Dear Lucy

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Quinyx: "Dear Lucy dashboards give us focus and clarity."

Quinyx is one of the fastest-growing workforce management providers in Europe. Dear Lucy’s real-time dashboards help keep everyone focused on the right sales priorities and have cut down on time spent on manual reporting. 

Quinyx, founded in Sweden in 2005, provides web-based systems for Workforce Management. The company’s clients include many well-known consumer brands such as McDonald’s, Burger King, Odeon Cinemas, GANT, L’Occitane, Swarovski, and London City Airport. Quinyx has offices in 7 European markets and is now opening up in the United States.

We had a chance to talk to Andreas Sjölund, the co-founder and CRO of Quinyx who recently moved to Boston to kick-start the company’s operations in the US.

How would you describe your role at Quinyx?

I’m the Co-founder and CRO at Quinyx, and I’m responsible for all the sales. I was involved in opening up our first office in Stockholm, and then growing the company to the other Nordic markets - Norway, Denmark and Finland.

About 4 years ago I moved to the UK to open up our business in the UK and while there, we also opened up our sales office in Germany. Earlier this year we opened up in the Netherlands and a few weeks ago I moved over to Boston to start our US business and I’m really excited about that!

One of our investors, Battery Ventures, is based in Boston and that has really helped us in connecting with like-minded people in and around Boston.

How would you describe your current prioritizes?

We are a fast-growing SaaS company - we have been growing at about 70% YOY (year-over-year) - and our main mission is to keep growing by helping more people enjoy work through our powerful workforce management solutions.

So our priority is to focus on continued growth in all our European markets and now in the US, too. And to do so by helping our customers succeed.

Quinyx provides cloud-based Workforce Management Systems.

How would you describe your sales organisation?

We recently hired a VP of Sales for the US, and are now in the process of hiring a VP of Sales for EMEA to be in charge of our European markets and to grow the team there. We also have seven Country Managers in Europe.

I also have a Director of Sales Operations working with me who is responsible for our CRM, Sales Enablement and our Dear Lucy dashboards. I also have a Director of Sales Engineering who is responsible for developing our Sales Engineers around the globe to make sure we show our solution the right way.

How would you describe the Quinyx company culture?

I’m very proud of our culture and the fact that we have managed to maintain much of the original company culture throughout our growth. We have put a lot of effort into this, and focused a lot on the “Enjoy Work“ culture as that is one of our slogans as well. 

Doing things together is really important to us. Two years ago the entire company went to Majorca on a goal trip, and earlier this year we went “glamping” in Sweden and we even had a party in the woods!

It is very powerful to get together as a team, to celebrate successes and to learn from each other.

I am an old ice hockey player and hence, teamwork is really key to me. In order to succeed in sales, R&D or customer on-boarding, you really need to surround yourself with great teammates - not only in your own department but also across the company. And I believe that has been a part of our success to date.

“Enjoy Work” is one of Quinyx’s slogans and a big part of the company culture.

We have monthly meetings where we present new customers, new product features and go out locally with different offices and do something fun together. This has been a very good way to interact, and be transparent about what’s happening in the company. 

I believe we still have an entrepreneurial feel within the company. And what really warms my heart is that we also hear that form our customers.

Some customers have even said that one of the reasons they chose us is that they love our culture and the way that it is reflected in our sales process and the way we speak with our customers.

What made you start looking for a sales dashboard solution and choose Dear Lucy?

We use Salesforce as our CRM and it is a great and flexible tool. But one of the things that wasn’t quite working for us was the way in which we calculate our sales targets quarter by quarter.  

In addition, we did not feel that we had the type of dashboard that we could share in all the offices and help us be transparent with our sales data.

We were looking at different solutions at the time and Dear Lucy was the only one that could give us exactly what we wanted. It was flexible and allowed us to see our sales target as accumulated as we have quarterly budgets that are accumulated throughout the year.

On top of that, the salespeople were really nice and very proactive in helping us - which I appreciate as a sales professional. Our Sales Operations Director has also enjoyed working with Dear Lucy and the “can-do” attitude of the team and great communication around complex issues has made cooperation easy.

How do you use sales data in decision making?

We have come a long way throughout our growth. Today, data is definitely very important for us, and we use it to make sure we are delivering on our commitments to the management team and our board.  

We track our Salesforce data with Dear Lucy sales dashboards: sales vs. targets, winning percentage and stages in the sales process, to name a few.

We follow our pipeline religiously and work closely with our marketing to track where our pipeline is coming from and how our campaigns are performing.

We also hired a Director of Sales Operations who has been brilliant in helping out in structuring our CRM and our dashboards to suit our needs.

We also measure how many deals come through our partners. One of the most exciting things is also the sales leaderboard as we have quite a competitive sales culture.

To be honest, it is actually fun with data. I did not think back when we started the business but I have learned to love it and follow it closely!

How do you use Dear Lucy sales dashboards currently?

We use the sales dashboard in all the sales meetings and the dashboards run on the TV screens at the offices. We have added our social media channels to the dashboards, so you can also see our latest social media posts on the TV screens.

We have local country meetings where country managers use the dashboard to go through the current situation and I also use the dashboard to run our bi-weekly global sales meetings.

We also use the dashboard to present in the Management Team. And If I am invited to the board meeting to present how sales are doing, I use the dashboard to do that.

I personally open Dear Lucy each morning. With the time zone difference to Europe, it’s interesting to see how much different markets have sold when I wake up!

What is the single most important KPI for you?

I personally love the fact that our sales dashboards calculate the Annual Contract Value (ACV) and we can track how much we have sold compared to last year. Another important one on the top is “won this year” and our yearly quota. I also look at each country against its sales target and see how much is left to reach the target.

How would you describe the impact of Dear Lucy?

Before Dear Lucy, we worked a lot with spreadsheets to put together our numbers.   

We probably used about 1-2 hours per week combined on reporting including everyone who was involved. So we have definitely saved a lot of time!

The TV screens bring the data available to everyone at the same time, and that has been great for the entire team. To me, clarity is power when you clearly see your data in a concrete way.

Having data visible also creates engagement in the team. It helps people make the right decisions and helps everyone to see how they’re doing.

With our growth rate, it is difficult to keep up with all opportunities but having a list of the top 10 opportunities helps us to focus on the right things.

Some executives are not that good at updating their CRM, and dashboards are a good trigger to remind people to update their data in the system.

So to sum up, Dear Lucy dashboards have definitely had a positive impact on the whole company - people are curious to see how we are doing and like to see how things evolve. Some of our partners have also been impressed to see that we are so well structured and have clear data available.

Who would you recommend Dear Lucy to?

If you are a B2B SaaS company and you like a partner that can give you a flexible solution in the form of a dashboard, Dear Lucy is a great choice. Also, if you like to see data in a user-friendly way in different offices, Dear Lucy dashboard works brilliantly for that!

Company name: Quinyx

Interviewee: Andreas Sjölund

Title: Co-founder & CRO

Industry: Workforce management, B2B SaaS

Personnel amount: 190

Growth rate: 70%

Geographic scope: Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Finland, UK, Germany, Netherlands, US

www.quinyx.com


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