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| Case Studies |
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Total Structures
“Microsoft Dynamics CRM serves a vital role in substantially increasing the efficiency of our salespeople.”
Adrian Forbes-Black, Vice President, Total Structures
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| Situation |
| When major event organisers require a structure to support the lighting, staging and public address equipment necessary to make their show a success, they come to Total Structures. The firm’s salespeople must possess a high degree of technical ability to map out what can be done. Managing the sales and delivery of services using Microsoft Office Excel® spreadsheets and email alone wasn’t sustainable for them. “We have a long sales and fulfilment cycle,” explains Adrian Forbes-Black, vice president for Total Structures. “In order to keep tabs on prospects and shepherd opportunities to closing, our techie salespeople need a CRM tool to guide them through the sales process.” |
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| Solution |
| Total Structures is a small company that lacked the staff to support an in-house solution. “That was a major reason I chose the online implementation model,” says Forbes-Black. To date, he has completed basic customisation of the sales module, adding an IM field and removing non-essential fields. Next, sales processes will be encoded into workflows to automate communications and reminders that nudge salespeople along. Soon after, the service and marketing modules will be phased into use. “Microsoft Dynamics CRM is easy to use, which helped with buy-in from our salespeople,” says Forbes-Black. |
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| Benefits |
| “Microsoft Dynamics CRM leads our salespeople through the process,” explains Forbes-Black. “It was a no-brainer to go with because an increase in efficiency alone will more than make up for the inexpensive cost.” By going with an online deployment model, the company’s mobile sales force can easily work offsite. “Our people can access the customer database through an Internet connection, which allows them to work independently,” says Forbes-Black. “They can access a prospect’s record from a trade show and understand the relationship we’ve had with them in the past, for example.” And because customer data is centralized, employees can access it and continue to do work when their colleagues go on vacation or leave. |
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High 5 Sportswear
“What Microsoft CRM does for us is make us much more effective and efficient in managing customer issues and capitalising on opportunities.”
Tom Mercer, VP of Sales and Marketing, High 5 Sportswear
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| Situation |
| High 5 Sportswear manufactures and distributes team athletic apparel to over 4,000 customers. With no formal lead-generation or tracking system in place, salespeople had difficulty capitalising upon leads from tradeshows and advertising responses. Moreover, lacking a centralised system to manage service issues resulted in time-consuming one-off solutions for every case. The inability to effectively share and manage customer information put a drag on basic business processes such as the quotation of product prices, for instance. As a result, customers quickly found out that if they didn’t like a quote from one person, they could call someone else to try and improve upon it. Executives decided to implement a CRM solution to address these challenges. With very limited IT resources and the need to have real-time information available to users, they decided their CRM solution would need to be hosted. |
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| Solution |
| Managers reviewed and/or tested various CRM alternatives, including ACT! and Salesforce.com. Tom Mercer, vice president of sales and marketing at High 5 Sportswear recalls the criteria that were used to evaluate the options. “The solution had to be easy to use, it had to integrate well with Office Outlook, it had to be scalable and it had to offer a hosted solution because we frankly didn’t have the IT resources to implement and support it on our own.” Based on these criteria, Mercer’s team selected Microsoft Dynamics CRM and planned to implement it to as many as 40 users throughout the company. They utilise the full functionality of the application including marketing, sales and service. The service module was implemented first, giving the company a comprehensive case-management system. |
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| Benefits |
| The company needed only minimal IT resources to implement Microsoft Dynamics CRM. “We wouldn’t have been able to do it ourselves, or it would have taken 18 months or more,” explains Mercer. High 5 Sportswear’s marketers will use the marketing module to increase hot leads by creating targeted lists and customised campaigns. The sales module provides an organised system for salespeople to consistently manage leads from beginning to end. “Being able to automate the creation of customer communications and follow-up tasks makes us more relevant to our customers,” explains Mercer. As for the service module: “We now have a system to track interactions with customers and work issues to an effective and efficient resolution,” says Mercer. |
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Lure
“I chose Microsoft Dynamics CRM because the tool worked better than Salesforce.com plus it worked inside Outlook and was more economical…The Salesforce.com people didn’t get our business and that was a showstopper for us.”
Lori McIntosh, Founder and President, Lure Executive Services
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| This executive-search consultancy specializes in finding top talent to help businesses grow. Employees interview client companies to learn about their businesses and goals. They also identify, interview and place quality employees. Interviewing and networking generate large amounts of data. This information was stored using manually intensive systems, from manila folders to email. Employees found it difficult to share client data effectively and use it onsite with customers. The firm's CEO decided to implement a CRM solution that would enable employees to deliver better service, faster. After comparing alternatives, the CEO chose Microsoft Dynamics CRM. |
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| Business Needs |
| Many executives at fast-growing businesses view key hires as a strategic component of their business plan. It’s just those people that like-minded employees at Lure Executive Services seek as clients. Finding the right clients—and the corresponding good hires—requires employees to collect, analyse and share information. “The high value we deliver our clients derives from the many data points we consider about them and their prospective hires,” explains Lori McIntosh, founder and president of Lure Executive Services. Lure employees conduct exhaustive research on companies and speak in depth with executives to understand their business and workforce needs. On the hire side, the team networks relentlessly, identifying and interviewing quality personnel. This process generates volumes of documents and data. The company’s practice of using manila folders, email, spreadsheets and electronic files did not meet McIntosh’s expectations for performance or speed. Employees could not access these manual systems onsite with prospects. Nor could they effectively share customer data. The hard-driving entrepreneur decided to implement a CRM solution. “I wanted to implement a system that would give my company a competitive advantage in our space.” |
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| Solution |
McIntosh distilled her search down to two alternatives, Salesforce.com and Microsoft Dynamics CRM. She had formal conversations with both vendors and completed trials with each solution.
“I chose Microsoft Dynamics CRM because the tool worked better than Salesforce.com plus it worked inside Outlook and was more economical,” says McIntosh. The Salesforce.com people didn't get our business and that was a showstopper for us.”
McIntosh also liked the offline features of the Microsoft solution. “We're very mobile and essentially work off of our laptops. So the Microsoft application's ability to support that capability was a huge selling point for us.”
Microsoft Dynamics CRM also met a number of other requirements. It easily scales to add future employees as the company grows and, as a hosted solution, McIntosh can build her company without slowing down to invest in an internal IT department.
Another important factor was the ability of users to configure data fields. “That was critically important for us,” says McIntosh. “We need to be able to tailor the CRM application to our business model if we're going to leverage it for competitive advantage in our industry. No one else is doing this.” |
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| Benefits |
| The hosted solution enables Lure Executive Services to develop a tailored CRM tool to give it a competitive advantage. “The way we’ve configured it, Microsoft Dynamics CRM is going to make us much more strategic and consistent in our approach to sales,” says McIntosh. “It’s going to allow us to touch the right people, more of them, and much more often than if we had continued to do things the way we were doing them.” |
| The hosted solution speeds time to market and requires no capital investment. |
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The company was able to very quickly implement, and begin using, the Microsoft solution. |
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The hosted solution allowed the company to defer capital investments in technology assets and apply those funds to revenue-generating activities. |
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The Microsoft-hosted infrastructure protects the company's data assets using leading industry standards and processes. | |
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| Flexible platform can be tailored to deliver a competitive advantage. |
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The depth of knowledge employees will now have access to, plus the speed with which they can access, use and deliver it to customers, is a key differentiator. |
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Sales force automation features combined with workflows enhance the productivity of Lure employees to a level orders of magnitude above competitors. | |
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| High availability to data and mobile features promote productivity and speed service delivery. |
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The company’s highly mobile, laptop-based employees can access real-time customer data from any location with an Internet connection. |
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The solution’s robust offline features allow employees to use data and features offline to support customers. |
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The centralized customer database markedly improves the efficiency with which employees can access, share and use customer data. | |
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| Workflows automate task assignments and prevent lapses in processes. |
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Users can create workflows to ensure that no steps are forgotten. |
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Workflows will streamline processes and further boost productivity. |
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Workflows will be used to automatically assign tasks as milestones are reached. | | |
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