Construction Company Improves Sales Success And Customer Service With CRM

Microsoft Dynamics
Customer Solution Case Study
Construction Company Improves Sales Success in Highly Competitive Market
Overview
Country or Region: Germany
Industry: Construction
Customer Profile
Specializing in environmental issues, Mall is a leader in Germany’s highly competitive construction industry with more than 17,000 accounts and 21,000 contacts.
Business Situation
Mall had several, decentralized databases and manual, paper-based sales and marketing processes that hindered accessing the customer and business data needed during sales activities.
Solution
To open the flow of information, Mall teamed up with IT Vision Technology to set up Microsoft® CRM and Microsoft SQL ServerTM 2000 in just four months.
Benefits
n Increases employee productivity 10 percent
n Improves sales success
n Speeds information access / “With Microsoft CRM, we can process 10 percent more transactions than we could before—without having to add staff.”
Markus Grimm, General Manager, Mall
A leader in Germany’s competitive construction industry, Mall specializes in handling environmental construction issues. With more than 17,000 accounts and 21,000 contacts, Mall was struggling to manage its sales and marketing activities with a decentralized system that included disparate databases and costly paper-based processes. Teamed with Microsoft® Certified Partner, IT Vision Technology, Mall set up Microsoft CRM (now part of Microsoft Dynamics™) to streamline sales processes and promote information flow throughout the organization. Mall achieved these goals with Microsoft CRM, which integrates with the Microsoft Office Outlook® 2003 messaging and collaboration client and Mall’s enterprise resource planning (ERP) system. Now, employees have central access to information and sales processes and can deliver superior customer service efficiently while improving their sales success.

Situation

Among the leading construction companies in Germany, Mall specializes in handling environmental construction issues, such as rainwater management and wastewater treatment. Operating in a highly competitive market, Mall has approximately 17,000 accounts and 21,000 contacts, and it is critical that Mall strategically manage its contacts and sales processes to build and retain more profitable customer relationships.

“With a clear CRM strategy and innovative methods, like the business capability map, Microsoft CRM and BizTalk Server 2004 enable us to deliver scalable, easy-to-use, integrated, and process-oriented solutions to customers like Mall.”
Jochen Klipfel, Managing Director, ITVT

Mall used several decentralized databases to manage its business information, in addition to costly, inefficient paper-based processes for handling project offers, orders, and invoices. Field workers could not access critical business information because they used a separate address database that was disconnected from the enterprise resource planning (ERP) system. Also, for the company’s marketing activities, another separate database existed with considerable differences in categories from its ERP database. Decentralized data management and categorization discrepancies between databases resulted in poor data integrity and insufficient index figures for the sales pipeline.

“To remain competitive in this market, it is essential that our employees can access accurate customer and business information, no matter where they are. With our old system, we did not have that,” says Klaus Vollmer, IT Manager at Mall.

Solution

To remedy the situation and help improve overall sales and business productivity, Mall wanted an integrated, centralized system that its 60 sales and marketing employees could use to access relevant customer information—whether working from home, in the office, or in the field.

Mall considered several customer relationship management (CRM) solutions, but chose Microsoft® Business Solutions CRM because it delivered best what Mall wanted—an easy-to-use application with a familiar business environment and user interface. “Choosing Microsoft was a strategic decision for us, not only because we have considerable experience with other Microsoft products, but we also appreciate Microsoft’s position in the IT sector,” says Vollmer.

Mall teamed up with IT Vision Technology (ITVT), a Microsoft Certified Partner in Stuttgart, Germany, to help plan and implement its Microsoft CRM solution. ITVT specializes in CRM, business processes, Enterprise Application Integration, and IT infrastructure. Using the “business capability map” methodology of identifying business processes that need automation, ITVT provides a framework for how technology solutions fit together to solve business needs for small- and medium-sized customers.

In just four months, Mall and ITVT were able to plan, test, and implement Microsoft CRM with Microsoft SQL ServerTM 2000 for centralized data storage. With one source, sales and marketing employees can now access all of the relevant customer and business information they need. Built on the Microsoft Windows ServerTM 2003 operating system, the comprehensive solution includes Crystal Reports 9.0 Professional to help employees transform business data into presentation-quality reports with compelling views of information.

Microsoft BizTalk® Server 2004 integrates Microsoft CRM and the Unix-based ERP system, giving Mall consistent information and data transparency throughout the organization, and a virtual private network connection enables field employees to access Microsoft CRM reliably through the Web or the Microsoft Office Outlook® 2003 messaging and collaboration client. For expanded collaboration and document-management capabilities in the future, Mall has scalable plans to deploy Microsoft Office SharePoint® Portal Server 2003 and Microsoft Exchange Server 2003.

Benefits

Mall now has an integrated, centralized solution that employees use to deal efficiently with an estimated 2,900 sales and marketing transactions each month—a 10 percent increase. Microsoft CRM helps boost employee productivity, increase customer satisfaction, and improve their sales success by making employee access to information easier and by providing consistent sales processes.

Increases Employee Productivity

With a centralized SQL Server database, employees can gather information from a single source. Employees gain valuable time for more strategic tasks by having access from any location to the necessary information for drafting a sales proposal or other customer correspondence. And they can access that information without having to search disparate databases or asking various departments for information. What’s more, now, error-prone, redundant data reentry can be eliminated because employees enter information only once. “With Microsoft CRM, we can process 10 percent more transactions than we could before—without having to add staff,” explains Markus Grimm, General Manager for Mall.

Improves Customer Service

Not only does Microsoft CRM help Mall close the deal more efficiently with new customers, but it helps employees deliver superior customer service, so the company can continue to expand its customer base. Having complete customer history and tracking capabilities has improved sales follow-up activities, helped reduce missed opportunities, and enabled employees to respond to customer inquiries more quickly, helping elevate customer satisfaction.

Using Microsoft CRM, Mall can set up step-by-step sales processes that not only allow for better management of business activities, but also help employees to initiate, track, and close sales opportunities consistently and efficiently. Sales representatives can schedule sales-related tasks and customer calls automatically, so they know exactly when and what steps to follow in tracking an opportunity. “Now, with streamlined, clearly defined, step-by-step sales processes, our employees can anticipate the next step and appear poised and professional when working with customers,” Markus Böll, Sales and Marketing Manager at Mall explains.

Speeds Information Access

Now, with its fully integrated Microsoft CRM solution, Mall has improved its information access throughout the organization. With Microsoft BizTalk Server, Mall extends CRM, integrating it with the company’s existing ERP system and, because of its centralized database and familiar user interface, information access has never been faster or easier. Through its virtual private network (VPN), remote workers can now access Microsoft CRM through the Web or the familiar Outlook 2003, extending a complete view of information, anywhere, anytime so that Mall can react more quickly to new opportunities.

“Information access is critical to our continued success. An integrated CRM solution helps us improve our close times, access the information we need, and track and manage leads more effectively,” explains Böll.

Microsoft Dynamics

Microsoft Dynamics is a line of integrated, adaptable business management solutions that enables you and your people to make business decisions with greater confidence. Microsoft Dynamics works like familiar Microsoft software such as Microsoft Office, which means less of a learning curve for your people, so they can get up and running quickly and focus on what’s most important. And because it is from Microsoft, it easily works with the systems that your company already has implemented. By automating and streamlining financial, customer relationship

and supply chain processes, Microsoft Dynamics brings together people, processes and technologies, increasing the productivity and effectiveness of your business, and helping you drive business success.

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