eComp Consultants Realize significant Increase in Sales Conversions and 75% Productivity Improvement with Mothernode

The Company

eComp Consultants is a provider of litigation support and technology consulting in the fields of telecommunications, Internet, and information technology. The company was founded in 2000 by expert service provider, Ivan Zatkovich.

The Challenge

The demand for patent litigation in the IT industry has increased substantially over the last 10 years. As a result, the dependence on industry experts to research, report, and testify on various forms of technology is increasing significantly. Furthermore, intellectual property litigation has increased the need for professional consulting and expert witness services, in the telecommunications, Internet technology, and information technology sectors.

To provide the services of specialized industry experts that can meet or exceed the ever-increasing demands of litigation support, and to create strategies for meeting their partners’ business objectives, the company looked to a CRM. And with a specialized—yet limited—staff of no more than ten employees, the company needed more leverage than their current solution could provide.

In the past, the company’s consultants and staff used Excel, along with a “homegrown” CRM. The CRM software was designed and maintained by a programmer who decided the project was too much work, and eventually stopped providing support. The organization began their search for a provider that could offer a long-term, reliable solution. “The Homegrown system was single-user designed, more for managing and tracking projects by one person that distributed weekly reports,” said Heather Diaz, VP Operations, eComp Consultants.

The Mothernode Solution

eComp narrowed down the search to only two players: Salesforce and Mothernode. The company finally chose Mothernode to replace the current CRM, as it was easier to use, and the Mothernode Team helped the company identify solutions to the problems in their sales process. It appeared that Mothernode would take on the role of a partner, while Salesforce.com seemed to be more concerned with the sale, which was twice the overall price of Mothernode. eComp would stretch their marketing budget even further by choosing Mothernode.

In 2014, eComp implemented the Professional version of Mothernode, resorting to the traditional functionality of the CRM, which included Leads and Opportunities, and Customers. Mothernode allows users to upload PACER files (Public Access to Court Electronic Records) to its platform, and let’s them display and communicate case-related data such as: docket information, patents, and the attorneys on file.

Mothernode is now used regularly by everyone in the company for daily operation, sales process management, and case projects. For example, the Vendors module stores the company’s expert witnesses and matches them with available projects and opportunities within the pipeline. eComp depends heavily on the versatile CRM solution.

Benefits and Results of Using Mothernode

When asked which module features she depends on the most, and which modules and features have had the largest impact on improving their internal business processes, the Operations VP replied, “Leads and Opportunities.” She was then asked which modules and features have had the largest impact on improving their customer service and delivery model; Heather again replied, “Leads and Opportunities.”

The interface that Mothernode provides to access the company’s lead sources, documents, patents and email systems, was preferred over their previous solution, according to Heather. And since the company’s previous software was homegrown, their sales process suffered—and the entire company was affected.
“[Our] previous method was not a CRM. It lacked Collaboration (notifications) between users, interfaces to lead source systems, email integration, relationships between projects and contacts, KPI, and ad-hoc reporting,” said Heather.

Using their previous methods, eComp Consultants experienced an assortment of paint points in their operations and workflow, and the lack of organization compromised revenue. “[There was] no visibility of customer activity; we had multiple manual individual processes—redundant, fragmented and duplicated data with much more effort to maintain in the multiple processes.

Missed opportunities; we could not handle growth. Much more time [was needed] to understand the opportunity events/transactions,” said the Operations VP.
However, once Mothernode was fully deployed and implemented, the company soon solved many of their previous challenges. “Mothernode greatly improved visibility of opportunity and events—collaborative communication, not single- threaded. It increased productivity with interfaces to lead source systems and email integration. It improved understanding of relationship between projects and contacts, KPI, and ad-hoc reporting.

Mothernode greatly improved visibility of opportunity and events, and collaborative communication between Sales and Management. Our process is not single-threaded; it can handle growth. Mothernode increased productivity with interfaces to lead source systems, email integration; improved understanding of relationship between projects and contacts, and gives us KPI and ad-hoc reporting that we did not have,” said Heather.

The company has successfully streamlined most of its operations—bridging the gap between people, throughout processes.

Benefits and Results (Recap)

75% improvement in productivity
75% improvement in internal collaboration
75% increase in information accessibility
75% improvement in the sales process
10% increase in annual revenue (after first 12-months)