Productivity Soars 33x for Crane Pumps & Systems with Paligo

Founded in 1885, Crane Pumps & Systems is a world-class manufacturer of quality pumps and accessories offering a wide range of solutions and services for the municipal, residential building, commercial building, military, and industrial markets.

In this case study, we speak with Ketan Pandit, VP of Marketing & Product Management and Elizabeth Howard, Marketing & Creative Manager, about Crane Pumps’ journey with Paligo, exploring the positive impact on their sales team’s efficiency and the broader implications for their business.

Crane Pumps & Systems sought to simplify their process for updating literature and enhancing their productivity. Their previous process was time-consuming, with documents in Adobe InDesign being exported to PDFs and uploaded to the website. Overall, the structure was simply not user-friendly. Adding and updating content took around an additional 40 hrs per month on top of regular work responsibilities.

One of the primary obstacles was finding the most effective method for making changes to a large amount of documents, potentially reaching the hundreds or even thousands. Furthermore, due to the inability of linking between PDFs, there were instances of incorrect information and discrepancies in the content because of manually having to enter information into each separate document. These inaccuracies and omissions occasionally resulted in unsatisfactory customer service.

For instance, all documents contained mentions of warranties. Therefore, Elizabeth was responsible for manually modifying each document within the InDesign file to reflect any changes to the warranty policy, converting it to a PDF file, and uploading it to the website. Because the documents could not be located in a single source, as we will explore further in the next section, there was no way to simply reuse content and update across the board. In this instance, Elizabeth had to touch over 1200 documents to make the updates.

In another situation, the quality of a paint product might be changed by its manufacturer. In such a case, Ketan points out that all catalogs and manuals would need to be updated to accurately reflect the new paint quality and incorporate important data points, which would be another case regarding the need for content reuse.

As noted above, the lack of a single source of truth for their documentation resulted in problems where documents were not linked, or changes were not reflected in all documents, resulting in inconsistencies. Crane Pumps & Systems needed to eliminate all of these inconsistencies.

In addition, the overall layout was not particularly user-friendly. For example, when the Sales team wanted to access and send information about a specific pump, they would have to download a lengthy 20-page document, sift through it to find the desired 2 or 3 pages needed, and then extract the relevant details for the client, taking up unnecessary time and energy away from their other responsibilities.

Crane Pumps & Systems’ objective was to reduce the time to review, edit, and publish a document by 90 percent. They wanted to eliminate all the content inaccuracies because there were many issues with inconsistent information. They wanted to simplify the structure so that their sales team could get what they needed in just minutes. From an engineering perspective, they needed all content to be accurate. And from a sales team perspective, they needed more productivity in a professional-looking package.

Because Crane Pumps focuses on continuous improvements, Ketan and Elizabeth ran a week-long Kaizen event to test how Paligo improved their workflow before going live. In these events, they identify a problem and an objective. In the case of Paligo, they decided to focus on their literature change process. They gathered people from several different departments to focus on different objectives.

To address these issues, each department took a different set to target:

• Marketing: Reduce the time to review, edit, and publish a document by 90%.
• Engineering: Eliminate inconsistencies and duplicate information.
• Sales: Simplify the catalog structure to reduce time spent on Sales Team quotations.

They identified seven improvement opportunities. The left column on the chart below lists the issues, while the right column lists the solutions after the implementation of Paligo.

Crane Pumps & Systems successfully achieved the objectives set for Paligo. The implementation of Paligo resulted in a 97% reduction in the time to review, edit, and publish documents.

The content reuse feature allowed for a single source of truth, reducing time and improving accuracy, while the search functionality in Paligo was praised for its ease of use and ability to quickly find relevant information.

After the Kaizen week, Ketan clarifies, “We eliminated a lot of the waste. The literature was difficult to locate and retrieve. Now, with Paligo, even if somebody doesn’t know our products, they can just type the part number in the search feature and find their product very easily.”
“It reduced the burden on our sales team. Now they are able to submit a package much faster and easier. And it’s compatible with both desktop and mobile, which works great since our sales team is always in the field.”
He recounts this recent interaction, “A salesperson just shared this with me last month. He opens Paligo on his cell phone, clicks the download button and it goes directly into his e-mail, so he doesn’t even have to download the file. It directly attaches to his e-mail and he says, ‘I’m in love with this feature.’”

When talking about time saved, Ketan explains that a literature change request with 2,200 pages (44 documents) would, in the past, have taken around 930 minutes. Now, with Paligo, the same change request takes about 28 minutes. That’s a 97% reduction in time (or in other words 33 x faster/3,300% productivity improvement)!

But with Paligo, we went from 930 minutes to 28 minutes because everything is linked now. That’s 97% reduction.
Ketan Pandit, VP Marketing and Product Management at Crane Pumps & Systems

However, Paligo’s impact extends beyond mere product document creation. Crane Pumps emphasizes how the system simplifies the process of making updates. Previously, a change like switching paint colors from black to blue would have taken considerable time. Now, with Paligo, these updates can be executed seamlessly, ensuring that the documentation is always accurate and up-to-date.
Elizabeth is very impressed with all of Paligo’s content reuse features. “I think the biggest impact has been the content reuse. It has completely streamlined our process and has made the biggest impact on how we publish documents.”

Not only has Paligo greatly influenced the company’s internal operations, but it has also had a significant effect on customers. Ketan explains that by having all documentation centered in Paligo, they have changed their approach to only providing relevant information to customers, rather than overwhelming them with unnecessary information.

Crane Pumps & Systems’ adoption of Paligo has proven to be a transformative decision, significantly improving document creation efficiency, easing product content management challenges, and receiving positive acclaim from both internal teams and external stakeholders. As Paligo’s usage continues to grow within the company, its benefits are anticipated to have a positive impact on multiple departments, cementing its role as an essential tool in Crane Pumps’ business operations.