Customer Solution Case Study
ISV Creates Highly Successful CRM Add-on Solution for Automated Follow-up Marketing
Overview
Country or Region: United States
Industry: Information Technology
Customer Profile
Founded in 1989, I.B.I.S. is a Microsoft® reselling partner focused on selling Microsoft Business Solutions CRM, Microsoft Business Solutions–Great Plains®, and Microsoft Business Solutions–Axapta®.
Business Situation
I.B.I.S. recognized that many customers needed a marketing solution to round out the functionality of Microsoft CRM. Since a solution was not currently available on the market, the company decided to develop its own.
Solution
I.B.I.S. developed Nurture Marketing, an ISV product for Microsoft CRM. This product helps the company’s customers streamline follow-up marketing activities and automates continuous communication with each customer.
Benefits
n Better campaign tracking
n Automation of follow-up
n Ease of monitoring and tracking
n Creation of new sales opportunities / "When we look at the Microsoft CRM portion of our business and its growth rate, we increased this portion of our business by 1,000 percent last year and by 150 to 200 percent this year."
Lee House, President, I.B.I.S.
Located in Atlanta, Georgia, I.B.I.S. is a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner and Microsoft Business Solutions reseller and independent software vendor (ISV). In addition to selling many different Microsoft solutions as an ISV, I.B.I.S. develops and sells add-on solutions to enhance the features of foundational products.
One of I.B.I.S.'s recent successes is the development and distribution of multiple solutions that work in conjunction with Microsoft Business Solutions CRM, an affordable, easy-to-use, customizable, and scalable front-office solution. I.B.I.S.'s Nurture Marketing ISV solution uses a Microsoft CRM foundation to provide automated follow-up marketing capabilities that help companies streamline follow-up contacts, track campaign success, and improve sales.
Situation
Formed in 1989, I.B.I.S. is an award-winning Microsoft® reselling partner and a Microsoft Business Solutions Inner Circle Partner. In 2001, I.B.I.S. was selected as an Atlanta "Hot Company" by the Metro Atlanta Chamber of Commerce.
During 2002, the company was one of 12 partner organizations to participate in the beta program for Microsoft Business Solutions CRM. I.B.I.S. was impressed with Microsoft CRM: its ease of use, its user-friendly integration with Microsoft Outlook® messaging and collaboration client, and its significant flexibility to both customize and scale. Additionally attractive was its ability to integrate with Microsoft Business Solutions–Great Plains®, a solution that I.B.I.S. had successfully sold for several years.
Convinced that Microsoft CRM had exceptional market potential, in July 2002 I.B.I.S. added Microsoft CRM to its product line.
I.B.I.S. also recognized that many Microsoft CRM customers would benefit from new solutions that added features to Microsoft CRM. To enhance CRM functionality, the company created a number of solutions, including Nurture Marketing for Microsoft CRM, Industry SolutionSets for Microsoft CRM, Solution Selling for Microsoft CRM, and GoodContacts for Microsoft CRM.
Solution
Nurture Marketing for Microsoft CRM is designed to help companies facilitate a drip-marketing campaign, a strategy that defines a particular sales and marketing campaign.
In a drip-marketing campaign, an automated series of personalized marketing activities provides companies with an efficient way of communicating with current and prospective customers without overwhelming salespeople with the management of multiple follow-up tasks. As a result, salespeople have more time to spend on high-paying activities while still maintaining and cultivating valuable relationships.
Nurture Marketing assures that each contact will be nurtured through a series of phone calls, newsletters, mail, and e-mails. The consistent communication provided by this solution helps the company's prospects and customers feel important, appreciated, and informed, which ultimately results in greater customer loyalty and increased revenue.
I.B.I.S.'s ISV software, including Nurture Marketing, is written using the Microsoft .NET Framework, an integral component of Windows® that provides a programming model and runtime for Web services, Web applications, and smart client applications, and developed on a database outside of Microsoft CRM. In addition, the I.B.I.S. Nurture Marketing solution has passed the official Microsoft CRM Test, verifying that the solution is fully compatible with Microsoft CRM. Accordingly, Nurture Marketing integrates seamlessly with Microsoft CRM, which helps ensure the ability to upgrade the application.
I.B.I.S. sells Nurture Marketing both directly and through a partner program of 25 resellers. Currently, almost 50 customers are using Nurture Marketing for Microsoft CRM software. Customers include companies in financial services, high-tech industries, healthcare, and life sciences, and range in size from 5 to 800 users.
I.B.I.S. uses several strategies to sell Microsoft CRM, including direct marketing to business executives working in sales (vice presidents of marketing, vice presidents of sales, and chief operating officers), Web-based seminars and sales seminars, and cross-selling to existing Microsoft Great Plains customers.
Lee House, President of I.B.I.S., feels that I.B.I.S. has an excellent relationship with Microsoft Business Solutions. I.B.I.S. is one of about 15 to 20 companies participating on several Partner Advisory Boards that provide feedback about applications to Microsoft Business Solutions. "Microsoft Business Services was of great assistance to I.B.I.S. during the beta process. The Microsoft CRM team was fantastic about fielding questions in a timely manner," says House.
In addition to specific product lines, I.B.I.S. often sells a stack of products, including infrastructure applications such as Microsoft SQL Server™ and Microsoft Windows operating system. By making a product stack available, I.B.I.S. can offer its customers a complete, end-to-end solution of products that work seamlessly together. "One of the reasons that first-generation CRM solutions failed was because of disparate systems," says House. "With Microsoft CRM, our clients have the benefit of the world's leading contact management system—Microsoft Outlook—integrated with Windows Server™, SQL Server, and Active Directory®. The total cost of ownership is dramatically reduced from our former tier one CRM solution."
Business is growing for I.B.I.S., primarily due to the demand for product stacks. "We indirectly drove more than $3 million in business back to Microsoft last year," says House. "When we sell a Microsoft Business Solutions product, it drives a lot of additional sales and frequently includes two to three ISVs or solution developer products."
House cites Microsoft CRM as a major business driver. "When we look at the Microsoft CRM portion of our business and its growth rate, we increased this portion of our business by 1,000 percent last year and by 150 to 200 percent this year," says House. "Although it did require an initial investment, it gives us the ability to grow, and I expect that we will see double and triple growth continue for the next five years."
Benefits
Nurture Marketing for Microsoft CRM has been a major success for I.B.I.S. because it provides significant advantages for customers, driving sales.
Better Awareness
Nurture Marketing provides continuous awareness among customers by prompting and automating the process of sending out newsletters, mail, and e-mails. These continuous communications help create constant brand awareness and make the company's customers feel important, appreciated, and informed.
Easier Tracking and Management
The Nurture Marketing solution makes it easy to monitor performance and return on investment of campaigns. It allows management teams to monitor and track all follow-up activities across multiple sales teams and product lines.
It streamlines these follow-up activities and guarantees that a follow-up process is initiated with each prospective and current customer.
Improved Sales
Nurture Marketing can help improve sales in many respects. It prompts salespeople to make follow-up phone calls and prompts them as to what to say, ensuring that their message corresponds to the literature that the prospective or current customer has received. It provides an opportunity to sell new products to an existing customer base by keeping customers informed. Nurture Marketing's tracking abilities also help identify new sales opportunities.
Microsoft Business Solutions
Microsoft Business Solutions offer integrated business applications and services that allow small and midsize organizations and divisions of large enterprises to connect employees, customers, and suppliers for improved efficiency. The financial management, customer relationship management, supply chain management, and analytics applications work with other Microsoft software, including the Microsoft Office System and the Windows operating system, to streamline processes across an entire organization. This gives businesses insight to respond rapidly, plan strategically, and execute quickly. Microsoft Business Solutions are delivered through a worldwide network of channel partners that provide specialized services and local support tailored to a company’s needs.
For more information about Microsoft Business Solutions, go to:
www.microsoft.com/businesssolutions