Customer Solution Case Study
/ Manufacturer Cuts Inventories by 20 Percent; Speeds Marketing Programs by 75 Percent
Overview
Country or Region:United States
Industry:Home Furnishings
Customer Profile
WorkRite Ergonomics, Inc., based in Petaluma, California, provides ergonomic office products and furniture. Founded in 1991, it has been on the Inc. 500, a list of the top 500 fastest-growing companies, for several years.
Business Situation
Field reps kept sales contacts in local ACT databases, preventing the company from developing accurate sales forecasts, targeted marketing campaigns, and an effective inside sales organization.
Solution
The Microsoft® CRM Sales Professional solution integrated with their AltiGen VoIP (Voice over IP) telephone system and contact center provides a comprehensive CRM solution.
Benefits
Accurate forecasting cut inventories 20 percent
Inside sales increased customer appointments 20 percent
Greater agility cut marketing lead time 75 percent / "We ran a targeted report and pulled a list of addresses in 10 minutes. In the past, we would have had to contact our field reps repeatedly for weeks to get their contact data to update the database."
Chad Crowell, Web and Database Developer, WorkRite Ergonomics
WorkRite Ergonomics, Inc., field representatives maintained individual ACT customer contact databases, prohibiting the company from developing comprehensive, real-time analyses of sales opportunities, and making access to current customer information it needed to support its new inside sales department impossible. So, the company adopted the Microsoft CRM (now part of Microsoft Dynamics™) Sales Professional solution and integrated it with a telephony solution from Microsoft Gold Certified Partner AltiGen Communications. As a result, WorkRite now has sales forecasts so accurate; it has reduced inventory levels by 20 percent. Its inside sales agents are 20 percent more effective in closing sales appointments for field reps. Marketing program lead times have been cut by up to 75 percent. And field reps—supported with enhanced sales and marketing programs—are more satisfied and successful.
Situation
WorkRite Ergonomics, Inc., a manufacturer and provider of ergonomic office products and furniture based in Petaluma, California, is one of those rapid growth company success stories that actually began life in the garage of one of its cofounders. Started in 1991, the company has been listed on Inc. magazine's 500, the top 500 fastest growing companies, for several years, as well as seen on the roster of the San Francisco Business Times' 150 fastest growing privately-held companies in the Bay area.
To keep pace with the company's rapid growth, the WorkRite sales and marketing infrastructure has grown along with every other aspect of company operations. WorkRite has 45 sales representatives around the country and conducts about 25 direct mail and e-mail marketing communications to its customer base each year.
While growing its operations, WorkRite began to outgrow many aspects of its supporting infrastructure, including its ACT customer database. In addition to current customers and prospects, the central database contained the names of anyone who had ever called for a catalog or been added to the database from a trade show contact list. The central office relied on field reps to maintain their own contact records on their local ACT databases and to forward updated customer information.
This method of updating was inconsistent and labor intensive, since representatives would send updates at irregular intervals, typically in preparation for major direct mail campaigns. Some reps would send synchronization files, some faxes, others e-mail messages. At least three employees were required to spend two weeks inputting the updated data into the central database. But with more than 20 percent of mailings coming back to WorkRite undeliverable, it was clear that this system was costly, time-consuming, and ineffective.
"With our old database, we were putting band-aids on a dinosaur every time we tried to update the solution," says Chad Crowell, Web and Database Developer, WorkRite Ergonomics. "But it was increasingly clear that it could never support a real-time, centralized customer database."
Two developments exacerbated the situation. First, WorkRite was preparing to greatly expand its ergonomic product line with new Sonoma Series™ Height-Adjustable Workcenters. WorkRite regarded the Sonoma Series™ products as the new flagship of the company, which meant the company had to deploy every appropriate resource to ensure their success.
"To sell Sonoma to our targeted customers, we needed accurate data to identify who those customers were," says Crowell. "We needed to know what they were buying from us and which customers had the biggest potential to adopt the Sonoma products. We needed data to make the best possible decisions about approaching customers with this new product line—and we didn't have that data at our fingertips."
The other development at WorkRite was the creation of an inside sales department to respond to incoming customer telephone inquiries and to work with the field reps to set up customer appointments for them. For the inside sales department to be successful, its members needed contact center productivity tools and immediate access to full and current information on each customer, so that they could respond appropriately and be confident that sales reps were seeing the same real-time data. Again, the existing solution couldn't provide that level of support.
Solution
In March 2003, Crowell was assigned the task of evaluating customer relationship management (CRM) solutions. Beginning with 35 CRM solutions designed for midmarket companies such as WorkRite, Crowell and his team evaluated the solutions based on five major criteria:
High level of usability for users with a range of experience
Cost and value per user
Customer premise versus hosted application solution providers
Integration with the Microsoft Office System including the Microsoft Office Outlook® messaging and collaboration client
Integration with the telephone system and call center
The Right Solution: Microsoft CRM
On the basis of these evaluations, WorkRite narrowed the field to seven candidates—NetSuite, Luxor, C2, SalesLogix, Open.Space, ACT for Web and Microsoft® Business Solutions CRM Sales—and solicited demonstrations of each. C2 and Microsoft CRM Sales became the finalists. The company conducted more extensive tests of each solution and chose Microsoft CRM Sales.
Accessible from Microsoft Outlook and the Web, Microsoft CRM Sales helps sales people manage leads and opportunities, measure and forecast sales activity, efficiently track customer communications, and automate stages in the sales process—helping ensure a shorter cycle, higher close rates, and improved customer retention.
Integration with AltiGen
Two years earlier, IT Manager Lesley Ransley had replaced WorkRite's phone system with an AltiServ Voice-over-IP (VoIP) business phone system from AltiGen Communications. The AltiServ system implemented included the integrated AltiContact Manager call center solution. During the selection process for the CRM solution, WorkRite learned that AltiGen provides native computer telephony integration (CTI) to Microsoft CRM that is Microsoft Gold-Certified. The company chose to implement the AltiGen CTI solution as well.
Once Microsoft CRM was installed, integration to the AltiGen AltiContact contact center solution was accomplished using the Microsoft CRM integration interface already provided within AltiGen's contact center software. This eliminated the need for custom middleware software or hardware.
The entire solution, including both the Microsoft CRM Sales and AltiGen IP-Business Telephone system integration, resides on servers running the Microsoft Windows® 2000 Server operating system. The AltiServ VoIP business telephone system also resides on a custom telephony server running Windows 2000 Server and the AltiGen telephony software.
The Microsoft CRM and AltiGen integration provides three key capabilities:
Automatic Screen Pop Up—When a call comes into the WorkRite inside sales department through the AltiGen phone system, a .NET-connected Web service retrieves the matching customer record for the phone number, if such a record exists. The customer's full account information appears in a pop-up window on the sales agent's desktop PC screen. This enables the sales agent to see that customer's pending orders, order history, pending sales appointments, and other relevant information, enabling the agent to be more effective responding to the customer's needs.
Automatic Call Activity Logging—When the call is finished, the call activity is automatically logged into the customer's record so that subsequent WorkRite users will be aware of the call.
Dialing from CRM records—The AltiGen CRM integration adds a "Dial" button to the CRM account and contact records, allowing agents to dial directly out of the CRM account or contact records. The AltiGen CTI integration also allows WorkRite sales agents to make calls from Microsoft CRM records simply by entering a customer or contact name into a search, and then clicking on the desired contact and telephone number that results from the search.
Remote Solution Access
The inside sales agents aren't the only WorkRite users for the solution. Outside field reps use their standard Web browsers to access the solution via Microsoft ASP.NET Web pages that pull data from the solution's Microsoft SQL Server™ 2000 relational database. Field reps can also use the solution when they're offline, thanks to its integration with Microsoft Outlook.
When the field reps connect to the WorkRite network—at a WorkRite office or over the Internet—the remote user automatically synchronizes with the central system, pulling updated customer records from the central database, as well as delivering their own updated information to corporate.
This enables field reps to very simply provide updated and timely contact and sales information on current and prospective customers to the central CRM solution—in contrast to the delay of months, or longer, that it took to collect that information under the prior system. WorkRite specifically requires field reps to enter all sales opportunities from every account, in order to create pipeline forecast reports.
Challenge: Cleaning the Data
WorkRite chose the Microsoft CRM Sales and AltiGen telephony integration solution in September 2003. The solution went live in February 2004 and was fully deployed by June 2004. One of the biggest challenges in implementing the solution, according to Crowell, was incorporating more than 25 ACT databases from the field, which existed in various states of maintenance.
First, the field reps cleaned the data themselves. The inside sales agents made a second pass to clean the data, which was then incorporated into the solution. After the solution went live, a third pass was made with temporary support staff, hired to update the database with current contact information for dealers and end users. This last pass completed the process.
Benefits
The AltiGen solution is helping WorkRite to cut inventories, increase the productivity of agents making phone appointments, reduce marketing lead time, and boost the satisfaction of the field reps on which the company relies.
Better Forecasts Cut Inventories 20 Percent
Thanks to the Microsoft and AltiGen solution, into which field reps enter all sales opportunities, WorkRite executives are able to build the most accurate sales forecasts they've ever had. As a result, the company has reduced inventory levels by 20 percent, U.S.$560,000, to $2 million.
"We have new visibility on pending orders including the ability to watch them progress through the sales cycle," says Jim Hybiske, Director of Brand Marketing, WorkRite Ergonomics. "We are now making smarter decisions about the impact those orders will have on inventory."
Efficiencies Boost Sales Appointments 20 Percent
Because inside sales agents are working with up-to-date information, they are able to be more productive both in responding to incoming calls and in initiating prospecting calls. In addition, the integration of the CRM and telephony solutions shaves an average of 45 seconds off the time for each customer interaction by inside sales agents.
As a result, inside sales agents have been able to increase the number of valid appointments they set for the field representatives by 20 percent in just the first six months of working with the integrated CRM solution, according to Crowell.
Agility Cuts Marketing Lead Time by 75 Percent
With a centralized and up-to-date customer database, WorkRite has been able to launch direct marketing campaigns more quickly. For example, one recent campaign was developed in 10 days rather than the 40 that Crowell estimates it would have taken with the previous system, for a lead-time improvement of 75 percent.
"We ran a targeted report and pulled a list of addresses in 10 minutes," says Crowell. "In the past, we would have had to contact our field reps repeatedly for weeks to get their contact data to update the database."
With shorter lead times on marketing programs, WorkRite can respond with greater agility to marketplace changes and launch campaigns quickly that take advantage of those changes. The solution also allows WorkRite to manage direct mail marketing internally, rather than needing to rely on an outside service, as it did with the former solution. As a result, the company saves another $30,000 per year.
Higher Field Rep Satisfaction
The increased rate of valid appointments is only one way that WorkRite's outside field reps are benefiting from the solution. More accurate and comprehensive information also allows WorkRite management to help field reps to target the most profitable opportunities. And field reps benefit from the marketing support provided by more effective campaigns.
As a result, field reps are more satisfied and successful, according to Crowell.
.NET Framework Provides Flexibility for the Future
Microsoft CRM Sales and AltiGen CTI offered the advantage of being based on the Microsoft .NET Framework, according to Crowell. The .NET Framework is an integral component of Windows that provides a programming model and runtime for Web services, Web applications, and smart client applications.
"As a developer, I know that the .NET Framework is the most prominent future-facing technology for Web-based solutions," says Crowell. "The .NET Framework offers complete scalability, customization, and the ability to easily exchange data with other systems including our telephone system. I knew that in addition to being able to extend the .NET-based solution myself, that I could expect a huge market of .NET-based solutions to be commercially available to extend CRM when we were ready. It's obvious that the .NET Framework and XML were meant for integration with other platforms—such as AltiGen telephone system and call center solutions. CRM has become central to the work we do. We now have the ability to integrate the Microsoft CRM Sales solution with our sales order systems, our Web site, and more. We all agree that's a big benefit."
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: