ROI CASE STUDY MICROSOFT DYNAMICS CRM TRADESTATION

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1 ROI CASE STUDY MICROSOFT DYNAMICS CRM TRADESTATION THE BOTTOM LINE TradeStation is an electronic trading platform. Nucleus analysts explored TradeStation s Microsoft Dynamics CRM deployment and found that moving to Dynamics CRM increased system reliability and user productivity. With a more flexible application, the company was able to deliver rapid application enhancements to customers and end users. ROI: 65% Payback: 1.5 years Average annual benefit: $1,947,115 THE COMPANY TradeStation Group, Inc. (NASDAQ GS: TRAD), through its principal operating subsidiary, TradeStation Securities, Inc., offers the TradeStation platform to the active trader and certain institutional trader markets. TradeStation is an electronic trading platform that offers electronic order execution and enables clients to design, test, optimize, monitor, and automate their own custom Equities, Options, Futures, and Forex trading strategies. TradeStation Securities, Inc. is a licensed securities broker-dealer and a registered futures commission merchant, and also a member of the Boston Options Exchange, Chicago Board Options Exchange, Chicago Stock Exchange, International Securities Exchange and NASDAQ OMX. The company s technology subsidiary, TradeStation Technologies, Inc., develops and offers strategy trading software tools and subscription services. THE CHALLENGE TradeStation had been using Onyx to support its internal CRM needs for approximately 10 years but found that because it had extensively customized the application, it faced challenges on a number of fronts: Because of extensive customization, an upgrade would have essentially been a reimplementation of the software, and the vendor was no longer supporting the version TradeStation was using. Without vendor support, IT staff time devoted to troubleshooting, bug fixes, and managing downtime was growing. The development team was unable to integrate new technologies or features (such as a self-service portal) into its existing system to deliver enhancements to internal teams and external customers. Corporate Headquarters Nucleus Research Inc. 100 State Street Boston, MA Phone: Nucleus Research Inc.

2 TOPICS Customer Relationship Management Application Development & Integration The company began to explore options that would enable it to be more agile in providing new applications to the business and leverage Microsoft SharePoint, dashboards, and other new technologies moving forward. It also wanted a platform that could rapidly meet new business demands without the need for sophisticated developer resources. THE STRATEGY In late 2008, TradeStation conducted a detailed RFP process for a new platform that would meet its business and regulatory requirements. It considered Microsoft Dynamics CRM, Salesforce.com, and a number of other vendors and in January 2009 the company chose Microsoft Dynamics CRM for the following reasons: TradeStation s developers already had significant skills with Microsoft SQL and the.net and the company felt it would be able to leverage those skills to deliver complex applications quickly. Given the extensive integration and application work TradeStation planned, it believed an on-premise application would be more appropriate than a software-as-a-service one. Microsoft Dynamics CRM s xrm capabilities and built-in auditing features would enable business analysts not just developers to make enhancements to TradeStation s applications, further accelerating application delivery. TradeStation reviewed a number of Microsoft partners to assist in the migration and chose Customer Effective because of its flexibility and because it used the Agile software development methodology, which was aligned with TradeStation s goal of providing ongoing enhancements to application users, rather than the more traditional Waterfall approach. The project was divided into several phases. Discovery and design was led by business managers and analysts that were teamed with technical developers. After identifying opportunities for process improvements and ways to make information more accessible, the team began development in April 2009, and completed code development and testing, data migration, and user acceptance testing by February In addition to supporting internal CRM user needs, Microsoft Dynamics also supports a Webbased portal for customer self-service. KEY BENEFIT AREAS Moving to Microsoft Dynamics CRM has enabled TradeStation to provide a stable and flexible platform for delivering CRM functionality to end users. BENEFITS Indirect 15% Direct 85% TOTAL: $5,841,334 2

3 Customer self-service has increased customer interaction without adding client services staff, and a rapid development environment enables developers to quickly address business needs with custom development projects. Specific benefits of the project include: Increased developer productivity. The xrm capabilities and reporting and auditing components within Dynamics CRM has enabled developers to complete new projects quickly and delegate less complex projects and enhancements to business analysts. Reduced technology costs. Moving to Dynamics CRM enabled TradeStation to redeploy existing IT resources that it had dedicated to supporting the old application platform. Reduced downtime. Moving to a modern application with vendor support and with less custom code and customizations has reduced the amount of system downtime and the related disruption for end users and customers. Improved client services. Sales and client services now have more immediate access to information about customer activities and demands so they can respond to customer inquiries more quickly. They have also benefited from being able to create their own departmental analyses using dashboards and the Advanced Find tool in Dynamics CRM. Increased collaboration. The flexibility of Dynamics CRM gave TradeStation the ability to take the out-of-the-box functionality of Cases and customize it to support interdepartmental communication between customer-facing and noncustomer-facing departments. Improved collaboration between departments has increased efficiency and improved the customer experience. KEY COST AREAS Key cost areas for the project included personnel, consulting, software, hardware, training, and other costs including travel associated with the project. COSTS Training 1% Other 4% Software 9% Hardware 8% Personnel 51% Consulting 27% TOTAL: $2,799,043 BEST PRACTICES TradeStation recognized that the key to continued performance in its industry was the ability to rapidly make changes based on the needs of the business and demands of customers without extensive development and coding requirements. The core components of Microsoft Dynamics CRM enabled TradeStation to focus on delivering new innovations on top of a stable application foundation. 3

4 CALCULATING THE ROI Nucleus calculated the costs of software, hardware, consulting, personnel, training, and other investments over a 3-year period to quantify TradeStation s total investment in Microsoft Dynamics CRM. Key direct benefits quantified include the redeployment of support resources for the old application platform and the avoidance of additional developer resources that would have been needed to deliver the same level and volume of ongoing enhancements and projects. Indirect benefits quantified include the time saved by customer service and sales people and time saved managing compliance risk associated with system downtime. Those benefits were quantified based on the time saved and the fully loaded cost of the related employees using a correction factor to account for the inefficient transfer of time between time saved and additional time worked. Not quantified was the business benefit of TradeStation being able to better retain and attract customers by maintaining a more reliable platform and delivering new enhancements. 4

5 DETAILED FINANCIAL ANALYSIS TRADESTATION SUMMARY Project: Microsoft Dynamics CRM Annual return on investment (ROI) 65% Payback period (years) 1.54 Average annual benefit 1,947,115 Average annual total cost of ownership 933,014 ANNUAL BENEFITS Pre-start Year 1 Year 2 Year 3 Direct 0 1,650,000 1,650,000 1,650,000 Indirect 0 297, , ,115 Total Benefits Per Period 0 1,947,115 1,947,115 1,947,115 DEPRECIATED ASSETS Pre-start Year 1 Year 2 Year 3 Software 145, Hardware 221, Total Per Period 366, DEPRECIATION SCHEDULE Pre-start Year 1 Year 2 Year 3 Software 0 29,033 29,033 29,033 Hardware 0 44,346 44,346 44,346 Total Per Period 0 73,379 73,379 73,379 EXPENSED COSTS Pre-start Year 1 Year 2 Year 3 Software 4,875 33,728 33,728 33,728 Hardware Consulting 751, Personnel 1,442, Training 28, Other 88,227 15, Total Per Period 2,315,196 49,495 33,728 33,728 FINANCIAL ANALYSIS Pre-start Year 1 Year 2 Year 3 Net cash flow before taxes (2,682,093) 1,897,620 1,913,387 1,913,387 Net cash flow after taxes (1,524,495) 985, , ,383 Annual ROI - direct and indirect benefits 65% 65% 65% Annual ROI - direct benefits only 55% 55% 55% Net present value (NPV) (1,524,495) (611,995) 239,671 1,028,251 Payback (years) 1.54 Average annual cost of ownership 2,682,093 2,731,587 1,382, ,014 3-year IRR 42% 42% FINANCIAL ASSUMPTIONS All government taxes 50% Discount rate 8% 2010 Nucleus Research, Inc. Reproduction in whole or part without written permission is prohibited. All calculations are based on Nucleus Research's independent analysis of the expected costs and benefits associated with the solution. 5