The customer, an international software development company with multiple locations and development centers, came to Itransition with a need for a new CRM solution. Having experienced a tremendous growth in both sales locations and the clients base, the customer grew increasingly displeased with the existing CRM system based on IBM Rational ClearQuest, which could no longer satisfy the growing demands of the sales and marketing departments, as was limited in functionality and required a fair amount of user training and costly support.
The project challenge was to integrate the marketing, production, and accounting processes and combine strong collaboration possibilities with a more powerful functionality.
The project started with the diagnostic and analysis phases, when Itransition dedicated CRM-consultants reconstructed, reviewed and suggested optimization of customer's marketing and sales processes and investigated their legacy sales automation solution, the IBM Rational ClearQuest-based application. During the analysis process some additional requirements were revealed, such as:
- support of multiple locations
- smooth integration with Microsoft Office (including Outlook) and MOSS 2007
- an easy to setup remote access with offline mode
- advanced security and rich reporting capabilities.
Initially we’ve shortlisted three technological solutions to match main requirements: customization of Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 Professional Edition, implementation of Sugar CRM Enterprise Edition and a Salesforce SaaS-based solution. When additional requirements came into play the best option satisfying all stated needs was Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 Professional Edition with a number of additional custom features.
Within the next four months Itransition project team customized and implemented the MS Dynamics CRM solution to the customer.
Result. The implementation of the CRM system triggered the reengineering and optimization of customer's marketing and sales processes and the broadening of the production department’s involvement into the CRM process. It also led to achieving the new level of collaboration between customer’s marketing and tech personnel on sales activities. The customer appreciated the acceleration of customer requests processing and a stable increase in sales even at the time of economic downturn. The implemented reporting functionality enabled the marketing and sales department to engage in more effective planning and decision-making.
Greatly satisfied by the results of this project, the customer initiated further CRM support and enhancement process.
System Highlights:
- Integration of the production, marketing and accounting processes into the sales process;
- Strong collaboration possibilities for customer’s departments and locations worldwide;
- Out-of-the-box support of multiple locations and remote offices;
- Native integration with other Microsoft solutions, especially Outlook 2007;
- Flexible security model with controlled access to company’s contacts and the projects library;
- Rich web interface based on cutting-edge Microsoft technologies;
- Customizable reports powered by SQL Server Reporting Service.
Technologies: Microsoft Dynamics CRM platform, ASP.NET 2.0, JavaScript, SQL Server 2005 with Reporting Services.
Duration: 6 months.
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