Customer Solution Case Study
/ Turkey's Leading Alternative Telecom Operator Boosts Sales Success with Customer Relationship Management Tool
Overview
Country or Region: Turkey
Industry: Telecommunications
Customer Profile
Borusan Telekom is a leading provider of telecommunications and Internet solutions to Turkey's corporate market.
Business Situation
Borusan Telekom’s existing customer relationship management (CRM) system was inefficient and difficult to customise. It could not support the corporate goal of becoming a Six Sigma company with automated processes.
Solution
Working with Microsoft® Certified Partner TradeSoft Business Services, Borusan Telekom implemented Microsoft CRM.
Benefits
n Improved customer satisfaction
n Accuracy of data and consolidation of customer information
n Shorter sales cycle with automated processes
n Sales success improvement with accurate data
n Better planning for greater revenue
n Strengthened management decision making / "Microsoft CRM has made a big contribution to our business, both in terms of improving sales and reducing costs."
Mehmet Baser, Customer Operations Director, Borusan Telekom
In 2004, specialist Internet service provider (ISP) and alternative telecom operator Borusan Telekom became the first company in Turkey to offer long-distance and international converged voice services to its corporate clients. The company had been relying on Microsoft® Excel spreadsheets and costly paper-based processes—an inflexible customer relationship management (CRM) system—to manage its sales across 36 regional outlets in Turkey and 4 global units. Further, the company wanted to follow Six Sigma, a best practice method that involves business process automation for greater efficiencies. Working with Microsoft Certified Partner TradeSoft Business Services, Borusan Telekom implemented Microsoft CRM (now part of Microsoft Dynamics™) to streamline its sales practice and promote information sharing. With Microsoft CRM, employees now access the right data to deliver superior customer service and improve sales success. Today, Borusan Telekom has emerged as a clear market leader in a deregulated telecom landscape with many new competitors.
Situation
After the deregulation of Turkey's telecom market in 2004, specialist Internet service provider (ISP) Borusan Telekom leapfrogged its competition by expanding its service offerings. It was the first alternative telecom operator in Turkey to offer long-distance and international converged voice services. Borusan Telekom was formerly known as Bnet, a subsidiary of Turkey's leading industrial group, Borusan Holding. Now, Borusan Telekom extends Bnet's data services, adding Internet connections, hosting and co-location data services, and offering customised solutions to meet its corporate customers' specific needs.
To stay ahead of new competitors in a deregulated market, Borusan Telekom believes excellent customer service is critical. However the company’s existing customer relationship management (CRM) solution, installed in 2000, was struggling to cope with market change and meet the company's needs. Staff used time preparing Microsoft® Excel reports, entering data, and searching through spreadsheets for information, rather than consulting customers and boosting sales.
Mehmet Baser, Customer Operations Director at Borusan Telekom, says, "To remain competitive in this market, it is essential that our employees can access accurate customer and business information, no matter where they are. But our former CRM system was dysfunctional. We were highly dependent on third-party providers. The legacy system was not easy to modify or customise. We were still relying on Excel reports and other supporting tools. And we wanted to change to a paperless system by completely automating our processes."
With staff distributed in 3 regional offices and providing service in 36 regions operations in Turkey and global operations in New York, Frankfurt, Vienna, and London, the solution also needed to be scalable and robust.
Furthermore, Borusan Telekom follows the Six Sigma model–a methodology that establishes concrete business procedures to ensure a consistent level of quality in all aspects of the business, including sales and customer service. Six Sigma attaches great importance to the management and measurement of business processes, sales, and after-sales processes. The CRM solution needed to support this methodology.
Baser says, "The Borusan group companies all follow the Six Sigma methodology, which means that managing and measuring our processes is essential. For instance, our sales team all apply an established process when completing a sale, which involves negotiating with the customer, making an offer, persuading the customer, finalising the sale, following up with the customer, and, finally, not losing them. All these components constitute the sales processes in our company. We wanted a CRM solution that could automate this process."
Solution
To remedy the situation and help improve overall sales and business productivity, Borusan Telekom looked for a flexible, easy–to-use CRM tool that could support an expanding company.
Baser says, "As a growing company, we needed a CRM solution that was flexible and easy to use. Regardless of how good the CRM system might be, if it isn't flexible or user friendly, it is worthless."
Borusan Telekom already had great success with other Microsoft solutions used across its entire infrastructure under a corporate agreement with Microsoft Turkey. The company chose Microsoft CRM because it provided an easy-to-use application with a familiar user interface. The Microsoft CRM application integrates with Borusan Telekom's existing IT systems (CA Unicenter Servicedesk, Mind Billing System) and is scalable for use with future technology purchases.
Additionally, Borusan Telekom found that Microsoft CRM supported the company's goal to streamline its processes, such as its sales work. Using Microsoft CRM, Borusan Telekom set up step-by-step sales processes that not only improved management of business activities, but also helped employees to initiate, track, and close sales opportunities.
Microsoft CRM is helping Borusan Telekom achieve its stated mission of becoming a Six Sigma company, and providing a "quality service–reasonable price approach" to its corporate customers who ask for converged telecommunications services.
The flexibility of Microsoft CRM is another important factor for Borusan Telekom. Microsoft CRM is easy to update and customise for a dynamically changing business. Baser says, "The structure of our products and our product portfolio may change significantly over time, so customer information could need to be renewed often. This is much easier with Microsoft CRM."
In just 10 weeks, Borusan Telekom and Microsoft Certified Partner TradeSoft were able to plan, test, and implement Microsoft CRM. During the first month of the project, TradeSoft and Borusan Telekom carefully planned the rollout to ensure there was no interruption to the business, while meeting its deadlines.
Baser was impressed with the prompt and easy rollout of Microsoft CRM. Baser says, "CRM projects have a reputation of not being completed on deadline. Our consultant, TradeSoft, planned a deployment strategy that involved determining how to roll out the application without impacting our business. TradeSoft met every deadline throughout the project, from clearing the data, storing it centrally, through to documenting how the application would be structured. It examined our processes and adapted the application to suit our corporate structure and rolled it out to all our sites, while training our users." Indeed, one day after deployment, TradeSoft consultants trained the sales team to use Microsoft CRM in under four hours.
Baser says, "TradeSoft understood both Microsoft CRM and our company's needs wonderfully," Baser says. "While we now have more competitors (following deregulation), Borusan Telekom is one of the few alternative telecom operators in Turkey that is operating profitably. We have a strong capital structure, a robust infrastructure, and experienced specialist staff. An excellent relationship with our customers is core to our success as a service-focused company."
Benefits
Improved Customer Satisfaction through Faster Response Times
Microsoft CRM not only serves as a sales automation system, it is also used by customer service representatives at Borusan Telekom's contact centres to improve customer support. Using Microsoft CRM, the team can access customer data easily and respond to customer queries through a single application. Quicker access to data and planning tools has now shortened the sales processes.
Borusan Telekom offers specialised and complex products. At times, such as during planned maintenance, the team is required to provide detailed technical information to the customer. In these cases, the sales team can access this information from a central location. They now have more time to spend on providing quality customer support, rather than preparing reports and searching for the appropriate information.
Baser says, "If we don't know which products our customers use when the customer calls the call centre, we cannot do our business. We need to check this immediately when the customer calls us."
Accuracy of Data and Consolidation of Customer Information
To end any risk of confusion when dealing with customers, Borusan Telekom wanted to consolidate the data on all of its customers into a single location. On average, Borusan Telekom deals with three contact people within each customer, that is, one technical, one financial, and one administrative. When dealing with 1,100 customers, keeping track of all these contact names with the company’s former paper-based processes could get confusing. It could also lead to data duplication.
"When a customer calls the call centre, we need to know who we are talking to. It is very important to have easy access to data. But errors used to occur all the time, including with customer names. What is important is to manage and correct an error. This was not very easy in our former systems. When data was entered twice or incorrectly, it was hard to find or spot the errors. In Microsoft CRM, managing and preventing errors is much easier."
Shorter Sales Cycle with Automated Processes
Borusan Telekom uses Microsoft CRM to manage its sales process from start to finish, and to measure sales performance effectively.
Without having to rely on teams to update and circulate Excel spreadsheets, sales teams can share data much faster with Microsoft CRM. The team has the right information available at its fingertips to transform every call to Borusan Telekom's contact centre into a potential sales lead. This information could include what products or services have been sold to the customers previously, and where service is to be provided to the customers.
Sales Success Improvement with Accurate Data
In addition to helping Borusan Telekom close sales more efficiently with new customers, Microsoft CRM helps employees deliver superior customer service, so the company can continue to grow. Having complete customer history and tracking capabilities has helped to improve sales follow-up, to reduce missed opportunities, and to enable employees to respond to customer inquiries more quickly—all of which help to boost customer satisfaction. Baser says, "Microsoft CRM has made a big contribution to our business, both in terms of improving sales and reducing costs."
Better Planning for Greater Revenue
Default templates and forms that Microsoft CRM provides allow the sales team to prepare Task Lists and, therefore, to manage their time better.
"Borusan Telekom's sales managers can be pursuing up to 100 opportunities at any one time," says Baser. "The Activity Planning Management tool and calendar functionalities in Microsoft CRM let the sales team plan their work efficiently, and ensure faster responses to customers."
"The sales team can quickly follow up sales opportunities centrally and spend more time with the customer, rather than losing time by preparing reports, entering data, and searching for information."
Strengthened Top Management Decision Making
Not only can the sales team easily use and customise Microsoft CRM, senior management can also access consolidated figures and reports, which are necessary for decision making.
Baser says, "It is extremely important for us to monitor our sales performance and report on it. When our top management looks at these reports, they can see consolidated figures, such as which sales were successful, and how long the sales process took."
Future Boost in Functionality Expected by the Company
According to Baser, the sales team has not yet scratched the surface of the CRM application's capabilities. "There is a workflow application that we haven't even started to use. As time goes on, we will offer customers new online services and applications. A member of our internal staff with only basic experience of using Microsoft CRM can easily design these new systems."
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 systemsthat 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