Ex-Cell Kaiser

Ex-Cell Kaiser’s sales and service teams handle complex orders for customized trash and recycling receptacles. Offering fast-turnaround shipping, the company needed a clear view of every customer interaction, quote, and order. By integrating Syspro ERP with SugarCRM, staff can see the full picture instantly.

For nearly a century, Ex-Cell Kaiser has been making recycling, hospitality, and facility-management products. Based in the U.S., it’s best known for distinctive trash and recycling receptacles – the kind seen in hotels, colleges, airports, and other public spaces – built to order for distributors and private-label partners. Each unit can be customized with finishes, colors, graphics, logos, and layouts to match a venue’s branding and turn a standard receptacle into part of the overall design.

Scattered customer data

That level of customization, combined with a promise to ship in as little as 10 days, puts intense pressure on how Ex-Cell Kaiser handles customer information. For years, Ex-Cell Kaiser got by with a patchwork of systems – Syspro enterprise resource planning (ERP) software on one side, customer relationship management (CRM) data on the other.

“Information lived in individual email folders, physical folders, shared drives, or Teams chats,” said Jeffrey Speizman, President at Ex-Cell Kaiser.

Contacts slipped through the cracks as people moved between distributors, and data errors piled up. To deliver quickly and stay competitive, the company needed a clear, real-time view of every customer interaction, quote, and order.

Merging two systems into one

When Syspro introduced an integration with SugarCRM, Ex-Cell Kaiser jumped at the chance to try it.

“What we saw was a reputable company with a robust CRM solution and, importantly, good integration capabilities,” said Speizman. “The Sugar team was absolutely outstanding – they helped us create a very solid solution.”

Sugar handled the rollout – migrating historical data from the previous CRM into Sugar – and worked with Syspro to set up the ERP connection. Adoption was quick, with users easily understanding workflows by watching short training videos from Sugar.

Full customer visibility

With the Sugar for Syspro solution, Ex-Cell Kaiser’s sales and manufacturing systems now run as one. Everyone sees the full picture in real time, with no flipping between systems. The company’s customer data, orders, and communications are now accurate, up to date, and easy to access – with staff spending less time on manual checks and corrections.

“The customization and level of detail available in Sugar have allowed us to create personalized dashboards across the organization,” said Anna Cosentino, VP, Sales & Marketing, Ex-Cell Kaiser. “These dashboards let our executive and management teams see either a 30,000-foot or 1,000-foot view of the same business. Sales can see the specific details they need to successfully close the business.”

Cases, opportunities, contracts, and communications that once lived in emails, shared drives, and paper files are now in Sugar. With Sugar’s Outlook integration, Ex-Cell Kaiser’s teams can quickly access the customer information they need, without searching through a long list of emails.

“From one screen, sales and customer service teams can push a single email to Sugar and make sure it is available to anyone who needs it, whether it is related to an opportunity, lead, service case, or SKU,” said Cosentino.

Accurate data and synced orders

Because Ex-Cell Kaiser works through distributors, it was previously difficult to gather information about end users. Now with ship-to locations and other details flowing in from Syspro, the company can infer end-user information, making records far more accurate and actionable. Sales and invoice data appear cleanly in Sugar, giving staff a clear view of performance without extra reconciliation.

The opportunity-to-invoice flow is now much more streamlined. The team enters sales opportunities and quotes into SugarCRM, and once a deal is won, the order details are synced automatically with Syspro. That order is then generated in Syspro, fulfilled and invoiced, and the information flows right back into Sugar.

“We see the Syspro integration with SugarCRM as a huge opportunity,” said Speizman. “It’s allowed us to build the foundation for the effective workflow we’ve always wanted.”