Customer Solution Case Study
/ High-Tech Manufacturer Boosts Productivity by 15–20 Percent, Achieves ROI in 8–10 Months
Overview
Country or Region:United States
Industry:Manufacturing—High-tech manufacturing
Customer Profile
Founded in 1955, Panduit is a world-class developer and provider of physical infrastructure solutions that help customers improve availability, operational efficiency, and business agility.
Business Situation
After facing formidable challenges with its two previous installations of customer relationship management solutions, including low adoption by its sales force, Panduit opted to implement a solution that offered greater ease of use and flexibility.
Solution
Working with Microsoft Gold Certified Partners Hitachi Consulting and STREAMSOL, the company completed deployment of Microsoft Dynamics CRM to more than 700 sales and marketing team members in two months.
Benefits
- Gained better business control through full adoption of technology
- Increased sale force productivity by 15–20 percent
- Reduced cost of sale by 3 percent in three months
- Greater sales consistency and coordination
- Achieved ROI in 8–10 months
Ron Partridge, Group VP of Global Sales and Marketing, Panduit
To fully standardize its sales processes and improve the rigor of sales reporting, Panduit—a leading manufacturer of comprehensive physical infrastructure solutions based on the Unified Physical Infrastructure℠ approach—needed a new customer relationship management system. Panduit experienced challenges with its two previous customer relationship managementdeployments. In each case, adoption was low, which complicated lead tracking, limited opportunities for coordinated selling, and blunted the effectiveness of performance evaluation. Panduit searched for a customer relationship managementsystem that was easy to use and cost-effective to deploy and extend. After implementing Microsoft Dynamics CRM in only 60 days, Panduit has increased its sales force productivity by 15–20 percent and expects payback on its investment in 8–10 months.
Situation
Panduit is headquartered in Tinley Park, Illinois, with a new world headquarters LEED Gold building opening in April 2010. Founded in 1955, the privately held company has more than 4,500 employees and annual revenue approaching U.S.$1 billion. In addition to its manufacturing centers in the United States, China, Singapore, Romania, Mexico, the Netherlands, and Costa Rica, Panduit operates sales and service centers in more than 60 countries and has a global sales and marketing force of more than 700 direct people.
Over the past five decades, the company has earned a reputation for its continuous innovation and leadership. In fact, Unified Physical InfrastructureSM—the service mark for its methodology and solution portfolio for data centers, connected buildings, and industrial automation—is recognized as industry-standard technology. The recent proliferation of data centers and increasing demand for fixed and mobile broadband access has opened up tremendous growth opportunities for the company, as the need for its expertise and solutions has surged worldwide. To capitalize on this growth, the company recognized the need to increase the efficiency of its sales and marketing processes and improve visibility into sales and marketing performance.
To advance its position as an industry leader and maximize market penetration, Panduit relies heavily on the knowledge and execution capabilities of its extended sales team. The company has a complex sales value chain that consists of distributors, contractors, integrators, alliance partners, design consultants, manufacturer’s representatives, and direct employees. To ensure that all the people who support this value chain can reference accurate pricing, parts, and design information for its solutions, the company needed technology that enabled real-time access to information and easy-to-use collaboration tools. The company’s deep solution focus amplified the importance of shared access to comprehensive customer and product information across its salesforce.
Two Different Customer Relationship Management Systems in Four Years
The company’s customer relationship management systems, however, were unable to meet these needs. Between 2005 and 2009, the company worked with two different customer relationship managementsystems and contemplated switching to another system.
Sales personnel were disappointed by the lack of seamless interoperability with the other customer relationship managementsystems, which they relied on to handle their critical business communication. Similarly, their previous customer relationship managementsystem did not offer the kind of integration with e-mail or a level of easeofuse hoped for by sales staff. Without this integration, they were forced to spend valuable time each day manually transferring prospect and customer information from e-mail messages into the customer relationship management database. Further, the previous system was difficult and costly to modify to align with the company’s established sales procedures. “Because of the costs involved in making changes, we ended up modifying our processes to fit the logic of the CRM system,” says Ron Partridge, Group VP of Global Sales and Marketing for Panduit. “We could have adapted the system to fit our business, so there would be no administrative burden on our team, but it would have taken an inordinate amount of resources to get this done.”
Need to Ensure Rapid,
Widespread Adoption
Owing to the usability challenges of its customer relationship managementsystems, the company’s sales force failed to adopt either system in sufficient numbers. In fact, the company estimates that fully one-third of its global sales personnel regularly worked outside of the system, increasing the need for double entry, complicating lead management, and limiting the effectiveness of sales reporting. “Without consistent use of the technology, we could not execute our global sales processes as efficiently as we needed to,” says Partridge.
To empower its team to maximize productivity, ensure adherence to its own defined best practices and procedures, and enable clearer insight into performance, Panduit began its search for a new customer relationship managementsystem. “We were looking for a system that we could deploy quickly, that our salespeople would want to use by it not putting a significant administrative burden, and that we could cost-effectively tailor to our business model,” says Partridge.
Solution
After evaluating the market for packaged customer relationship managementsystems, Panduit selected Microsoft Dynamics CRM. Company executives had worked closely with Microsoft industry experts throughout the process to discuss how the solution would meet Panduit’s unique requirements. “In addition to easeofuse, the solution had to offer a combination of built-in integration capabilities to connect all of the parts of its value chain and the extensibility to meet changing business needs,” says Al Bissmeyer, High-Tech Industry Development Manager at Microsoft.
Up and Running in Two Months
With help from Microsoft Gold Certified Partner Hitachi Consulting, Panduit completed its implementation of Microsoft Dynamics CRM and deployed the solution—which included multilanguage support for English, Chinese, and Japanese—to its entire sales force in two months. This accelerated schedule included tailoring screens to match the company’s process flow and modifying lead management capabilities in the system to automate lead tracking according to specific business rules. In order to streamline deployment and accomplish completion of the project within two months, Panduit chose a partner-hosted deployment model. Microsoft Gold Certified Partner STREAMSOL provides the hosting service through its data centers.
Flexible, Easy-to-Use System
Panduit has taken advantage of the flexibility of Microsoft Dynamics CRM to make changes to the composition and number of screens used to perform daily tasks. For example, the company now has the ability to dynamically add fields to accommodate multiple SIC codes for customers. Building on the support that the solution provides for optimizing business processes, Panduit worked with Hitachi Consulting to minimize the number of screens and clicks required to complete opportunities. Whereas staff previously navigated through multiple screens in their previous system to fulfill this process, they can now input all of the necessary information by using a single screen. Moreover, salespeople can now access functionality in Microsoft Dynamics CRM through Microsoft Office Outlook on their laptops,which simplifies finding the information they need.
Automated Lead Routing
The team from Hitachi Consulting also helped Panduit extend the solution to automatically route leads to sales teams based on a set of predefined business rules, including geographic location and interest in a particular solution area. As soon as one of the company’s marketing staff members submits a qualified lead to the database in Microsoft Dynamics CRM, that record is automatically linked in the system to the appropriate regional sales organization. An automated e-mail alert is then transmitted to the field sales manager to initiate follow-up activities. “Except for a few small add-ins, where our team wrote some additional custom code, we mainly used the built-in tools and capabilities of Microsoft Dynamics CRM to create the global lead-routing piece of the solution,” says Jon Petrucelli, who managed the Panduit implementation for Hitachi Consulting. Because of its familiarity with Microsoft technology, Panduit’s IT team can easily adapt this feature to align with changes in the makeup of the company’s regional sales organizations.
Sales Portal Integration
Panduit looks forward to taking advantage of Microsoft Office SharePoint Server to link data stored in Microsoft Dynamics CRM to sales and marketing collateral hosted on the company’s intranet. This will help Panduit employees, distributors, systems integrators, and other partners in the value chain quickly find the most current and relevant documentation on its expansive array of solutions. “Without leaving their e-mail inbox, our people will be able to link directly to solution assets, product specifications, and the sales playbooks for each solution,” says Partridge. “This will not only save us time but also ensure that we’re all adhering to the same strategy.” In addition, Panduit can take advantage of Active Directory Rights Management Services in Office SharePoint Server to control the distribution of proprietary information across its sales network. This technology will help Panduit more effectively manage its intellectual property and maximize consistency in how its employees and partners communicate about the company’s solutions.
Benefits
Through its investment in Microsoft Dynamics CRM, Panduit has streamlined and improved the coordination of its sales processes, increased the productivity of its global sales force, and gained business agility by lowering its total cost of sale. Building on the success of a rapid implementation cycle, the company projects full payback on its investment in 8–10 months.
Gained Better Business Control Through Full Adoption of Technology
By implementing Microsoft Dynamics CRM, Panduit has been able to tighten standardization of its sales strategy, better manage the execution of this strategy, and improve visibility into performance at every level of its global sales organization. “To reach any of these goals, adoption of the technology is absolutely critical,” says Partridge. “The ease of use and flexibility of Microsoft Dynamics CRM has played a huge role in ensuring that all of our sales and marketing team members worldwide—more than 700 people—use the system.This is something we never could accomplish with our other CRM systems.”
Increased Sales Force Productivity by
15–20 Percent
Microsoft Dynamics CRM has helped Panduit’s sales staff increase productivity by 15–20 percent. By taking advantage of the flexibility of the solution, Panduit was able to quickly introduce greater efficiency in several key processes, such as reducing the number of screens required to complete sales orders. Also, because Microsoft Dynamics CRM meshes with Office Outlook and works with other tools, including Microsoft Office Word, sales staff save more than an hour each day. In total, the company estimates that each sales associate can save up to seven hours a week through these new efficiencies, a timesavings that can be applied to building and deepening customer relationships.
Reduced Cost of Sale by 3 Percent in Three Months
By increasing the efficiency of its processes and boosting workforce productivity, Panduit has lowered its cost of sale by 3 percent in three months, driving higher profit margins and maximizing cash flow. As the company continues to streamline processes, including capitalizing on its new, global lead-routing capabilities, executives anticipate continued reductions in total cost of sale over the next several quarters. This expectation is bolstered by improved visibility into sales performance. “With Microsoft Dynamics CRM, we have the ability to measure and report on critical values—such as the number of leads closed against a specific target, down to the individual salesperson—so that we can really fine-tune our process and execution going forward,” says Partridge.
Greater Sales Consistency and Coordination
Microsoft Dynamics CRM, together with Office SharePoint Server, provides the tools to empower all of the people within the company’s extended sales value chain to share information quickly and securely and offer input into the sales process. As the company continues to accelerate its solution sales approach, this improved coordination among field sales staff, account executives, distributors, and other key business partners is critical to boosting efficiency and operational consistency to drive revenue growth.
Achieved ROI in 8–10 Months
Executives project that, based on numerous factors—including increased productivity, improved coordination of sales efforts to shorten sales cycles, and greater IT self-sufficiency—Panduit will realize payback in 8–10 months. “It’s hard to overstate the tremendous value to our business in seeing full ROI on our investment in such a short time frame,” says Partridge. “And, we feel like we’ve just scratched the surface in terms of the new capabilities that we get through Microsoft Dynamics CRM.”
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: