Case Study - A post-sales system for a high growth events organiser
Fortem International is a UK-based, multi-award-winning global trade exhibition organizer with over 20 years of experience.
- Client
- Fortem International
- Year
- Service
- Intelligent Business Middleware
Overview
Fortem International specialize in delivering top-class trade exhibitions across various sectors, including e-commerce, technology, disaster relief, retail, leisure, farming, hospitality, and food & drink.
With offices worldwide, Fortem International runs over 35 events annually, attracting a global audience of industry professionals.
During a period of rapid growth, Fortem’s reliance on disconnected off-the-shelf software created significant operational friction—ranging from contract errors and double-booked exhibition stands to sluggish deal approvals and missed invoices. These inefficiencies directly impacted sales performance, operational harmony, and financial outcomes.
DGxC designed and delivered a tailored Intelligent Business Middleware solution that unified Fortem’s key systems—including Salesforce, Pipedrive, Xero, Docusign, and Floorplan tools—into a single,streamlined platform. The result? A 100% reduction in double bookings, 10x faster deal approvals, and a scalable foundation for operational clarity and growth.
The problem
During a growth phase, Fortem International had adopted several off the shelf software services to help them accomplish post-sales tasks, such as contracts and invoicing.
These services were used in silos by different departments at different points in the process with not enough operational oversight, leading to human error, inefficiencies and specific operational issues.
- Hampered Deal closing.
When trying to close deals, the sales team were having to jump between systems to collate the information they needed to produce a Contract for signature. This led to contractual mistakes and in the worst cases collapsed deals.
- Stand Double-Booking.
The sales team were allocating Stands on a first-come-first serve basis with no way of knowing if a stand had already been sold. This led to a large number of contracts having to be redone due to stands being double booked.
- Disjointed approval process.
Deals need to be approved by various departments before they can be considered complete. This process had taken place over email with various stakeholders copied into unwieldy email chains, making it slow, hard to keep track of and impossible to see an operational overview. This led to mistakes and interdepartmental friction within the organisation.
- Siloed financial processes.
Financial tasks, such as raising invoices, were taking place directly on the accounting system and could only be carried out by certain individuals once a Deal had been approved. This caused a bottleneck in the process and with no visibility over approved Deals, invoices were being missed.
The team at DGxC really took the time to immerse themselves in our processes and get an understanding of our frustrations and requirements.
Head of Global Operations
Fortem International
What we delivered
We began by meeting with Fortem’s key stakeholders to understand the pain points within their organisation and their visions of what their perfect deal process looked like. We gathered insights from team members handling daily tasks which helped us further refine system requirements and build a picture of how the system needed to be used.
Our team designed a system utilising our Intelligent Business Middleware approach, centered around the lifecycle of the average Fortem International deal. We presented an initial draft to Fortem's senior leadership, and sat with them to make sure all their needs were being met.
We then got to work, and the end result was a secure and scalable, Intelligent Business Middleware application custom designed and built to enhance Fortem International processes (dubbed "the hub" by Fortem employees).
We integrated all of their existing tools, which included Sales Force, Pipedrive, Xero and Docusign (and industry specific Floorplan Software) into the middleware. Each integration was only brought to the forefront when required to process a deal to the next phase of its lifecycle.
Listing pages were added to provide operational overviews so users could see at a glance the status of deals and take action against any it states relevant to their department.
- Automatic deal population.
The integration of Fortem International's Sales and CRM platforms sends client information directly to the middleware when a deal is being done, speeding up the sales closing processes and preventing data entry errors.
- In-app stand selection.
Integrating the Floorplan Software directly into the middleware ensures that only non-reserved stands were available to the sales team, eliminating the risk of double-booking stands.
- Streamlined approval process.
Instead of unwieldy email chains, deal approvals are now managed and actioned from the middleware at the click of a button with all pertinent information on display. Whatever the outcome, interested parties are notified so they can take action.
- Directly raise invoices.
Specific notifications and overview pages alert need-to-know users about un-invoiced deals. Invoices can be generated directly on the middleware and pushed onto the finance platform, speeding up this part of the process and releasing operational bottlenecks.
Integration list
DGxC were a pleasure to work with and have become a valued extension of our team, ensuring the continued success and development of our systems.
CEO
Fortem International
- Reduction in double bookings
- 100%
- Faster approval times
- 10x
- Reduction in un-invoiced clients
- 100%
- Reduction in subscription fees
- £100k p/a