Who is Grain de Sail?

Grain de Sail is a coffee roaster and chocolate maker located in Morlaix, Brittany. The company stands out for its unique approach to transport: it uses its own cargo sailboats, the GDS and GDS II, to transport its products in a decarbonized way.

All products are certified organic and are based on three fundamental values: taste, sustainable development, and adventure. Grain de Sail is committed to making quality organic products accessible to everyone, combining taste requirements with environmental responsibility.

The initial challenge: a sales organization under the pressure of growth

Before adopting Sidely, Grain de Sail's sales management relied on Excel. As the sales team grew, this approach revealed its limits. Area managers had to constantly access Dropbox to update and retrieve essential information, a process that quickly became tedious and impractical.

This data dispersion made real-time steering difficult and limited visibility in the field. Grain de Sail needed a solution that would offer its sales representatives a single, reliable tool accessible directly in stores.

Why Sidely?

The team quickly identified the potential benefits of a CRM platform dedicated to sales teams. Sébastien Geoffroy, Sales Director, explains: "I immediately saw what the benefit was for us to switch to Sidely. In terms of field monitoring, we are moving to another dimension."

The adoption: a progressive and structured deployment

To validate the effectiveness of the solution, Grain de Sail first designated its Brittany representative to test the web and mobile application for two weeks, with no obligation.

The trial won the unanimous approval of the sales representatives. A training day was then organized in collaboration with Sidely to ensure a smooth transition to the tool and facilitate adoption by the entire team.

"The sales reps quickly got the hang of the tool. It's a tool they can't live without, because it meets all the needs they have in the field: from prospecting to selling," specifies Sébastien Geoffroy.

How Sidely transforms daily life in the field

Every day, area managers use Sidely in all visited stores. The mobile application allows data entry in real-time, with or without an internet connection. As soon as the visit is finished, the team can go to the next customer. At the end of the day, they organize their tour for the next day directly via the application.

Concrete benefits

This new organization is bearing fruit quickly:

Better data quality. Grain de Sail now collects reliable and structured information on each point of sale, eliminating errors and duplicates related to manual entry.

Significant time savings. The elimination of going back and forth between Dropbox and Excel frees up time for high-value-added sales activities.

Better field visibility. The team has an overview of product placement in stores, assortment movements, and local distribution issues.

A revealing example

A chocolate bar had to be removed from the shelves following a product recall related to an ingredient issue. The numeric distribution share then fell. When the product went back on sale, Grain de Sail did not initially notice that the store presence continued to decline.

Thanks to Sidely, the team quickly identified this persistent decline and was able to implement corrective actions directly in the field. In less than 15 days, the numeric distribution returned to its initial level.

The overall impact: a more robust sales process

"Sidely increases revenue, the quality of the process with customers, the quality of the reporting from sales reps to me, and the quality of what I can bring to them. Everything is positive in using Sidely," summarizes Sébastien Geoffroy.

The adoption of this platform allowed Grain de Sail to scale up without sacrificing the quality of sales management. Sales representatives gain autonomy, management gains visibility, and customers gain responsiveness.