It’s no secret that the manufacturing sector is under extreme pressure. Between depressed export demand, rising input costs, and strong competition, manufacturers need new strategies in order to prosper.

Andrew Johnston, Senior Economist at the manufacturers’ group EEF, opened this morning’s seminar programme. He gave an illuminating summary of the challenges facing the sector, and the strategies being employed to meet these. We’re exhibiting at SubCon 2013, featuring lots of leading suppliers and subcontractors to the manufacturing industry. It’s no secret that the manufacturing sector is under extreme pressure. Between depressed export demand, rising input costs, and strong competition, manufacturers need new strategies in order to prosper. Andrew Johnston, Senior Economist at the manufacturers’ group EEF, opened this morning’s seminar programme with an illuminating summary of the challenges facing the sector, and the strategies being employed to meet these. Andrew Johnston, Senior Economist at the manufacturers’ group EEF addresses SubConRecent performance has been poor, with a triple dip recession narrowly avoided through marginal growth in Q1-2013. Andrew outlined how the ‘Other transport’ sector, including aerospace and shipbuilding, is performing well, along with mechanical equipment/machinery and electrical sectors. However construction materials is still suffering due to lower demand. In fact, ‘demand risks’ dominate the outlook for 2013 in spite of strengthening confidence across the sector. Issues include: the fear of further recession, input costs, exchange rates, increased raw materials costs, finance and supply chain capacity. Andrew highlighted that innovation will play a vital role in strengthening UK competitive advantage, in terms of IP and value added, allowing differentiation from global competitors. The EEF has found that companies are focusing on several strategies in the near term in order to address these challenges. These include increasing demand from new and existing export marketing, commercialising new technology and products, and a focus on satisfying existing customers. Maximising customer relationships was highlighted as a key strategy for ensuring sustainability and growth. With the cost of acquiring new customers up to seven times higher than serving existing customers, manufacturers can achieve additional revenues, and secure longer term relationships by increasing their focus on CRM-led value-added customer support. This approach allows companies to capture more revenue across the product lifecycle, and be ready to sell new products or upgrades when it knows customers are ready to buy. This is precisely for these reasons that we developed Flowlens a “customer lifecycle management” software that offers manufacturers an effective CRM, MRP, Inventory, Management reporting, and operational tool. Flowlens lets you manage customers, with proven methods for increasing business process efficiency, customer retention and profitability.

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Flowlens – Customer Lifecycle

It manages customer and asset data, sales, operations, service and communications, creating actionable reports, customer segmentation and targeting, and efficient CRM workflow and service management features. Flowlens customers achieve greater profits and lower costs, whilst securing customer relationships for the long term.