In 1975, Gerry Ryan OAM started Jayco Corporation to build trailblazing recreational vehicles (RVs) for Australians. Inspired by Jayco Inc in the United States, Gerry quit his job and started the company inside a small suburban shed.

The gamble paid off. Jayco Corporation is now Australia’s largest RV manufacturer with over 1,000 employees and partnerships with 29 dealerships. The company operates out of a 60,000 sqm purpose built facility and has produced over 200,000 RVs to date.

Despite its size, Jayco Corporation is still a family-run business valuing people, quality and innovation. Each product is Australian-made, guaranteeing a standard of quality trusted by generations of adventurers. When COVID-19 hit, new challenges emerged.

Travel bans sparked increased interest in RVs. Sales skyrocketed across Australia putting a strain on manufacturing, sales and customer service processes. Jayco Corporation realised its CRM was outdated with data scattered across marketing, sales and after-sales teams.

The company needed a flexible CRM to bring data together and support continued growth. Andrew Fogarty, Business Analytics Manager at Jayco Corporation, led a comprehensive scoping process to find the right solution.

Andrew teamed up with marketing managers at local dealers to find a CRM that would benefit both Jayco Corporation and its entire dealership network.

Working with limited data and outdated systems

Jayco Corporation has a strong relationship with its dealer network, where each dealership operates as a private company with exclusive rights to sell Jayco products. To support these dealerships, Jayco provides premium marketing and sales assistance.

Despite these efforts, Jayco faced challenges due to insufficient data, which complicated the task of gaining a complete view of sales, marketing, and customer service activities across its dealerships.

Without a clear view of sales pipelines across dealerships, it was difficult to recommend improvements. “We knew what dealers were selling week to week but didn’t have data about their sales opportunities in progress or web enquiries,” says Andrew.

On top of this, marketing teams didn’t know how campaigns were performing. “Our team puts a lot of effort into campaigns from EDMs to creative content”, says Andrew, “But what we weren’t seeing was how much traffic we were genuinely driving to the dealer network and how leads were being followed up.”

When lead data was available, it came without context. Marketing couldn’t gauge a lead’s level of interest or determine if they had previously owned a Jayco—an essential detail since past caravan owners are likely to repurchase.

After-sales teams also faced challenges. When customers called head office, support staff didn’t have access to complete account details. A lot of time was spent calling dealerships and verifying details. “We needed insight into previous touchpoints with agents and dealers to support each case better,” says Andrew.

After meeting with heads of sales, marketing and after-sales teams to discuss a solution, the way forward became clear. “We needed a robust CRM solution to help us speak to more people, provide better customer support and ultimately sell more caravans,” says Andrew. Centralising data in the right CRM would provide better visibility and give every team and the information to succeed.

Implementing SugarAI across 20+ dealerships

An extensive discovery process was undertaken to find a CRM that would break down siloes between Jayco Corporation and its network of 29 dealers.

Andrew led the scoping process and received input from marketing managers at local dealers, like Jade Walsh at Jayco Adelaide, as well as internal stakeholders. “We came down to two solutions and chose SugarAI because we were excited by the vision pitched to us by CRM Strategy,” says Andrew.

CRM Strategy is an independent Sugar implementation partner. Experts in using SugarAI to integrate data and create high-performing sales processes, the team showed Jayco how flexible and customisable Sugar could be. “We saw we could customise Sugar to suit our needs and use our data to build super-specific modules,” says Andrew.

From Jade’s perspective, Sugar’s flexibility meant local dealers like Jayco Adelaide could still retain their ways of working. “The customer journey module was a gamechanger for me. It meant we could keep our process while still sharing data with Jayco Corporation. Other platforms didn’t allow that kind of flexibility,” says Jade.

So, Jayco Corporation and CRM Strategy teamed up to bring data in one place, customise processes and help each Jayco dealership, like Jayco Adelaide, successfully implement SugarAI.

First, data sharing agreements were made between Jayco Corporation and its dealer-network. Then, Sugar Market, Sell and Serve modules were set up. Head office teams started to get insight into web activity, sales funnels and customer histories giving teams access to data they had never had previously. “Seeing web activity start to come through was a huge win. Suddenly, our marketing teams had better data to work with and build advanced nurture campaigns,” says Andrew.

Next, it was time to get dealers on board. Each dealership had a unique structure and different levels of technological maturity. “We wanted to discover each dealership’s ideal vision and then help them achieve that with Sugar,” says Andrew.

Some dealerships were excited by the idea of creating digital customer profiles that could be accessed by marketing, sales and after-sales teams. Others saw the benefits of using Sugar Market to create targeted marketing lists for EDMS. Whatever the dream, Andrew and the team at CRM Strategy strategically showed dealerships how SugarAI worked and the benefits of bringing data into one place.

Integrating data transforms work across departments

SugarAI has completely transformed processes at Jayco Corporation. “Before Sugar, data was all over the place and there wasn’t a combined view of sales, marketing and after-sales activity,” says Andrew.

“Now that data is in one place wecan be much more proactive.”

For example, access to data around web activity, web enquiries and sales trends allows Jayco Corporation to get smarter when it comes to product placement.

“We have a much broader view of what consumers are interested in and can ensure our dealers are stocking products popular in their region,” says Andrew.

For the marketing team, more data means more insight into campaign performance. Teams can now use web activity data to understand who their campaign is targeting and how many people are moving through to the next sales stage.

At a dealer level, marketers can pull custom lists within minutes and help drive profits. “Marketers can pull lists of people who bought a caravan 2 to 3 years ago and start retargeting them,” says Andrew.

For sales reps, conversations are smoother as they can instantly see if leads are returning customers and understand what Jayco products are of interest.

Jayco Corporation sales teams can also better assist their dealers. With insight into web enquiries, lead funnels and sales processes, Dealer Development Managers have more information to help recommend performance improvements.

“Clear benchmarks empower dealers with insights, support, and resources, fostering strategic collaboration for high performance and mutual success in sales.” says Andrew.

After-sales teams have also made big improvements. Service agents can now view a customer’s full Jayco history, from dealership visits to past purchases and service records. This means more personalised support and happier customers.

“The next step for after-sales is to create a customer portal using Sugar,” says Andrew, “We want customers to be able to log in to see their details and track any open cases.”

Indeed, Jayco Corporation plans to keep innovating in every area and the team at CRM Strategy will help them do it. “We plan to keep optimising our processes and tailoring data in SugarAI to drive better business processes and decisions,” says Andrew.