Building Materials Manufacturer Case Study

Hanson has found huge opportunities they didn’t know existed

Hanson is the UK’s largest producer of cement and cementitious materials, as well as one of the largest ready-mix and aggregates companies. There are several divisions within Hanson which include: cement and quarrying (primarily fixed outlet); concrete with nearly 200 concrete plants, thousands of customers and hundreds of weekly requests for quotation; and an asphalt division of a similar scale. Each division utilises Barbour ABI differently.

On average, the Hanson team accesses the Barbour ABI platform multiple times every week and found it very easy to adopt. They get the most of Barbour ABI’s complete package of services, including both digital and human resources, which gives them competitor advantage. “You can use the platform at a level that works best for you, whether that’s using the mobile app independently or all the enhanced resources that are available,” says Andy Murphy, Commercial Director at Hanson UK.

Andy has personally been using Barbour ABI for over 30 years across multiple businesses. The reason both Andy and Hanson have been customers for so long is because of its proven value. Andy says: “As a building materials sales professional, it’s essential to have excellent information and knowledge about who is building what at any given time. How are you meant to get the best results if you don’t know what’s going on? Knowledge is power and that’s always been our view.”

Barbour ABI is the entity that provides Hanson with the essential information they need and is at the heart of everything they do.

Prior to using Barbour ABI, the challenges Hanson faced were doing business in a non-digital world and although postal information was useful, it wasn’t as easy to filter through and be highly targeted. The Barbour ABI platform has revolutionised this, as Hanson are now able to focus on the right opportunities efficiently using the granular search functionality.

Once they find opportunities, if they need to find more information, they call on their Customer Success Manager, Customer Support team and the team of researchers. Hanson has built a strong relationship with the Barbour ABI teams, who have always been incredibly helpful and quick to respond. Andy says: “I’d encourage anyone using or thinking of using Barbour ABI to not only use the functionality of the platform, but also use the additional resources and support provided. The Customer Success Managers and team of researchers add so much value, but are often underutilised.”

Not only does Hanson encourage its teams to use all available resources, they also train and retrain everyone on a regular basis so they understand what resource is available to them. The Barbour ABI platform also helps managers to track their team’s usage of the platform and apply these metrics to their sales force effectiveness KPIs. Different team members also have different KPIs, focus on different regions, and sell varied products. Barbour ABI allows each person to hone in on the specific opportunities that are most likely to bring success based on their objectives.

Andy has found that customer feedback is very important to the Barbour ABI team, as they truly listen in order to optimise the platform to benefit customers. He’s found other platforms only provide the bones of the information, but Barbour ABI is more user friendly and goes a step further by providing a personal touch. Even during the pandemic, the support given to Hanson was amplified to optimise their return on investment.

One way Hanson use the platform is to discover markets that would be interested in their products with specific characteristics. A recent focus has been sustainability and the team has been able to find clients, projects and companies who are interested in this type of product using the information that Barbour ABI provides. To achieve this, the platform allows the team to identify the schemes likely to use the materials and easily identify primary decision makers, saving valuable time. Recently, Hanson got information about a market segment they hadn’t spotted. They discovered a certain type of project they didn’t know about previously, of which there were quite a few and within 20 minutes they found opportunities they could action. Andy says: “We have every attribute to be successful, we just didnt know about these opportunities.”