Case Study: IFIS (food & health information provider) achieves operational efficiency and clearer commercial visibility with Workbooks CRM

Workbooks Drives Efficiencies and Provides Greater Visibility into IFIS Commercial Operations

IFIS, a not-for-profit specialist in food and health information established in 1968 and publisher of the FSTA® database used by over 1,000 institutions and companies, faced growing pains from its legacy in‑house CRM. The system held 87,000+ records but lacked multi‑currency support, did not integrate with Sage, and kept sales and finance data in silos, creating duplication, manual reconciliation, poor reporting and limited ability to track tasks, leads and opportunities.

After evaluating vendors, IFIS implemented Workbooks CRM, running the new system in parallel while cleansing and migrating historical data. The intuitive, Outlook‑linked platform was rapidly adopted across sales, marketing, finance and senior management, automating invoice transfer to Sage, simplifying multi‑currency processes and producing accurate debtor reports. Results included fewer manual processes, reduced errors, time savings, clearer sales pipeline visibility and improved decision‑making — with plans to extend Workbooks to support new services like ESCALEX.

IFIS

Maria Severino

Head of Finance