When the Global Furniture Group team reached out to us after a warm recommendation from Microsoft, we knew right away this wouldn't be a standard CRM project. That wasn't because Global happens to be one of the four biggest players in the office furniture industry. It was because, for their American branch, they deliberately chose a specialized Belgian team over a large international consultancy.
Today, we're rolling out that partnership. This is the story of how we evolved from CRM implementation to strategic partnership.
For fifteen years, Global Furniture Group had been working in the same CRM environment, and it had reached its limits. Sales and customer care wanted to work together more effectively and get faster insight into what was happening with customers. A new solution was clearly needed. One that grows with the organization, connects teams and makes data more reliable.
During their selection process, Global spoke with three parties: their current CRM partner, an American player and, on Microsoft's recommendation, The Zoo. From the very start, our experience in manufacturing and distribution, including previous projects in the furniture industry, played a major role. We spoke their language and knew what they needed. Not in theory, but in the day-to-day reality of their sector.
J. Edward Ainsworth, Director of IT at Global, put it very clearly:
"I asked Microsoft to go out and get a couple of other options. If they could find anyone who had worked with a competitor of ours, someone familiar with the industry, that would be a bonus. During the presentation, The Zoo hit upon several of our pain points. And it was also the Minimum Lovable Product approach: wanting to deliver something our users want to use. Not just have to use, but can be excited about. That appealed to me."
For Ari Asher, VP Operations, trust came quickly:
"Ten minutes into the call, it was clear to us that you were our vendor. It was clear that you understand the industry, and that you understand what's needed to make a CRM system usable: not only build it, but actually have people work with it, which has always been the biggest challenge."
For our team, that was special to hear, especially since this is a large, international and strategic project.
Before we even started on the technical build, Ellen Baeten (Managing Partner) and Katrien Van Pol (Business Lead CRM) traveled to Philadelphia.
For a full week, they sat down with the sales, customer care and IT teams to analyze processes, sharpen expectations and clearly define the scope.
That week laid the foundation not only for the functional analysis, but also for the partnership itself. It showed that cultural differences don't have to be an obstacle when everyone shares the same goal.
At The Zoo, we work according to the Minimum Lovable Product (MLP) principle. It's not a marketing term, but an approach that grew out of Ellen and Katrien's many years of experience within larger IT organizations.
There, they often saw CRM systems built to perfection according to management's wishes, while the day-to-day users were barely involved. The result was all too familiar: features nobody used, low adoption and frustration on the work floor.
With MLP, we turn that around. We build a system that makes strategic sense and fits the way end users actually work. Not by only building what management asks for, and not by only listening to what end users want. Instead, we map out the needs of both. That way, we bridge the gap between what management expects and what's needed on the work floor.
By including everyone's wishes and needs from day one, we create a CRM system that doesn't just "work", but that employees actually want to use.
One thing quickly became clear during our conversations: for Global, CRM has to be more than an internal system that simply stores data and approves discounts. It has to be a foundation that supports sales and customer care every day to do their jobs better.
Ainsworth described its importance as follows:
"To me, the importance of CRM is keeping the right people informed of what's going on with your customers at all times. It's going to give our sales team and our customer service team better communication and better insights into what's going on with customers and problems. Hopefully, it'll help resolve problems quicker."
Asher added:
"The more you know about your business, the more accurate and in-depth data you have, the better decisions you're able to make."
That's why we didn't build a CRM system that just collects data. We built a future-ready tool. One that reduces admin, makes mobile working easier and truly supports people in their jobs.
We also explored developing AI agents that become handy extra digital colleagues for both sales and customer care. In customer care, this extra colleague is already in full use. The agent answers frequently asked questions and searches the huge knowledge base, so employees have the right answer ready for their customer right away.
For sales, the agent is still in full development, but after its first presentation to the team, everyone is already thrilled and can't wait to start using it. It will mainly be a tool for when sales reps are on the road. When you spend all day driving from customer to customer, the last thing you want is to spend hours on admin in the evening. Soon, a sales rep will be able to call the agent just before walking into a customer meeting. The agent summarizes the key opportunities, shows how far along they are on their KPIs, flags any open issues with customer care, and more. That way, they'll never walk into a customer meeting without the full picture again. After the meeting, the rep calls back with a summary and the to-dos, which the AI agent immediately sets up in CRM. Tasks created, summary prepared, all ready so the territory manager only has to approve.
Throughout this whole story, we didn't wait for Global to come to us with AI questions. We proposed the possibilities ourselves. Not because AI is a trend, but because we want to help people do their jobs better, not just build a tool.
And that's exactly how it feels today. The customer care team is already working with the new CRM system and their AI colleague. On the sales side, the rollout of the new CRM system is also underway: the first group got started enthusiastically and was proud to be the first to use it. The reactions were unanimously positive. The Quoting tool in particular, which makes creating quotes quick and easy, is a big hit.
What started as the replacement of an outdated CRM platform grew into something more. Because we like to think along, additional assignments came our way during the project: marketing, change management, customer surveys and other customer-related processes that we took off their hands.
Today, we're bringing several areas of expertise to Global at once: CRM, Customer Care, Sales, Marketing, Modern Workplace and AI. Not as separate projects side by side, but as one whole that supports their digital transformation.
The best part of this project is how naturally our partnership with Global Furniture Group has grown. What began as an international selection procedure quickly evolved into a journey where we sat around the table together as one team. It wasn't just the technology, but above all our way of communicating and structuring that gave them confidence in a project that represents a major step forward for their organization. To us, that confirms that a CRM implementation only truly works when there's attention for people, not just systems.
For us, this partnership is more than a one-off project. It's a collaboration in which we keep building, thinking along and providing support for the long term. At the same time, it's a case that shows what a specialized Belgian team can mean, even for large international players. We're happy to bring that experience to companies closer to home that are looking for a partner who thinks along with them, stays close and builds solutions that people actually use.
