Danish Fashion Jewellery Designer Enhances Customer Service with Centralised CRM

Situation

Julie Sandlau is a specialised Danish jewellery business founded in 2002. Today, the company trades all over the world and employs nine people. It presents two major design collections a year, exports 90 per cent of its products, and supplies high-profile retailers throughout Asia, Europe, and the United States.

To ensure continuing growth, Julie Sandlau must retain existing customers as well as attract new ones. Historically, this has been a key challenge for the business. Carsten Blom-Hanssen, Managing Director, Julie Sandlau, says: “Often, it is has been difficult to retain customers, even though they are typically very happy with our products. This is because we did not previously have tools to manage the follow-up process or communicate with clients and journalists effectively.”

To ensure consistently excellent customer service, the company decided to deploy new customer relationship management (CRM) technologies. In doing so, it hoped to automate the process of delivering exhibition invitations to customers and the press. Other aims were to consolidate all available data on customers and their requirements, support personalised client communications, and discover which customers were no longer buying regularly.

In addition to its CRM ambitions, the company also required a scalable IT infrastructure to support both regular networking and the business applications it wanted to implement.

Finally, the company wanted to boost remote access that would allow its sales representatives to access information from any location outside of the office. To best serve their clients, the sales representatives needed to have access to public folders on the company's network to attain critical marketing and product information.

Solution

To achieve these goals, Julia Sandlau deployed Microsoft® CRM (now part of Microsoft Dynamics™), which helps small and medium-sized businesses build more profitable customer relationships. Easy to deploy and use, it is accessible from the Microsoft Office Outlook® 2003 messaging and collaboration client and the Web, and it integrates with other business systems.

Julie Sandlau uses Microsoft Windows® Small Business Server (SBS) 2003 as a server for Microsoft CRM to support its travelling sales team. By using SBS 2003, the sales team can access crucial information regarding customers from any location, such as across Europe, Asia, and the United States. Furthermore, SBS 2003 provides a secure infrastructure, including built-in firewall protection and secure remote access, which ensures the company's data is protected and the network is safe.

The new system offers a new, centralised database that collects and stores information relating to existing customers. This includes names, addresses, and product requirements, ensuring that all customer information is always accurate and up-to-date. An overview function helps Julie Sandlau staff to identify any customers who have stopped buying regularly and send appropriate communications to re-establish contact with them.

Microsoft CRM is fully integrated with the Microsoft Office System, the desktop productivity tools already in use at the organisation. This ensures that Julie Sandlau staff continues to work in a familiar IT environment and that training requirements are minimised. “We wanted to ensure consistency by running a Microsoft solution right across the infrastructure,” says Blom-Hanssen.

Importantly, centralised management of customer information and full integration with Outlook 2003 supports effective client communications. Now, invitations to exhibitions of new product ranges can be sent quickly and effectively. These can be rapidly personalised so customers are only invited to appropriate events in the right places.

Blom-Hanssen says: “With Microsoft CRM, we can now target customer communications much more accurately. We can invite a customer from Japan to exhibitions in New York, Los Angeles, or Paris. For a Swedish customer, we can send an invitation for events in Copenhagen. Microsoft CRM helps us track who we need to invite and where. In just a few months, these new strategic capabilities have improved our customer retention significantly.”

When invitations are sent, customers can respond electronically. All information is then immediately updated in the system. This provides a comprehensive record of all customer communications and ensures that no invitations are overlooked or duplicated.

Benefits

Easy Access to Centralised Customer Information

The new technology provides a comprehensive, centralised record of customer information. This is always up-to-date and can be accessed quickly and easily by all employees.

Blom-Hanssen says: “The availability of accurate information has already delivered significant benefits. Sales staff can refer to the sales histories of prospective customers and target communications accordingly. We can also ensure that all customers in a particular area are invited to nearby exhibitions and print out lists of attendees. This increases the efficiency of event planning across the board.”

Centralised data storage also means that errors can be identified and corrected immediately. This ensures that all customer information, such as contact details and sales histories, is correct and up-to-date at all times.

Blom-Hanssen says: “With Microsoft CRM we can now be sure that all information relating to our customers and their requirements is correct. As a result, we can target our marketing communications more effectively.

“Centralised information also gives us considerable savings in time and resources. Instead of referring to their notebooks, sales staff can now access the information they need at the click of a mouse. This helps us to be much more proactive and increases operational efficiency.”

Inexpensive and Rapid Deployment in Less Than a Week

Working with Microsoft Certified Partner Cubizz CRM A/S, Julie Sandlau was able to deploy the new Microsoft CRM technologies in just three days. The technology was rolled out on the first day. Then, the system was customised in line with existing business processes, and on the last day workshops were held to train staff on the new system.

Blom-Hanssen says: “We wanted to minimise the impact of the deployment on our day-to-day processes. Working with Cubizz helped us to achieve this and deliver a fully functional solution in a matter of days.”

The company also benefits from the remote access functionality of SBS 2003. “[With SBS 2003] our partner can simply login and fix issues and install new functionality through a virtual private network (VPN). This is an important factor when looking at costs,” says Blom-Hanssen.

Greater Employee Mobility Improves Sales Quality

Increased mobility is extremely important for Julie Sandlau, whose employees travel regularly to trade shows in Asia and Europe to meet clients and partners. With SBS 2003, the sales group has access to its product and financial information and public folders from any computer with an Internet connection and a Web browser—thus improving the group's functionality, productivity, and reach.

Scalable Solution Improves Network Performance

The stable, integrated network environment provided by SBS 2003 enhanced the performance of the network, which led to increased system availability and employee productivity. What's more, the scalability of SBS 2003 solution provided the company with the ability to support the roll out of more business applications.

Blom-Hanssen says: "SBS 2003 provided us with a scalable IT infrastructure to support both regular networking and the business applications we wanted to implement."

Potential for Future Development

To date, Julie Sandlau has implemented contact management and history functionalities in Microsoft CRM. It is currently working with Cubizz to plan implementation of additional Microsoft CRM management features. This helps to measure and enhance business performance on an ongoing basis. It also provides tools that target marketing to a range of customer segments and identifies new business opportunities.

Blom-Hanssen says: “We want to deploy these additional functions as soon as possible to achieve new efficiencies and increase visibility across our business activities. The new technologies will also help our employees boost their productivity and sustain a highly professional image for the company.”

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: