“The way we’ve configured it, Microsoft Dynamics CRM [Online] is going to make us much more strategic and consistent in our approach to sales. It’s going to allow us to touch the right people, more of them, and much more often….”
Lori McIntosh, Founder and President, Lure Executive Services
As an executive-search consultancy, Lure Executive Services seeks to deliver high value. Employees interview client companies to learn about their businesses and goals. They also network to identify, interview, and place quality employees. Interviewing and networking generate large amounts of data, which was stored using manually-intensive systems. After an extensive search for a solution, it chose to implement Microsoft Dynamics™ CRM Online.
This case study is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY.Document published April 2008
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 to take on as clients.
Finding the right clients—and the corre-sponding good hires for them—requires employees to collect, analyze, 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.
Unfortunately, the company’s practice of using manila folders, e-mail, spreadsheets, and electronic files did not meet McIntosh’s expectations for performance or speed in serving her client base. 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,” says McIntosh.
Solution
McIntosh distilled her search down to two alternatives, Salesforce.com and Microsoft Dynamics™ CRM Online. She had formal conversations with both vendors and completed trials with each solution. McIntosh also engaged the services of Ascentium, an interactive marketing and technology consultancy, to evaluate and implement a viable solution.
“I chose Microsoft Dynamics CRM [Online] because the tool worked better than Salesforce.com plus it worked inside Outlook and was more economical,” says McIntosh. “The people at Ascentium understood our business and how we wanted to use a CRM solution to implement our business model. The Salesforce.com people didn’t get our business and that was a showstopper for us.”
McIntosh also liked the Microsoft solution’s offline features. “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 Online also met several other requirements of the entrepreneur. It easily scales to add future employees as the company grows. Moreover, as a hosted solution with Microsoft, McIntosh can build her company without slowing down to invest in an internal IT department.
Another critical 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.”
Employees use the marketing module to create marketing lists of C-suite executives. Then they create e-mail campaigns to support the company’s phase one educational goal. And as results start to accumulate, they’ll be able to track them and create reports to analyze effectiveness.
Lure employees use the sales module to capture, share, centrally access, and analyze data about clients and potential hires. “We easily access a job seeker’s background, resume, and career goals,” adds McIntosh. “We’re able to capture other key data too, like who our clients ultimately hire and for how much. Then we leverage that proprietary market information to be more successful on other accounts.”
Benefits
The Microsoft-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 [Online] 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.”
Hosted solution speeds time to market and requires no capital investment.
The company was able to very quickly implement, and begin using, the Microsoft solution.
Using the solution, this small and growing company is able to defer investments in technology assets.
Hosted infrastructure safeguards the company’s data assets using leading industry standards and processes.
The solution is flexible—when the company grows larger, managers may choose to migrate it in-house.
Solution can be tailored to deliver a competitive advantage.
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 in Lure’s space.
Sales force automation features combined with workflows enhance the productivity of employees.
High access to data and mobile features promote productivity and speed service delivery.
Highly mobile employees access real-time data from any location with an Internet connection. The ability to call up job seekers’ data on a sales call significantly strengthens a sales pitch.
The solution’s robust offline features allow employees to use data and features offline to support customers.
Centralized customer database markedly improves the efficiency with which employees can access, share, and use customer data. Data migrates from employees’ heads to the CRM database to become a corporate asset.
Workflows automate task assignments and prevent lapses in processes.
Users can create workflows to implement standardized workflows and ensure that no steps are forgotten.
Workflows will be used to streamline processes, further boost productivity, and automatically assign tasks as milestones are reached.
This case study is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY.Document published April 2008