Customer Solution Case Study
/ / Leading Corporate Education Provider Improves Marketing Efforts with CRM Solution
Overview
Country or Region: Canada
Industry: Corporate education services
Customer Profile
Polar Bear Corporate Education Solutions, headquartered in Sydney, Nova Scotia, and a division of CrossOff Inc., is among Canada’s leading providers of corporate training for business professionals.
Business Situation
Polar Bear sought a customer relationship management (CRM) solution that could help the company improve its marketing efforts and maintain its industry leadership position.
Solution
Polar Bear deployed Microsoft® CRM for use in its 17 offices and integrated it with the company’s Microsoft Business Solutions--Great Plains® financial management solution.
Benefits
n Time needed to export customer data decreased by 50%
n Increased accuracy of sales forecasting
n Improved marketing campaigns
n Savings of $12,000 a year in database administration / “With Microsoft CRM, we now have the ability to market to our existing customer base and further penetrate the corporate education market by up-selling and cross-selling to our current customers.”
Mike Hayes, Vice President of Marketing, Polar Bear Corporate Education Solutions
Polar Bear Corporate Education Solutions, a leading provider of corporate technology education and consulting services in Canada, faced a problem common to many businesses today: The company’s growth was increasingly constrained by the limitations of its customer relationship management (CRM) system, which resulted in difficulties sharing information, higher database and marketing costs, and sales-forecasting issues.
Like other organizations whose success is based on long-term customer relationships, Polar Bear sought a flexible, cost-effective CRM solution—one that could help the company boost its sales and marketing efforts, attract new customers, satisfy current ones, and maintain its market leadership position. Polar Bear found its ideal solution in Microsoft® Business Solutions CRM (now part of Microsoft Dynamics™), which is integrated with the company’s Microsoft Business Solutions–Great Plains® system (now part of Microsoft Dynamics™).
Situation
For more than 20 years, Polar Bear Corporate Education Solutions has provided computer, IT, and software training to companies across Canada. Polar Bear’s offerings range from individual courses and seminars to certification programs and full-scale technology training solutions. Polar Bear’s courses are designed for virtually every skill level and position, including network administrators, system analysts, IT managers, senior executives, administrative assistants, and business professionals. More than 100,000 students per year take advantage of Polar Bear’s offerings.
But as more and more companies seek the training to make the most of their human resources, Polar Bear has faced increasing competition. “Our market is extremely competitive, and it is very important to keep our existing customer base satisfied as we work to expand our market share,” says Mike Hayes, the company’s Vice President of Marketing. “As a market-leading Canadian provider, our customer relationships are constantly at risk to competitive approaches.”
As part of its effort to maintain its leadership position, Polar Bear recently introduced a team-based sales concept to its 46 sales professionals and 14 district and executive managers located in 17 offices across Canada. The new sales model requires shared account and contact information, collaboration, and centralized reporting.
The company’s previous customer relationship management (CRM) system, which consisted primarily of the ACT! 2000 contact management solution, had several limitations, including:
n Inability to effectively share information. Polar Bear’s sales organization wasn’t able to share account and contact information outside a local workgroup. This led to inaccurate forecasting and forced sales reps to spend too much time performing local and consolidated reporting.
n Recordkeeping inaccuracies. Customer data was maintained in individual databases and synchronized to a master database. However, customer updates weren’t always synchronized properly, which led to incorrect customer records and addresses.
n Lack of correct marketing information. Polar Bear often incurred extra expenses for direct mail campaigns when customer names, addresses, or postal codes were not correct, which occurred frequently because of inaccurate information in Polar Bear’s database. As a national provider, account information wasn’t consistent across regions, and duplicate records and processes prevailed.
Polar Bear realized that a new CRM solution was needed to help the company maintain its competitiveness. “At Polar Bear, one of our biggest strengths is our customer database of top-tier Canadian corporations,” says Hayes. “We realized that, without a proper CRM solution, we would not be able to realize the potential for revenue growth of this customer list.”
In addition, Hayes says, “Our sales team required a tool that would allow it to retain current business and manage customer relationships more effectively. In the past, valuable information was available in our database that was not easily accessible.”
Aside from being able to address the above issues, Polar Bear’s new CRM solution needed to meet other criteria: It had to be cost-effective, offer a central database, and integrate with the company’s current Microsoft® Business Solutions–Great Plains® back-office solution.
Polar Bear evaluated Microsoft Business Solutions CRM and three other popular solutions designed for small to mid-sized companies. “We evaluated ACT! for Web, SalesLogix, and GoldMine,” says Dan MacDonald, Polar Bear’s Vice President of Technology. “ACT! did not offer the back end that we required, and there were limitations on the functionality of the Web-based product. SalesLogix was a great product, but it was too expensive. GoldMine was a good product as well, but it involved the use of a thin client and required synchronization.”
Solution
After evaluating several options, Polar Bear selected Microsoft CRM. “One of our key considerations was the comparable total cost of implementation, and that’s where Microsoft CRM won out,” MacDonald says. “Ease of integration with an already deployed Microsoft Great Plains accounting system was also a strong factor.”
Polar Bear Corporate Education Solutions called on Polar Bear Business Solutions, also a division of CrossOff Inc., and a Microsoft Business Solutions partner, to assess the organization’s specific needs and perform the software implementation. During the needs assessment, Polar Bear Business Solutions spent time defining sales processes, business logic, and workflow. In addition, it conducted focus group sessions with Polar Bear Corporate Education Solutions’ sales, marketing, and management personnel to identify best practices to incorporate into the solution.
At the same time, Polar Bear Business Solutions assessed the hardware requirements for Microsoft CRM and outlined a plan for migrating the data—which consisted of more than 8,000 customer accounts and 25,000 customer contacts—from ACT! 2000 and Outlook® messaging and collaboration client to Microsoft CRM. Polar Bear Business Solutions provided the sales team detailed guidelines to ensure that data was clean, accurate, and up-to-date before it was migrated, and conducted two virtual classroom training sessions to introduce the sales team to the new software. Then each Polar Bear Corporate Education Solutions office was migrated to the new Microsoft CRM solution in September 2003.
The implementation included customization of business rules, report modifications to better meet Polar Bear’s needs, and setting up the necessary access and security for the team-selling model. “We spent a significant amount of time doing the needs assessment,” says Florence Brophy, Vice President of Business Solutions at Polar Bear Business Solutions. “That due diligence really allowed for a smooth implementation.”
Benefits
By implementing Microsoft CRM, Polar Bear Corporate Education Solutions is taking advantage of a wealth of benefits, including:
Improved National Marketing Campaigns
Every year, Polar Bear sends out approximately 24mailers—consisting of marketing campaigns, product launch information, vendor events, and promotions—tothe company’s national database. A process to pull customer data for these mailers that previously took approximately two weeks can now be completed with more accuracy in less than a week with Microsoft CRM. In addition, Polar Bear is now able to quickly perform searches that isolate incomplete customer or address data, which further reduces printing and mailing costs.
Instant Access to Customer Data
Polar Bear’s previous system required a two-day turnaround for database searches. With Microsoft CRM, Polar Bear’s sales, marketing, and management personnel enjoy real-time access to current information. In addition, any employee with the proper permission is now able to run consolidated reports. Polar Bear estimates that this capability alone will save the company approximately CDN$12,000 per year in database-administration time.
Simplified Account Management
Because of its nationwide presence, Polar Bear manages many different contacts, in different departments, in different locations—and all with differing budgets and accounting codes. With the new solution, all contacts and their corporate relationships are linked, allowing account managers everywhere in the country to coordinate activities within accounts. And the company expects even bigger successes in the future. “Eventually, we will achieve account billing efficiencies—including fewer disputes and the right invoice going to the right person with the right budget authority—as we integrate Microsoft CRM with our Microsoft Great Plains accounting software,” Hayes says.
Enhanced Lead and Sales Tracking
The new solution helps Polar Bear’s sales representatives more easily manage the sales lead tracking and forecasting functions. With Microsoft CRM, sales representatives can report on sales activities in mere minutes, instead of the average of an hour-and-a-half it used to take with the old system. In addition, better sales tracking has helped Polar Bear improve the accuracy of its sales forecasting. After implementing new forecasting processes and Microsoft CRM, forecasts have been within 5 percent of actual revenues for three consecutive months.
Opportunity for Additional Sales to Current Customers
Hayes is looking forward to using Microsoft CRM to help unlock the power of Polar Bear’s vast customer list, which consists of some of Canada’s top corporations. “With our new CRM solution, we now have the ability to market to our existing customer base and further penetrate the corporate education market by up-selling and cross-selling to our current customers,” he says.
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 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.
For more information about Microsoft Dynamics, go to:
www.microsoft.com/dynamics