities, leads, and marketing campaigns. When integrated bi-directionally with ERP, CRM software provides a truly holistic perspective.

When relationship management software serves as enterprise infrastructure rather than departmental tooling, the specific opportunities that emerge can include:

Manufacturing teams gain visibility into the full sales pipeline, enabling more informed production planning that accounts for probable future orders rather than just current commitments. Finance teams can automate invoice reminders while simultaneously alerting sales to overdue payments from key accounts, turning accounts receivable into a collaborative process rather than a handoff. Customer service can resolve issues in a single interaction because they have immediate access to order history, invoicing details, and account preferences without switching systems or escalating to other departments.
Procurement and vendor management connect with quality assurance data, enabling smarter sourcing decisions that account for the full cost of supplier relationships rather than just unit pricing. Return material authorization, waste tracking, and recall management become coordinated processes that protect both consumer safety and brand reputation while ensuring accurate inventory accounting.

These benefits are the natural result of treating relationship management as core infrastructure rather than departmental software. The automation capabilities in modern platforms can trigger these cross-functional workflows automatically. When a customer’s last payment is overdue, the system can both send automated reminders and alert the account manager. When production delays affect shipments, customer support can receive automatic requests to reach out proactively.

“Immediate access to the right information at the right time makes immediate resolution possible,” Hoffman notes, “but it also makes it possible to build business process automation that will save enormous amounts of time.”

The primary function of modern CRM should be to make it easy for employees to use. It doesn’t need to show every field of data from receivables, payables, purchase orders, and the production line. Instead, the information presented to each end user should facilitate ease of use without triggering overwhelm. Employees shouldn’t have to toggle between multiple dashboards or systems to access the information they need most often, but they also shouldn’t be burdened with data that’s not important to them.

What to Look for in a Modern Solution

Not every CRM platform can deliver these capabilities. The key differentiator is whether the software was built from the ground up to integrate sales, marketing, customer service, project management, ordering, invoicing, and ERP data into its fundamental business logic, or whether these capabilities were added later through acquisitions and bolt-ons.

Essential capabilities include unified architecture that doesn’t require users to toggle between different modules or interfaces, embedded AI and automation that can orchestrate cross-functional workflows, true bidirectional integration with ERP systems, and flexible low-code or no-code approaches that let you adapt the system to your processes rather than forcing you to adapt your processes to pre-built modules.

Additional must-have capabilities include high availability to ensure business continuity, fast and effective deployment to minimize disruption, and industry-leading security, data governance, and reliability to protect sensitive customer and operational data.

The implementation approach matters as much as the technology. This transformation represents a mindset shift as much as a software upgrade. Success requires change management that helps people across the organization understand how their roles fit into the broader ecosystem of relationships the business depends on. “People across the entire organization have the opportunity to serve customers,” Hoffman emphasizes. “It’s really in the business’s DNA.”

Moving Forward in Uncertain Times

Today’s manufacturers must navigate geopolitical uncertainties, inflation, skills shortages, and an accelerating pace of technological transformation. The right tools and solutions can help them become more agile and resilient, strengthening their ability to communicate with, respond to, and evolve alongside their customers. A modern CRM can and should play a central role in the future of manufacturing, but stakeholders will need to open their minds to new possibilities for integration, automation, and collaboration.

“We’re not introducing a new breed of technology,” Hoffman says. “We’re introducing a new mindset. When manufacturers begin thinking cross-functionally, the entire organization becomes better able to serve everyone, customers, prospects, partners, employees, innovate and succeed.”

Key Takeaways

Narrow definitions create invisible costs. When you think of CRM as sales software rather than relationship management infrastructure, you miss opportunities to eliminate inefficiencies across finance, operations, customer service, and supply chain management.
Modern manufacturing demands cross-functional collaboration. Today’s business models require more customer interaction across more departments than traditional workflows supported. Disconnected systems can’t meet these demands.
Integration is the foundation, not a feature. The platforms that deliver enterprise-wide value were built with integration as core architecture, not added through bolt-ons and acquisitions.
The five drivers of software investment all apply. Modern relationship management platforms simultaneously increase revenue, decrease costs, decrease risks, improve customer experience, and improve employee experience when implemented with enterprise-wide thinking.
Automation multiplies the benefits. The real power emerges when cross-functional workflows operate automatically, resolving issues in single interactions and preventing problems before customers notice them.
Ease of use determines adoption and ROI. Modern CRM should present relevant information to each user role without overwhelming them with unnecessary data or requiring toggling between multiple systems.

Ready to discover what modern CRM can do for your manufacturing operation?

Download the complete white paper, “Not Your Father’s CRM: Transforming Manufacturing Operations with AI-Native Workflow Automation and Enterprise-Wide Connectivity,” to explore how leading manufacturers are rethinking relationship management to compete in today’s challenging environment.

How M&M International Modernized Sales with Creatio and Net at Work

A high-volume stainless steel tubing manufacturer builds out a team-based, data-driven sales model to support its next stage of PE-backed growth

Modern manufacturers often run on a mix of ERP, email, and spreadsheets that made sense when the business was smaller. A founder or small sales team keeps everything straight in their heads, while Sage 100 or another ERP handles orders and inventory in the background. As the company grows, adds salespeople, and brings on investors, that patchwork of tools makes it harder to see the full picture of customers, pipeline, and profitable growth.

CRM software for manufacturers is supposed to solve that problem. The reality is that many teams either limp along without CRM, or adopt a heavyweight platform that’s too complex and too expensive for a lean industrial distributor. The sweet spot is a right-sized CRM that connects to the ERP you already trust, gives distribution sales teams real visibility, and supports the next stage of growth without adding a lot of overhead.

In this article, you will learn:

Why founder-led manufacturers eventually outgrow email and spreadsheets for sales management
How CRM software for manufacturers can turn tribal knowledge into a shared, searchable customer view
How integrating Creatio CRM with Sage 100 helps distribution sales teams see pipeline, margin, and history in one place
What to look for in a right-sized CRM implementation partner for manufacturing
How M&M International, a high-volume stainless steel tubing manufacturer, worked with Net at Work to build a scalable, data-driven sales model

Founder-led manufacturers often follow a similar pattern, especially when they’re running without dedicated CRM software in place. A strong operator builds a loyal customer base over decades, powered by deep expertise and long-standing relationships. Most of that knowledge lives in one person’s head, inbox, and spreadsheets — and it works, until the company hits a new stage of growth.

That’s where M&M International found itself. For more than 30 years, the company has supplied stainless steel tubing used in a wide range of medical devices and industrial equipment. It’s a high-volume, low-margin business where pennies per foot matter and reliability, responsiveness, and quality are just as important as price.

After a private equity firm acquired M&M and the founder retired, the business remained solid. But the commercial side needed to look very different. The new owners wanted pipeline visibility and repeatable processes. Customers still expected personal attention. And for the first time, M&M needed a team-based sales model instead of one brilliant, hands-on owner doing it all.

Net at Work and Creatio CRM became the way M&M turned founder magic into a shared, repeatable sales engine on top of the Sage 100 ERP they already trusted.

The moment everything has to get out of one inbox

When Chief Commercial Officer Chris Pleibel joined M&M, he stepped into a business with a strong reputation and a fairly bare-bones commercial infrastructure. There was no formal sales organization to speak of. For years, the founder personally managed most customer conversations, pricing decisions, and deal negotiations. Order history and inventory data were stored in Sage 100. Customer interactions were kept in Outlook. Spreadsheets and email threads filled in the gaps.

That model doesn’t translate well when you suddenly have a board, a PE sponsor, and a growing sales team.

Chris was hired to change that. He became the company’s first formal salesperson, then quickly added five more reps. Instead of one person fielding every question, there were now multiple people talking to customers, prospecting new accounts, and carrying quotas.

At the same time, investors needed metrics. They wanted the kind of pipeline visibility you expect from modern CRM software for manufacturers — clear states, conversion rates, and timing they could rely on. As Chris pieced that story together from separate tools and manual reports, it was clear they needed something better than heroic effort every month. They needed a right-sized CRM system to capture what had made the company successful and make it accessible to everyone.

Why Creatio won

Technology-wise, M&M already relied on Sage 100 ERP, hosted by Cloud at Work, as the backbone for orders, inventory, and billing. What was missing was a CRM system for managing customers, opportunities, and day-to-day selling.

Chris came in with plenty of CRM experience, including time with large, well-known platforms. He also understood what it takes to keep those systems humming — specialists, administrators, and a lot of overhead. That wasn’t realistic for a lean organization operating in a tight-margin industry.

Creatio hits the sweet spot. As a low-code CRM platform for manufacturers, it offers the structure and flexibility Chris needs without requiring a huge support staff. M&M could roll out foundational CRM capabilities — accounts, contacts, opportunities, and quotes — and grow into more advanced automation and analytics at its own pace.

Net at Work, already familiar with M&M’s Sage 100 environment and Cloud at Work’s hosting, recommended Creatio and helped turn that vision into a practical design.

The Value of CRM ERP Integration: Keeping Sales from Flying Blind

Net at Work’s consultants worked with Chris to design practical CRM and ERP integration between Creatio and Sage 100 ERP, so the systems talk to each other in ways the sales team actually uses. Sales reps can see who the customer is, what they’ve bought recently, and how volumes are trending — all from within Creatio. When an opportunity matures and it’s time to quote or book the order, the process moves into Sage 100.

In an environment where margins matter, that kind of CRM and ERP integration is crucial. It keeps quoting grounded in real costs and availability. It helps reps focus on profitable business. And it stops the team from re-keying information between systems.

Net at Work’s dual expertise meant Chris didn’t have to translate between how the operation works and the software’s capabilities. The consulting team bridged that gap, keeping the project focused on business outcomes instead of technology for its own sake.

“The Net at Work team is awesome to work with – they are ridiculously responsive,” Chris says. “And they kept the implementation grounded in business outcomes.”

Making CRM something reps willingly live in

Of course, the best CRM in the world doesn’t matter if the sales team avoids it. Chris went in with a clear stance: the system had to make life easier, not harder. Stages and fields need to reflect the long, technical sales cycle typical in M&M’s market. Reps needed a simple way to see what they’d done, what was pending, and where deals were getting stuck.

Net at Work configured Creatio to match the team’s day-to-day rhythm, turning it into sales management software, rather than a generic CRM. Opportunities move through a sequence that makes sense to the reps. Activities are easy to log and review. The Outlook integration automatically pulls in emails and meetings, so the system quietly builds a shared history of every customer interaction. “If the system is clunky, salespeople will work around it,” Chris says. “Because Creatio fits the way we operate, my team actually lives in it.”

For Chris, Creatio has become the hub for running the commercial side of the business. Dashboards show how the pipeline looks by rep and by stage, making it easier to coach the team and prioritize follow-up. “For the first time, I can walk into a board meeting with a clean view of pipeline, probabilities, and timing that I actually trust,” he adds.

More than a project: a partner for the long haul

Today, M&M participates in a customer experience plan with Net at Work, giving them ongoing guidance on their Creation CRM implementation and room to refine their CRM and ERP integration as the business evolves.

M&M still looks and feels like the company its founder built — careful with costs, proud of its place in the medical device supply chain, and committed to doing things right. The difference now is that its sales operation no longer depends on one person’s memory.

With Creatio, Sage 100 ERP, Cloud at Work, and Net at Work behind the scenes, M&M has a shared, scalable way to grow — and the visibility modern CRM software for manufacturers is supposed to deliver.

Read M&M International’s full story here.

CRM as an Operational Driver in Manufacturing

Most manufacturers have a CRM, but few are using it as an operational system. When sales, service, and operations run on disconnected tools and siloed data, the result is missed orders, delayed decisions, and customer relationships that suffer.

In this recorded panel discussion, industry practitioners and CRM specialists will dig into how manufacturers are moving beyond basic contact management to connect the people, processes, and data to better run the business.

The conversation will cover why CRM underutilization costs manufacturers more than they realize, what real visibility across sales, service, and inventory looks like in practice, where AI is reducing manual work and surfacing issues before they escalate, and what separates manufacturers who modernize successfully from those who stall out. You’ll also hear honest implementation lessons about what to avoid and where to start.

Featured Panelists:

John Bruno, Global Head of Manufacturing, Creatio
Jes Smothers, Account Executive, Net at Work
Rob Rawcliffe, Solutions Engineer, Net at Work

M&M International Builds A Scalable Sales Engine With Creatio and Net At Work

A STEADY FORCE IN THE MED-TECH SUPPLY CHAIN

For more than three decades, M&M International has been a quiet force in the medical device supply chain. From its headquarters in New Jersey and its operations in Korea, the company manufactures stainless steel tubing used in a wide array of medical devices and industrial equipment. It’s a high-volume, low-margin world where reliability, responsiveness, and quality matter as much as price.

For most of those 30-plus years, M&M grew under a highly technical, hands-on founder who knew the products, the customers, and the market inside out. He handled nearly all of the selling himself and kept a remarkable amount of institutional knowledge in his head, his inbox, and a handful of spreadsheets. That model worked well for a long time.

The inflection point came when another company acquired M&M and the founder retired. The fundamentals of the business were strong, but the commercial side suddenly needed to look very different. The new owners wanted clear pipeline visibility and repeatable processes. Customers still expected the same personal attention. And for the first time, M&M was building a dedicated sales organization.

That’s when Chief Commercial Officer Chris Pleibel joined the company and turned to Net at Work and Creatio CRM to help M&M grow its commercial operations without losing the strengths that made it successful in the first place.

HITTING AN INFLECTION POINT

Chris describes M&M as a “33-year-old start-up,” a company with deep expertise and loyal customers, but a commercial operation that suddenly needed shared structure and visibility.

For years, the details that matter most to selling, including contacts, open quotes, and customer context, were scattered across email threads and spreadsheets, and getting a complete picture often meant going straight to the owner. After the acquisition, that approach couldn’t support what came next. Chris stepped in as M&M’s first formal salesperson and quickly built a team of five additional reps, those “ask the owner” workflows no longer fit the reality of how the business needed to operate.

Suddenly, the company needed a shared view of sales activity: who was talking to whom, which quotes were still in play, and where opportunities were stalling. But pulling that kind of picture together from Sage 100, Outlook, and spreadsheets became a weekend project for Chris.

The goal wasn’t to overhaul what worked. It was to capture decades of know-how in a system the team could share, so M&M could scale the sales organization with confidence.

A SHARED VIEW OF SALES ACTIVITY

M&M already relied on Sage 100 for ERP, hosted in a secure environment by Cloud at Work. Sage 100 handles orders, inventory, production, and billing. What M&M lacked was a true CRM: a place to manage prospects, track activity, and understand the quote-to-order funnel at a glance.

Chris had worked with Salesforce in previous roles and knew what a large, powerful CRM platform could do, and the overhead involved in maintaining it. “That level of complexity simply doesn’t make sense for us,” he explains. “We needed a sales tool that would power our team without overpowering our resources.”

Creatio strikes that balance. It offers a modern interface, strong workflow capabilities, and an affordable entry point. Just as important, M&M could start with a focused set of capabilities such as: accounts, contacts, opportunities, and basic quoting – and expand as the team and data mature.

Net at Work, already a trusted advisor around Sage 100 and Cloud at Work hosting, recommended Creatio and helped M&M think through how to design a CRM that fits the way they actually sell.

RIGHT-SIZED CRM

Net at Work worked with M&M to design a Creatio environment that aligns tightly with Sage 100. Customer records, contact information, recent order history, and key metrics flow from Sage into Creatio, giving sales reps a complete picture of each account without forcing them to toggle between systems. Opportunities and leads live in Creatio, where the team can track touches, log notes, and manage follow-ups. When an opportunity is ready to formalize, the team moves into Sage 100 for quoting and order processing.

That integration is particularly important in M&M’s world, where pennies per foot matter. Reps can see whether a customer has outstanding orders, how their volumes are trending, and which product lines they buy most often. It’s easier to spot genuine growth opportunities and avoid chasing deals that don’t make sense commercially.

Net at Work’s knowledge of both sides of the house, including Creatio on the front end and Sage 100 on the back end, meant M&M didn’t have to translate manufacturing realities into technical requirements. “The Net at Work team is awesome to work with — they are ridiculously responsive,” says Chris. “And they kept the implementation grounded in business outcomes.”

EMBRACED BY THE TEAM

Net at Work configured Creatio to match the team’s day-to-day rhythm. The sales cycle in M&M’s space can be long, with quotes and projects evolving over months. Creatio now gives the team simple, consistent stages and fields that reflect that reality. Reps can see where each opportunity stands, what the last touch was, and what needs to happen next.

“If the system is clunky, salespeople will work around it,” Chris says. “Because Creatio fits the way we operate, my team actually lives in it.”

The Outlook integration turned out to be a small but important win. Reps live in email; with Creatio connected, those messages, meetings, and attachments roll into the customer timeline with minimal effort. Over time, that builds a rich, shared history that outlives any individual inbox.

For Chris, Creatio has become the way he runs the commercial organization. “For the first time, I can walk into a board meeting with a clean view of pipeline, probabilities, and timing that I actually trust.”

PARTNERSHIP MAXIMIZES VALUE

Like any meaningful system change, M&M’s Creatio journey had its learning curve. There were nuances in how data should flow, questions about what to measure, and moments where the team needed help interpreting options.

Net at Work stayed close throughout. “When we hit bumps early on, Net at Work jumped in fast, simplified things, and got us back on track,” says Chris. “That kind of responsiveness builds trust.”

Today, M&M is on a customer experience plan with Net at Work, giving Chris and his team a predictable way to request enhancements, adjust dashboards, and explore new capabilities as they are ready. They know they are only scratching the surface of what Creatio can do, and they have a partner who can help them unlock those features at the right pace.

M&M International still looks very much like the company its founder built: focused on quality, proud of its role in the medical device supply chain, and careful with every dollar. The difference now is that its commercial engine is no longer locked in one person’s head. With Creatio, Sage 100, Cloud at Work, and Net at Work in their corner, the company has a shared, scalable way to grow – and the visibility to prove it.

“Creatio is easy to configure, powerful, and the right size for us today, but it still gives us room to scale into more capabilities over time,” Chris concludes.

Stop Managing Pipeline Reactively and Start Predicting It

Gain visibility before deals stall, not after.

If deals stall and no one notices until the forecast review, your pipeline process is reactive. CRM should surface risk before revenue slips, not provide a record of what already went wrong. This session gives sales leaders, RevOps, and CRM admins the process framework to make that shift.

What You’ll Learn

Why inconsistent follow-up discipline is the leading cause of stalled deals, and how to address it at the process level
Why accountability & coaching need to happen inside the CRM, not around it
Workflow automation strategies that reduce manual tracking and protect selling time

Who This Is For

Built for Sales Leaders, RevOps professionals, and CRM Administrators responsible for pipeline health and forecast accuracy. If your team finds out deals are at risk at the forecast review rather than weeks before it, this session is for you.

What You’ll Take Away

You’ll leave with tactical process changes that increase pipeline visibility and give your forecasts a foundation they can stand on.

The Revenue Signals Hiding in Your CRM Data

Use CRM data to drive decisions, not just fill reports.

Your CRM contains customer data. But if your leadership team is using it primarily for pipeline reports, you’re missing the signals that matter most. Early revenue risk. Expansion opportunities sitting inside accounts you already own. Engagement gaps that don’t surface until a deal is already lost. This session shows you where to look and what to do with what you find.

What You’ll Learn:

The forecasting blind spots that distort executive confidence and drive missed targets
How siloed engagement data hides expansion opportunities inside accounts you already own
How CRM data should connect to revenue, cost, and risk decisions at the leadership level, not just sales activity

What You’ll Take Away:

You’ll walk away with a clearer view of how CRM data should inform strategic planning, not just satisfy a quarterly reporting requirement.