You’ve spent time and resources building a solid presence on the web. It’s attracting visitors and potential customers, but then what?  How does the information and opportunities it creates flow into the other parts of your business processes?

This is often the point at which web sites stall in their development. You know it’s important to get your information out there in order to get leads or even sales online, but, without clear direction, it typically goes no further.  At this point, your web site plays just one role in your business.

By taking the next step, and tying your website into other business processes, you can improve efficiencies and customer experience.

Leads

Contact forms are a commonplace feature on sites today. You want to make sure it’s a simple process for those interested in learning more about your products or services to get in touch with you. Usually this information is sent to someone internally via email. Sometimes that’s sufficient, but what if that person is busy or on vacation? The lead sits in there inbox, hidden until they can get back to it.

A better way to handle this is:

• Have the lead feed directly into a CRM system.
• The lead can go directly into a workflow, sending out notifications to both internal staff and the customer.
• When the main contact is out of the office, the workflow would trigger an email to other staff that a lead has not been responded to and needs follow-up.
• When that response does occur, it is recorded in the CRM system and available for others on staff to see.

In this case, the integration of the web site and the CRM system helps sales stay on top of new business opportunities regardless of staff availability.  One person being out does not hold up everything.  Furthermore, that lead can be tracked and followed from the time it’s entered until it’s closed without any need to manually reenter it into another system.

Support

Just as important as leads coming into sales, are questions and issues coming in from current customers.  Again, integration into CRM or a help desk makes your company more timely and efficient when handling requests.

The efficiencies in how customers are helped can be taken a step further.

• As questions come in, staff can categorize these requests which can then be reported on.  
• As you see trends in what topics are popular, you can proactively address these by creating a knowledge base.  This is a set of reference articles can help both internal support staff and external customers.  
• Your staff can respond quickly with proven answers by directing customers to the knowledge base articles.
• In the future, customers can search these articles and find the answers themselves, eliminating the need for support to get involved in these cases.

Sales

When a company selling products moves to the web, they usually have systems already in place for accounting, inventory tracking, and similar functions.  Once their web site starts bringing in orders, they may need to take the order information gathered from the web and then manually enter it into their internal systems.

The great thing about modern software systems is that data is stored in similar ways. This makes it possible to set up processes that synchronize this data.

 For example, Pinnacle has built a solution called the Connector which allows businesses to set up maps between different databases and specifyhow the information flows between them.  Even if your systems store data in different ways (one stores quantity and unit price while the other just has a total), the integration can still be automated.

With a solution such as the Pinnacle Connector, or direct integration of the website with CRM, a company’s ecommerce store would be able to send the order processing information directly to their other systems, eliminating the possibility of human error, and ensuring that all necessary information has been entered into the correct systems.

Case Summary:

Auto & RV Publications are published weekly as an effort to assist those who are buying or selling new or used vehicles.  In the past 11 years, Auto & RV’s distribution has grown from two states to seven.  This growth process has created the need for a better distribution management solution.

Original distribution process:

• Distribution Routes had been stored in Microsoft Excel.  Each Route was organized within its own document.
• Each Route Driver would receive a printed copy of their Route and hand write corrections and updates to the Routes.  Adding Stops, changing quantities, updating addresses, and cataloging returns were all tracked.
• Route sheets ran on a 4 week cycles and were returned to corporate with 4 weeks of hand written data.
• Each sheet was used to update the corresponding Excel document.

Problems caused by this process:

• Visibility into the data was very cumbersome and time consuming.  No reporting was available to analyze a Route or an individual Stop.
• All historical data was overwritten as the Excel document was updated.
• The Excel files were unsecured and exposed on the shared network drive.
• Mapping of the routes was a manual process that involved printing an area map and using a highlighter to color code Stops along Routes.
• Growth of the product was hitting limitations due to excessive distribution effort.
• Customer service was not able to guide a caller to their nearest book.  All callers had to be patched through to the one distribution employee.

Pinnacle’s solution: 

Our original goal was to migrate from Excel to a centralized database.  Microsoft Access was chosen as the front end for the solution.  This worked great for several years, but as Auto & RV continued to grow, it became clear that the best plan would be to utilize Microsoft Dynamics CRM to best manage distribution data and processes.

Benefits of integrating CRM into Auto & RV Publications distribution process:

• Improved Visibility and Retention – CRM allows for advanced user ad-hoc searches and development of standard reports.  Weekly route data is built and saved allowing for basic reporting and exposing trends.
• Security and Segregation of Duties – Role based security allows for multiple users to be assigned specific job functions.  Granular permissions to add, edit, and delete various data types ensures data integrity.
• Route Mapping – Microsoft Virtual Earth is used to permit the users to see an individual Stop plotted automatically on a map.  With an additional custom process, users are able to view every stop along a given route sequentially numbered on a map.
• CRM allows for Audit Tracing – Out of the box Modified By tracking and additional custom data tracking allows for visibility into who changed what data and when.
• Increased Growth Potential – Inherent multi-user capabilities and the power of Microsoft’s SQL Server, CRM has allowed Auto & RV to grow without distribution logistics throttling the operation.  Distribution has increased from 2 or 3 publications to over 13.  This growth was accomplished with hiring just 1 additional employee.
• Improved customer service – Callers no longer have to wait for a distribution expert to help them find a book.  Route data is integrated to the AutoRV.com web site allowing web users to find their nearest book.  All CRM users have an Advanced Find allowing them to instantly search for books near a caller.

As executives running business, we can spend hours (or have our employees spend hours) chasing information to create the reports that we need to make the informed decisions that keep our businesses running and successful.  One of the cool things about technology today, is that we have produced ways to streamline these reports to almost eradicate that daily labor and have the reports (and information tied to them) constantly at our fingertips.  Simply put, this is called Business Intelligence. And I call it… Cool as crap!

So, what is Business Intelligence (or BI)?  BI is gathering technological information and presenting it in a way that’s useful and dynamic.

BI is not new, and companies have used it for years to create charts and graphs to keep an eye on limited information.  What’s different now is that we can actually mine the data from your company software, put it in a centralized location and create both drillable and actionable up-to-the-minute reports on the information that is most important to you.

Example:

We worked with a client recently who had an employee that spent 2 ½ hours a day putting together a daily sales report.  By using Business Intelligence, we were able to create a live report to have the same information always immediately available to our client.  Thanks to BI, our client is able to save 600 labor hours a year, and at $10/hr (conservatively speaking), that’s $6,000 in a year.

Business Intelligence can centralize information from all types of systems including:

• Accounting software (Like Microsoft Dynamics GP, Peachtree, QuickBooks, JD Edwards, etc)
• Customer Relationship software (Like Microsoft Dynamics CRM or Salesforce)
• Line of Business Application (Manufacturing software or whatever proprietary software you use to run your daily operations)

What makes this exciting is that before, you had to purchase special software to display the information in a particular dashboard or system.  Now, we are able to centralize these reports in the place that helps you the most. 

Here are some of the ways we can centralize data:

• Websites (including internal websites like SharePoint)
• Business Dashboards (such as in GP 2010)
• Excel files using PowerPivot (Yes… we can have up-to-date live information available in an Excel format with charts and graphics.)
• SQL Reporting Services

Ask yourself.  How much time is being wasted by your top managers chasing, crunching, or sharing information?  What if you could free an additional 4-6 weeks a year for these key people to focus on new initiatives?  Business Intelligence can help take your organization to the next level by having critical, just-in-time information at teams’ fingertips.”  Or, in my own words, you could simply say it’s “cool as crap!"

Really it’s cliché’ to say “we value our customers” or “we pride ourselves on superior customer service”…  Blah. Blah. Blah.   I’m sure the same information is on your competitor’s web site.  How are you insuring that you’re truly putting your customers first?

What controls can you put in place?  How can technology help raise the bar of the experience your clients have with your organization while saving time, improving security, and monitoring your business processes?

Microsoft 4.0 Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software can help.  What can it do for me?

• No more “information everywhere”.  CRM software can consolidate all your customer information into one shared database.

• Security for your sales leads and contacts.  If you have salespeople on the road with valuable leads only on their laptops, you may be at risk of those leads going with them if they choose to leave the company.  CRM centralizes this information from anywhere in the world.

• No more duplicate entry.  With Pinnacle’s PinConnect tool, we can have your customer data synchronized with your accounting system, push A/R information into CRM, and talk to just about any other system you have to get the information you need where you need it.
• Manage tasks and business processes.  Your business most likely has several processes, how a lead converts into a customer, how warranty or customer service calls are logged, how proposals are created, etc…  CRM has built in “workflow” tools to help you track the progress of critical functions and can send you automated alerts when/if they’re not happening.
• Information accessible 24/7 from anywhere.   You can access your CRM data from anywhere in the world via the web to update meeting notes, add leads, you name it.
• Business Intelligence.  Once your data is consolidated, you can get the information you need to make day to day decisions to help effectively manage your operation and improve service with scores of built in reports.
• And there’s more.  Really, the opportunities to customize CRM to your specific needs are nearly endless.  This is not your old spreadsheet telling you your customer’s birthday… this is a platform that can lead to web portals for your clients, multiple systems working together, an employee management tool, sales funnel reporting, and more…

Want to see it in action? 

On February 25th from 11:00-1:00, we will cover some CRM basics, but more importantly, give you practical examples of how businesses are actually using this software to build sales, improve service, and more…  Better yet?  We’ll feed you lunch…. on us.

Where:     Pinnacle, 4100 Edison Lakes Pkwy Ste320, Mishawaka, IN  46545

When:   February 25th, 11:00-1:00   (Lunch provided)

Cost:   $0

Please RSVP at http://pinnaclecrm.eventbrite.com or call us at (574) 235-8100 to register.