Customer Solution Case Study
/ / Chilean Investment Firm Positions Itself for Growth by Gaining Control of Sales Leads
Overview
Country or Region: Chile
Industry: Financial Services
Customer Profile
Andueza Patrimonios is a financial advisory firm in Santiago, Chile. The growing market for these services provides Andueza Patrimonios with both opportunities and challenges.
Business Situation
The financial advisory business in Chile is becoming very competitive. Every new lead is an important opportunity for the company, but the lack of a centralized database often resulted in duplicated efforts and missed opportunities.
Solution
The company decided to deploy Microsoft® CRM Sales Standard, aligning its own workflows internally to match those of the solution. Within a month, the firm was able to begin managing all of its customer relationships with its new database.
Benefits
n Centralized, accessible customer information
n More effective managed growth
n Increased employee productivity
n More sales opportunities / “We were up and running within a month of deployment, managing our customer relationships with Microsoft CRM.”
Rodrigo Andueza Saint, General Manager, Andueza Patrimonios
Andueza Patrimonios, located in Santiago, Chile, is a new financial advisory firm with a fast-growing client base. Increased sales activity provided both opportunities and challenges for the business. The company needed a comprehensive software solution to help centralize sales leads and automate business processes. The solution also needed to integrate with its existing office systems and potential workflow. With these requirements identified, Andueza Patrimonios turned to C-Metrix Business Solutions, a Microsoft® Certified Partner for Microsoft CRM (now part of Microsoft Dynamics™) solutions, to deliver an affordable, stable, and powerful system for managing customer information.
Situation
As Chile’s economy continues to grow, more people are seeking professional financial advice about how to invest their money. To be successful in this industry, Andueza Patrimonios must offer top-quality customer service.
When Andueza Patrimonios first opened its doors, managing customer information and new leads was a fairly straightforward process. The firm used the Microsoft® Office Outlook® messaging and collaboration client as its e-mail program and Microsoft Office Excel® to manage customer information and to forecast sales.
As the company’s client list grew, however, Andueza Patrimonios and its five sales representatives found it increasingly difficult both to track and coordinate sales activity and to respond to new leads and close business. For example, sales representatives were often making multiple calls to the same customer. The sales team was also having difficulty staying informed about what had been discussed with the customer in previous calls. Andueza Patrimonios realized that it needed a more effective way to analyze sales in order to cross-sell and upsell its financial products to customers interested in additional investment opportunities.
Solution
To keep track of important sales leads, Andueza Patrimonios determined that finding a customer relationship management (CRM) solution would help address many of the challenges it faced. The company wanted a solution that was full-featured yet would integrate with its existing office systems and workflow. After evaluating several solutions, Andueza Patrimonios determined that Microsoft CRM most effectively met its requirements.
“We knew that Microsoft CRM would be around long into the future, and that gave us a certain peace of mind,” says Rodrigo Andueza Saint, General Manager, Andueza Patrimonios. “Plus, we wanted local support and expertise, not telephone support from overseas. That’s something no one else could offer us.”
The company prepared for the Microsoft CRM implementation in advance. “We integrated our workflows and processes to take advantage of the capabilities of Microsoft CRM. So it was a little easier for us to migrate to the new system in many respects,” says Andueza Saint.
Easy user adoption was another key factor in implementing Microsoft CRM. “Some of our employees were intimidated at the beginning just because it was a new way of doing things,” Andueza Saint recalls. “But other employees recognized its similarity to the Microsoft Windows® operating system environment, and they caught on very quickly.”
Like many small businesses seeking a competitive edge, Andueza Patrimonios wanted to deploy a new solution as quickly as possible. “We were up and running within a month of deployment, managing our customer relationships with Microsoft CRM,” says Andueza Saint. “Part of this was due to Microsoft CRM’s ability to customize the workflow to match our processes. But a large part was the familiar user interface of Microsoft CRM—it integrates with the other Microsoft products we are already using, such as Internet Explorer, Outlook, and Windows.
“Our technology partner, C-Metrix, offered us a software and hardware package they created called CRM Express, which included Microsoft Windows Small Business Server 2003 Premium Edition on an HP Proliant server,” continues Andueza Saint. “They worked very closely with us to configure the CRM software to fit our needs, and they installed the server. They also gave us the support we needed to customize the product to meet our needs.”
Benefits
Moving to Microsoft CRM began to pay off for Andueza Patrimonios almost immediately.
Centralized, accessible customer information
Customer information is now located in a central location that is easily accessible to everyone in the company. Because all customer contacts are tracked and all calls are logged into one system, sales representatives no longer make duplicate calls to the same customer lead. The time saved allows them to pursue more sales opportunities.
More effective managed growth
Microsoft CRM is also helping Andueza Patrimonios manage growth more effectively.
“We are in the process of adding more sales representatives to our firm, and they will be able to contribute to our bottom line more rapidly because they won’t have to create their own way of managing sales. They can easily adapt to our Microsoft CRM workflow and become productive almost immediately,” says Andueza Saint. “That certainly gives us the competitive advantage.”
Increased employee productivity
Microsoft CRM has also allowed Andueza Patrimonios to retain some key employees.
“One of our best salespersons needed to work out of her house for an extended period of time due to some personal issues,” said Andueza Saint. “Because she is able to pull up the information she needs to do her job from home, we are not only able to continue to provide her clients with the level of service they’ve come to expect, but also retain a very important member of our sales team.”
For Andueza Patrimonios, the ultimate goal is to deliver top-quality customer service to its existing customer base without sacrificing quality as the business grows. Andueza Saint says, “We now have a CRM system in place that will let us grow without starting again from scratch, or relearning processes or 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 systems that 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