Building Commercial Operations
How Altec is building its commercial operation for 100% revenue growth without additional sales headcount
Table of Content
“If we want to double our revenue, we cannot simply double our commercial organization.”
Dennis, CEO — Altec
For Dennis, CEO of Altec, this was not an inspirational statement. It was the strategic ambition for the years ahead.
There are limits to generating more revenue simply by hiring more people. Good commercial talent is scarce. And with every additional employee, administration, coordination, and complexity increase as well.
The question was therefore not whether Altec would continue to grow. The question was how. 100% revenue growth. Without additional sales headcount.
For Rens, that meant a new role. In addition to Marketing Manager, he became Product Owner Commercial Operations. Not responsible for software, but for determining how the commercial organization can become more productive every year and how technology can structurally free up capacity.
Portrait
Photo of Rens — to be supplied
Pull quote — Rens, placeholder
“Quote from Rens on why Commercial Operations needed a single owner — two or three sentences, in his own words, ending on what he is most proud of today.”
Rens — Marketing Manager & Product Owner Commercial Operations, Altec
Growth requires capacity
Many digitalization projects start with software. We started with capacity.
What do commercial employees spend their time on? And more importantly: where do they truly add value?
It quickly became clear that real commercial value does not come from entering orders, searching for product information, or switching between different systems. It comes when employees advise customers, develop complex quotes, guide projects, and make commercial decisions.
That became the starting point.
The first building block
At that time, Altec did not yet have a Customer Portal. That was deliberately chosen as the first building block. Not because anyone expected all revenue to move online. Quite the opposite.
From day one, it was clear that a Customer Portal would process around fifteen percent of revenue. But revenue does not tell the whole story.
That portion contains large volumes of smaller orders: repeat orders, commodity products, contract prices, and customer-specific pricing agreements. Orders where inside sales mainly performs administrative work and adds no additional commercial value.
By digitalizing precisely that part, capacity was created. Not because fewer people were needed, but because the same people gained more time for projects, advice, and commercial judgment. That is exactly where Altec creates added value.
~15%
of revenue via the Customer Portal — high volume, low commercial complexity
~85%
of revenue outside the portal — projects, technical questions, complex quotes and project pricing
Insight block — Customer Portal, placeholder
—
Orders via portal / month
— %
Of all orders
— %
Of revenue
— hrs
Admin time saved
One practical example of the order type that now runs automatically — a short paragraph, roughly this length, illustrating what inside sales no longer has to touch.
A portal was never the end goal
From our first conversations with Propeller, we noticed that surprisingly little of the discussion was about a webshop. The conversation was about our commercial operation. About how the same commercial intelligence made available to customers could ultimately also be made available to our own commercial organization.
The Customer Portal was never the endpoint. It was the first building block. Because around 85 percent of our revenue is generated outside the portal. That is where projects, technical questions, complex quotes, alternatives, project pricing, and advice arise. You do not digitalize that with a webshop. You support it with a better commercial operation.
Let systems return to what they do best
During the analysis, it became clear how many commercial processes had become scattered across systems over the years. None of those systems was doing anything wrong. They were simply being used for processes they were never designed for.
That is why we did not want to replace systems. We wanted each system to return to what it does best. Exact Globe remained the backbone of our internal operation. Finance, logistics, order processing, and master data belong there. Commercial processes that had ended up in Exact Synergy and other applications over the years were moved step by step to Propeller. Not because ERP falls short, but because ERP has a different responsibility.
Your ERP runs your business. Sales, quotes, and commercial collaboration belong somewhere else.
Before
Commercial work spread across four places
Exact Synergy
Outlook
Excel
A separate quote tool
Today
One commercial workspace in Propeller
✓ Quotes
✓ Product information
✓ Collaboration
✓ Customer communication
✓ Orders
✓ Pricing agreements
✓ Order status
Before / Today — to confirm
One line naming the applications employees no longer need to open at all.
From Customer Portal to Sales Hub
The Customer Portal proved that a modern commercial environment works. Where the Customer Portal helps customers order independently, the Sales Hub supports the commercial processes that can never be fully automated: complex quotes, project pricing, alternatives, technical advice, and orders that begin with a phone call rather than a shopping cart.
Today, customers have access to rich product information, real-time availability, customer-specific prices, contract agreements, and a modern user experience. If customers have all the commercial context they need to order independently, why should account managers and inside sales employees continue working from Exact Synergy, Outlook, Excel, and a separate quote tool?
That made the Sales Hub the logical next building block. Not a CRM. Not a replacement for ERP. But the commercial workspace where account managers and inside sales create complex quotes, work out alternatives, determine project pricing, and make commercial decisions.
The same commercial context
The same product information
The same pricing logic
The same commercial rules
The same workflows
KPI card — Sales Hub, placeholder
—
Quotes per month
—
Orders per month
—
Daily users
Short paragraph on the process that improved the most and why — plus the time saving it represents (estimates fine, marked as such).
AI as the next building block
Now that the Customer Portal and Sales Hub run on the same commercial operation, AI agents can connect directly to it.
AI takes over administrative work, such as preparing orders, quotes, and commercial signals. Not as separate tools, but as part of the same commercial operation.
Not to replace people, but to give commercial employees more time for customers, projects, and advice.
AI snapshot — placeholder
Agent name
What it does, the manual work that disappears, and roughly how much time it saves.
Agent name
What it does, which errors it prevents, and the impact on inside sales.
Agent name
What it does, the commercial signal it surfaces, and the time it gives back.
Conclusion: on track
Today, all commercial processes come together in one commercial environment. Customer Portal. Sales Hub. Product information. Quotes. Orders. AI.
No longer separate applications. One commercial operation.
In fact, this is where the next phase really begins. Every improvement creates new capacity. Every AI agent creates new room. Every optimization brings the original ambition closer.
For many organizations, an implementation ends at go-live. For Altec, that is where the real work begins. Commercial Operations is not a project. It is a way of continuously improving.
Dennis's ambition still stands: 100% revenue growth. Without additional sales headcount. The first building blocks are in place. Customer Portal. Sales Hub. AI.
Altec is not finished. But it is on track. Not by adding more people, but by enabling every commercial employee to deliver more value every year.
One commercial operation on top of Altec's existing systems
Four building blocks.
Where Sales, Customers and AI Agents work
Live at Altec today
Sales Hub
Customer Portals
Commerce Engine
AI & Workflows
One commercial foundation
Products · Prices · Customers · Quotes · Orders
Commercial Insights
Action Hub
Open APIs
Security
Connected to your existing systems
Exact Globe (ERP)
Exact Synergy
WMS
PIM
Configurator
Closing pull quote — Rens, placeholder
“Closing conviction from Rens — why the ambition is achievable, when he will know Commercial Operations is truly successful, and what the next step for Altec is.”
Rens — Marketing Manager & Product Owner Commercial Operations, Altec