Castrol is a leading manufacturer, distributor and marketer of premium lubricating oils, greases and related services to automotive, industrial, marine, aviation, oil exploration and production customers across the world. Its delivery network extends throughout 120 countries, covering 800 ports, and partnering with more than 2,000 distributors and agents. Castrol relies on leading-edge technology solutions to keep its operations running like a high-performance motor, while continuing to add more marketing/sales, communications and distribution horsepower. And it gets those solutions from Pittsburgh-based 4CTechnologies.
Since 2009, 4CTechnologies’ 4CGeoWorks has provided Castrol with industry-leading site analysis on demand, including demographic data, traffic patterns, population shifts and local competitors to help it position its business with Do-It-For-Me (DIFM) oil change providers.
The DIFM percentage of the oil change market continues to grow. DIFM consumers are less informed about the oil that is used in their vehicles, and are less likely to request a specific brand. As a result, DIFM service providers make buying decisions regarding product brand and type without significant input from the actual consumers. At the same time, quick lube businesses have seen declining daily car counts and increased pressure from discount oil change services provided by other automotive businesses.
Castrol’s recent growth initiatives involve the development of cutting-edge technologies, custom solutions and mobile applications in part to support sales and marketing initiatives, improve education and open distributor lines of communication.
To support and drive new growth initiatives, Castrol worked with all three of 4C’s divisions for custom software development, (4CTechnologies), Geographic Information Systems (4CGeoWorks)) and creative support (4CDesignWorks).
4C built Castrol a solution that allows for streamlining and ongoing management of multiple data sources. By integrating multiple sources, Castrol achieves a comprehensive database of automotive businesses in the U.S.
This centralized – and continuously updated – data set then serves as the basis and “Source of Record” for a variety of functional areas within Castrol – most prominently a prospecting engine that is focused on serving high-quality prospects to sales staff so that they target prospects and manage their outreach with the greatest probability of success.
The team at 4CTechnologies first worked with Castrol to design and develop a solution to aggregate data from a large variety of sources as identified by Castrol, including internal sales and marketing data extending to local competitors, premium “bulk” data providers, various geographic data sources and publicly accessible data sources secured online sources.
4CGeoWorks provided critical insight into this initial process, using various methods, including a location-based methodology to ensure that duplicate data was consolidated into a single record, which is particularly challenging for address data. This centralized database is then accessed by an application that 4CTechnologies developed to highlight desirable prospects to sales staff, while also enabling them to make updates to the system as they interact with potential clients.
Castrol has experienced great success to date as its sales targets began to utilize the “InSight by Castrol” prospecting engine in early 2017. Additional features continue to be incorporated – with key initiatives underway for the future that include:
Custom Routing – A custom routing application that will work in tandem with the prospecting engine to allow sales staff to map out the most efficient approach to engaging with potential clients face-to-face.
Predictive Analytics – utilizing statistical analysis and machine learning techniques, prospects will be further prioritized and presented to sales staff based upon their potential value to the organization.
Detailed Dashboards – The visualization and presentation of massive volumes of data within the existing system – allowing users an easy way to review and analyze data that is critical to them.
To encourage adoption of the new tool from the sales team, 4CDesignworks built an intuitive and easy-to-navigate user design experience. 4CDesignWorks also provided branding and internal promotions assistance during the rollout phase, including a logo design, PowerPoint template, poster and a flyer outlining benefits of the application.
Castrol is not only focused on securing “net new” clients, but has also taken steps to ensure that clients have a premium experience throughout their relationship with Castrol. In support of this, 4C and Castrol have worked together to create a custom installer management and rewards program that incentivizes installers to purchase Castrol products – while providing Castrol with visibility into installer purchasing behaviors, as well as the ability to stimulate specific future purchases as desired.
In support of this program, 4CTechnologies teamed with the Castrol team to design and build various applications that make up a rewards program that is targeted at installers, wherein they can redeem points for various merchandise, events and travel. A tablet-optimized application was designed and developed to enroll installers into the rewards program, while an Extract, Transform, Load (ETL) Process was designed to capture sales volume from various distributors into a single target database.
Within this program, administrative users have the flexibility to build and apply promotions to accounts based upon criteria that they deem to be appropriate (geographical, product-based, incremental sales volume improvements, etc.). This rewards program provides insight into Castrol sales volumes (down to the SKU level), the ability to build targeted promotions based upon specific sales initiatives, a centralized point of access for information about existing customers, and also seamlessly shares data with the ongoing Master Data Management initiative.
While users have experienced great success in the initial deployment of the rewards program – additional features continue to be incorporated – with key initiatives underway that include:
Distributor Rewards Program – the incorporation of an incentive program to encourage Distributor sales staff to sell Castrol products.
Expansion of Dashboards – The visualization and presentation of account statuses within the system – allowing an easy way for users to review and analyze data that is critical to them.
Incorporation of new promotion types – including incremental sales growth promotions and new account promotions.