Affordable solutions designed for SMEs as well as large enterprises.

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1 edition

2 3 The world around us is changing constantly. It s almost impossible to keep up with technological developments. But you can t change your ERP system overnight. After all, this is often a comprehensive, complex and well thought-out system that is crucial for many of your business processes. You want to continue developing your business while at the same time making better products, improving your services and staying ahead of the competition. Prodware s intelligent software applications allow you to become more flexible and productive. Prodware is a full-service systems integrator with knowledge of the entire Microsoft platform. We develop and implement industry-specific ERP systems, and offer CRM, BI, document management, infrastructure, hosting, and Cloud solutions. In other words: Prodware is an ERP supplier that helps its customers make the most out of their business information. We take advantage of our knowledge of ERP and additional applications, such as CRM, to link relevant pieces of information and make them available to your whole organisation, thus enhancing your ERP system s profitability. Intelligent software and easily accessible applications enable you and your employees to work far more effectively, cut costs and extract more operational control information from your data. All of this without overloading your IT budget or human resources! Affordable solutions designed for SMEs as well as large enterprises. of your customers cost you more than what you charge them.

3 In our series entitled ERP works with we introduce the most popular and effective software solutions and applications in terms of: Higher return on investment Better information for operational control Flexibility Cost savings Improved efficiency Greater job satisfaction

4 6 Microsoft Dynamics CRM is often connected to Microsoft Dynamics NAV and AX. There is a good reason for this, as it is meant for the part of your organisation that your ERP system does not cover. Your sales, marketing and customer service teams are all in daily contact with customers and business partners. They gather information to enable you and other managers to make decisions and enhance the quality of your services to your customer. This way, you stand above the crowd, attract loyal customers, win deals and secure orders. The next step involves seamlessly transferring all sales data from Dynamics CRM to your ERP software without losing information. As ERP is focused on crucial financial and operational information, your business can benefit from the fixed nature of ERP processes. This means data is captured, held and processed in a standardised fashion. CRM processes, on the other hand, are flexible and can be tailored to different people with different needs and responsibilities. CRM is about keeping track of your interactions with your customers and prospects through phone calls, service agreements, records of conversations, meetings and quotations. It is about launching marketing campaigns and managing your sales force and, last but not least, your aftersales and customer service. Speed, simplicity and accessibility are crucial in this respect. Microsoft Dynamics CRM runs through Outlook and Office, i.e. through Word and Excel, which means it is both familiar and user-friendly. And, let s face it, your salespeople actually only really know one program: their mailbox! In order to gain control of your customer and partners data, you need to enable your teams to access this information as simply and as easily as possible. Give the right customer the right kind of attention.

5 9 Why should I connect my ERP system with a CRM platform? The data that is entered by your operations team into your ERP system is crucial for your sales team, who need to have access, for instance, to product specifications or to take a look at the company s stock. Similarly, your sales team needs to send your customers requirements, agreements and contact history to your administration or operations team once an order has been registered.

6 10 FOOD All I want is useful software. Do I really need to turn my organisation upside-down to achieve that? Of course not! However, the success of a CRM system - and therefore its added value is not so much about the software you use but about your vision of customer experience, customer service and customer relationship management. That vision is translated into the right software product. A software product that is user friendly, easy to use, set up and operate. FOR THOU GHT...

7 13 Companies that consistently pay more attention to customers than their competitors enjoy on average 10 % higher profitability Turn your customers into business partners rather than invoice addresses. 9 % higher market value Your customer s wishes You want to manage your customer relationships better. That s understandable. But CRM is also about the following underlying issue: what does the customer want, expect and demand from you? What are his or her needs? If you want to improve your customer relationship processes, you need to focus not only on your organisation s bottlenecks, but also on the needs, and possibly even on your customers frustrations. How can you eliminate those? Information policy Different teams and employees in your organisation require different types of information and different ways of accessing that information. Different types of data require different security levels. Your information policy, in which these issues are worked out in more detail, influences your choice of software and applications as well as the design and setup of your systems. Being able to access all data from any location may sound appealing. But many of your employees have other needs. Relevance is the key! Expectations CRM is about managing your organisation s and customers expectations. Within your organisation, you need to have information about the quotation process (what exactly has my salesperson sold?) and activity history, as well as insight into leads and the sales pipeline. Equally, CRM is essential for managing your customer s expectations. Is the software sufficiently flexible to enable your marketing, sales team and service desk to do their work properly and enable you to proactively serve your customers and continually exceed their expectations? FOOD FOR THOUGHT...

8 15 Avoid pitfalls such as accepting an inadequate system, or a system that does not meet your expectations. Objectives Why do you want to implement a CRM system? This could be for either business or technological reasons. As a matter of fact, your goal may be to improve your new business wins, retain your existing customers or increase the reliability of your sales forecasts, or you may want to lower the cost of using disparate systems or increase your flexibility. Optimise processes Depending on your objectives, CRM helps you to improve some of your business processes, such as customer relationship management, marketing and sales activities and customer service. What is your current approach and what do you want to change? Map out the employees who will work with CRM beforehand. In most industries, 75% of the revenue is generated from 5% of the customers.

9 17 Measure and benchmark How do you eventually want to measure your CRM system s efficiency and profitability? Set yourself measurable targets to achieve your objectives, for things like finding the right information, which may seem straightforward, but are often time-consuming for your sales employees. Make sure that all the information about each customer is centralised: this will easily save half an hour of work per employee and per day. You will then be able to devote this time to your customers, instead of having it eaten up by the system. The benefits of the CRM system Your employees can easily learn how to take advantage of the CRM system. With your sales team for example, rather than entering quotations in Excel, in their customer database and in other documents, they will only need to update customer data in one location. SET YOURSELF MEASURABLE TARGETS TO ACHIEVE YOUR

10 Get support from the top. Make sure that your CRM project has a sponsor in the management team. Believe in it! Have a senior manager who does not support it because they are sceptical about the software. Communicate regularly about the objectives, progress and the success of the CRM project. Explain it! CRM is in the interest of your entire organisation CRM genuinely supports day-to-day activities Adopt a step-by-step approach for your employees, to give them all the opportunity to learn. Make sure that there are enough people who can devote time to CRM. Forget to keep explaining that the system is necessary and beneficial to the company, and that it is urgent to implement it. Want to change too fast and too much, as this will generate resistance. Give insufficient support and time to the project team. Be reluctant to share information and knowledge about business partners. Think in terms of buttons and technology rather than people and needs.

11 20 The right solution for your organisation? From "customers" to "stakeholders" Microsoft Dynamics CRM is all about customer relationship management. This ultra-flexible platform is ideally suited to the needs and requirements of your marketing and sales teams. Furthermore, its simple design and setup allow you to manage all types of stakeholders: employees, suppliers, partners or any other party. Interacting with your business partners and getting relevant information about them is of utmost importance. Configuring, not programming Microsoft Dynamics CRM is a platform which does not require any development. You can however set the system up to work according to your requirements, objectives and processes. With simple wizards, you can configure workflows and processes quickly and flexibly. Did you know that Microsoft Dynamics CRM is not an expensive solution? Most organisations spend more money on coffee for their employees than on customer relationship management. The ideal cloud solution Depending on your strategy, needs and requirements, Microsoft Dynamics CRM can be hosted on your premises or deployed in the cloud. The Cloud-based Microsoft Dynamics CRM system offers the following benefits: No dedicated infrastructure required Secure and reliable Accessibility at any time and in any place Single and transparent pricing, per user and month Possibility to try the service before subscribing to it

12 A leading offshore transportation company was looking for a platform to manage its complex sales processes and its teams. They chose Dynamics CRM because it was ideal to perform this Transportation: insight into complex sales processes, roles and business partnerships task step by step, i.e. to standardise the process and manage the potential risks. CRM can play a crucial role in forecasting: it is a reliable sales pipeline tool. Our customers A well-known pizza chain uses CRM to select new locations, attract franchisees and establish outlets across Europe. Microsoft Dynamics CRM has given it the opportunity to improve its business processes efficiency and organisational performance and enable its management to benefit from a better understanding of ongoing activities. Food franchise: marketing and sales force and their solutions A clothing franchise chain was looking for a software solution that would enable it to optimally serve its rapidly expanding list of franchisees. Every day, the company was inundated with questions from franchisees about its stock, goods and store layout. As it was growing rapidly, the company needed to control this flow of questions and information. Microsoft Dynamics CRM met these requirements, as it was both flexible and easy to use. The clothing and apparel industry: speed and flexibility On average, gaining a new customer is 5 to 7 times as expensive as retaining an existing one.

13 Mobile CRM Implementing Mobile CRM will quickly improve your sales and customer service employees efficiency in contacting their prospects and customers. They will be able to remotely access customer information from anywhere and add important data anywhere at any time, thus instantly saving time and boosting their productivity. In other words, Mobile CRM generates a fantastic return on investment. adaptations 25 Social CRM Social CRM is a hot topic. You have far more information at your fingertips about your customers than you can imagine. For example online networking: Who knows who? Which customers should I use to make contact? One important question you must ask yourself is this: which information is relevant to my organisation and to my employees? Would you like to know more about your customers needs to be able to meet them more adequately? Social CRM gives your sales team the tools to open the doors at the right time with the right message. Your employees want to work with their own smartphone or ipad. Just like at home. They can. Customer Experience Exceed your customers expectations. Genuinely add value for your customers. An organisation s ability to stand out from the crowd depends on its capacity to provide value-added goods or services to customers. To succeed, it is vital to perform operational controls, use your employees skills and optimise and facilitate processes and activities. A genuinely customer-oriented business strategy includes capturing the relevant customer information to help you exceed your customer s expectations. According to some studies, Mobile CRM can improve your productivity by 26%. Depending on your business sector, by retaining 5% of your customers, you may increase your profitability rate by 25% to 95%.

14 26 Prodware CRM combines technology, expertise and advice which enables your CRM system to instantly add value to your business and enable you to reach your objectives. Apart from being a CRM specialist, Prodware has all the necessary expertise to integrate CRM into other systems, in virtually every industry. We understand that CRM adds value to your sales, marketing, customer service, project management and human resource teams better than any other CRM provider. We can also advise you on the implementation of additional software and applications to support your business processes and improve your CRM system s success and return on investment.

15 This is the ERP+CRM edition of the Beyond ERP ebook series. Interested in obtaining other editions of this series? Send an to Contact Prodware (UK) Limited Waterfold Business Park Bury, Lancashire t +44 (0) e info@prodware.co.uk i Conception Design: Fire Penguin Creative Copy: Schaapman Communicatie

16 Prodware (UK) Limited Waterfold Business Park Bury, Lancashire t +44 (0) e info@prodware.co.uk i