Why Manufacturing Companies Need Microsoft Dynamics CRM

Louise Alderton, 13 May 2011

In today’s world Manufacturers no longer just compete on efficiency. The top guns in Manufacturing are well aware that sales, marketing and customer service will be the key drivers of giving them a competitive edge. Many Manufacturing companies are deploying a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) solution to provide them this advantage.

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Manufacturers need a solution that considers all elements of their business. It needs to be able to be integrated into existing and essential legacy systems, offer a complete 360-degree view of customer information and interactions and be adopted quickly amongst their staff. Microsoft Dynamics CRM provides a great framework for a manufacturing solution enabling them to streamline processes across sales, operations, marketing and customer service. Overall creating a customer, people focused organisation rather than operations focused.

Let’s take a look at some of the features of a Microsoft Dynamics CRM Manufacturing solution:

Channel Management

By equipping your sales channels with timely and relevant information, you can improve your competitiveness. You can establish consistent sales and customer services processes worldwide and, at the same time, maintain the flexibility to tailor specific offers and pricing. The single platform serves as a central, easily accessible hub for all information meaning that staff can collaborate on business proposals, quotes, campaigns and other efforts. Processes can be connected across the board to create efficiency and you can easily monitor revenue through orders and invoices.

Campaign Management

You will increase your marketing effectiveness with tools to manage your marketing campaigns, from initiation through post-campaign analysis. Built-in analytical and reporting tools arm you with insights to proactively refine your methods and improve the targeting of high-value prospects.

Service Management

With Microsoft Dynamics CRM, it’s easier to schedule services and manage resources so you can meet or surpass customer expectations. By automating processes, you can reduce costs and help ensure that service is delivered consistently. You will be able to define services together with related resources and work schedules to streamline delivery. You can even track how well current scheduling is fulfilling service goals and adjust as necessary to save time and costs.

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Business Intelligence

Get business intelligence tools to help you analyse your business processes, identify possible enhancements, and adjust quickly to changing conditions. Microsoft Dynamics CRM provides visual tools and reports to help you act on the insights that you gain. You can even integrate your Microsoft Dynamics CRM solution with your existing systems, including ERP, shop-floor control, inventory, financial, and sales-order processing. This allows you to gather information from across your company giving you a complete picture. These tools can also assist in complying regulation requirements through comprehensive information management and reporting.

Now let’s take a look at a couple of real-world examples of a Microsoft Dynamics CRM Manufacturing solution in action:

High Five Sportswear

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High Five Sportswear manufactures and distributes team athletic apparel to more than over 4,000 customers in the United States and Canada. They faced challenges of how they track their performance, the need for much better visibility and improved collaboration. After a lot of research High Five Sportswear decided on implementing Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online. The implementation of this solution was very time efficient as well as financially efficient.  They wanted to get the solution up and running in a week but managed to achieve this in just two and a half days.

Realistically the adoption rate for our staff is at 100 per cent; this is due largely to the familiarity through the strong integration with Outlook. The use of Microsoft Dynamics CRM online has brought the company closer to their customers in providing better service. Staff are able to recognise the benefits the value of sharing timely, accurate information in helping everybody move quicker through service issues. In the past High Five Sportswear were so concerned with providing high levels of customer service that they would have multiple people or departments dealing with the same issue at the same time. Now by being able to record the information and have it readily accessible to everybody eliminates implication of efforts, wasting time and resources.

Everybody wins. The company wins, the customers win, sales reps win, and the end user wins because they can provide more timely, better customer service. The use of Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online allows High Five Sportswear to differentiate themselves from their competitors through higher levels of customer service.

Watch the full video.

Modulyss

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Based in the Netherlands, Modulyss is a designer and producer of floor coverings who employs 120 people. The company wanted to make it easier for employees to manage the sales process, and so it chose to implement a Microsoft Dynamics CRM business management solution.

Since deploying Microsoft Dynamics CRM, Modulyss have become much more responsive to leads and opportunities. Employees can now access valuable contact and customer information, which helps them establish strong client and customer relationships, and win new business. With centrally stored and accessible information the transition between sales reps is easier.

With beneficial analytics and reporting the sales process is able to continuously improve. They can understand how they won a deal or why they lost one enabling them to then refine their processes, avoid making the same mistakes twice, and win more business. Reporting is simplified. With readily available information it only takes a few clicks to configure a report. These reports can be created on almost anything therefore helping Modulyss understand how every element of the business is performing.

Project management is more effective. Microsoft Dynamics CRM gives Modulyss an accurate overview of the status of all projects. It only takes a few seconds for staff to see how current projects are progressing. If a project is falling behind schedule they can allocate more resources to make sure it is completed on time.

Read the full case study.

*1 Image from: http://sproutsocial.com/insights/2010/12/should-you-automate-your-content/
*2 Image from: http://www.powerobjects.com/blog/2010/09/07/service-scheduling-part-2-in-microsoft-dynamics-crm/
*3 Image from: http://www.gpaembroidery.com/sportsteams.html
*4 Image from: http://crm.dynamics.com/en-nz/featured-customers/case-study-details?casestudyid=4000008134