AS TICKET SALES SKYROCKET, MINOR LEAGUE TEAM S EFFICIENCY SOARS WITH CRM SOLUTION

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1 COLUMBUS CRM CASE STUDY AS TICKET SALES SKYROCKET, MINOR LEAGUE TEAM S EFFICIENCY SOARS WITH CRM SOLUTION The baseball club relied on manual processes to handle ticket sales. When faced with an 88 percent increase in sales, internal operations struggled to keep up. The Toledo Mud Hens Baseball Club enjoyed recordbreaking ticket sales after its move to Fifth Third Field. But while ticket sales increased by 88 percent, operations struggled to keep up. The club relied on sales representatives to deliver handwritten sales orders to accounting staff, who then entered the information into Microsoft Dynamics GP. To alleviate manual processes and gain insight into sales, the club deployed Microsoft Dynamics CRM and turned to Microsoft Gold Certified Partner Columbus for its implementation and integration expertise. Now, when a sales representative creates a sales order in Microsoft Dynamics CRM, the order includes all relevant customer information and automatically creates an invoice in Microsoft Dynamics GP. Today, the club also uses Microsoft Dynamics CRM to offer personalized services and tailor marketing and promotions to the needs of fans.

2 With Microsoft Dynamics CRM, we can get the money in when we make the sale and send the sales order automatically to accounting. Nothing falls through the cracks. Scott Jeffer, Assistant General Manager and Director of Marketing, Toledo Mud Hens Baseball Club and Toledo Walleye Hockey Club Client: Toledo Mud Hens Web: Number of employees: 40 Country: United States Industry: Media and entertainment sports team CHALLENGE Sparked by the grand opening of the team s new home at Fifth Third Field in 2002, the Toledo Mud Hens scored annual record-breaking ticket sales building momentum that culminated in back-to-back Governors' Cup championships in the 2005 and 2006 seasons. Following this trend, the Toledo Mud Hens Baseball Club broke its alltime attendance record in 2007 when annual ticket sales reached nearly 600,000 as fans witnessed the Toledo Mud Hens claim the International League West Division title. A minor league baseball team and Triple-A Affiliate of the Detroit Tigers, the Toledo Mud Hens Baseball Club is a private, nonprofit organization with 40 full-time employees. All proceeds benefit Lucas County, Ohio. CUSTOMER PROFILE: The Toledo Mud Hens Baseball club has 40 employees and sells 570,000 tickets a year to its dedicated fans. The baseball club relied on manual processes to handle ticket sales. When faced with an 88 percent increase in sales, internal operations struggled to keep up. SOFTWARE AND SERVICES: Microsoft Dynamics CRM Scribe Although the team upgraded its ballpark, the club s internal sales processes remained nearly the same. Consequently, when ticket sales increased by 88 percent in one year, internal operations had difficulty keeping up with ticket demands. When sales representatives completed a sale, they either handwrote the sales information on scratch paper or filled out a form. This information was then hand delivered to accounting staff who keyed the information into Microsoft Dynamics GP. If an account included a food order, the order was hand delivered to the ballpark concessionaire as well. Accounts that included food orders averaged two revisions before game day, says Brian Perkins, Manager of Group Sales and Service for the Toledo 2

3 Mud Hens Baseball Club and Toledo Walleye Hockey Club. As a result, concessionaire staff spent a total of 300 hours a year checking in on account information with sales and accounting staff. With increased sales, manual processes quickly became a burden and sometimes led to data entry errors. In a six-month, off-season sales period, a single sales representative handled more than 300 season ticket accounts. For each of these accounts, the sales representative spent 10 minutes creating an invoice in Microsoft Office Word and printing it. When taking on increased sales, we needed to stay operationally efficient, says Scott Jeffer, Assistant General Manager and Director of Marketing for the Toledo Mud Hens Baseball Club and Toledo Walleye Hockey Club. The last thing we wanted was to force sales representatives to do busy work during normal business hours when they could be selling instead. Consequently, sales representatives would often handle sales calls during business hours, waiting until the end of the day to create and print invoices. Says Jeffer, On occasion, the manual invoice process led to orders falling through the cracks or major issues on corporate sales, where tens of thousands of dollars could be involved. In addition, invoices could pile up, leading to an unpredictable workload for accountants. To manage customer information, sales staff recorded basic contact information into Goldmine, a customer relationship management (CRM) tool from FrontRange. Says Jeffer, We were really only using the system as an electronic Rolodex; it didn't include any financial information, such as quotes and orders. The lack of correlation between sales and accounting information not only resulted in manual processes, but led to issues of nomenclature. Explains Jeffer, Our accounting software and CRM software did not share the same naming conventions. While a sales representative might label an account with a descriptive name for the outing, the accountant might label it with the name of the person who paid for the outing. When the check arrived, it would be difficult to determine which account it applied to. Without a system that tied customer contact information to sales history and accounting, the baseball club could not create targeted marketing campaigns or gain insight into the sales cycle. After moving to Fifth Third Field, it literally became a different ball game, says Jeffer. We needed a way to become more sophisticated in our marketing efforts. This meant gaining complete visibility into customer information. When our sales representatives contact our customers, they need to know exactly what we have been selling them, be able to identify their interests, and ultimately serve them as best as possible. 3

4 SOLUTION With support from Joseph Napoli, Vice President and General Manager of the Toledo Mud Hens Baseball Club and Toledo Walleye Hockey Club, the club deployed Microsoft Dynamics CRM, a fully integrated customer relationship management system. The club provided the solution to 30 employees in the front office and migrated all contact information from Goldmine into Microsoft Dynamics CRM. Jeffer found that the flexibility of Microsoft Dynamics CRM helped ensure that the club could adapt to changing business requirements. To tailor the solution to the needs of ticket sales, the club turned to Microsoft Gold Certified Partner Columbus. The Toledo Mud Hens Baseball Club relied on many manual processes, says Hollie Cox, Vice President of Services for Columbus. To overcome this challenge, we first needed to streamline account tracking and then integrate Microsoft Dynamics CRM with Microsoft Dynamics GP to automate the delivery of sales orders to accounting. The planning and implementation expertise of Columbus helped drive the success of the solution. The company s team of professionals provides unbiased needs analysis, system selection, installation, training, custom programming, and ongoing support. Creating a Ticket Sales System Columbus customized the sales screens of Microsoft Dynamics CRM to map to the two primary revenue streams handled by the ticket department, including season ticket sales and group ticket sales, as seen in Figure 1. The company also customized the screens to enable the corporate sales department to manage advertising packages. To better serve the needs of group sales customers, group sales information is divided into quotes and orders. Explains Jeffer, A quote is essentially a continually revised order that becomes official on the day of the game, helping us match our services to the actual demand of an order that may change at any time. For example, a reservation for 150 people in a picnic party area may actually become a reservation for 167 people come game day. Sales representatives can also associate an event to an account. Columbus created a pick list to include ballpark spirit events, such as birthday parties and school group trips. Sales representatives can search through past sales associated with a particular event to quickly target a specific audience or notify fans of upcoming events. To tie sales information to accounting, Columbus integrated Microsoft Dynamics CRM with Microsoft Dynamics GP using software from Scribe Software. When a sales representative places an order in Microsoft Dynamics CRM, Scribe integrates the data in real time, so the same information is then available to accounting staff as an invoice in Microsoft Dynamics GP. To ensure that ballpark concessionaire staff members prepare the correct quantity of food, they use the Advanced Find feature in Microsoft Dynamics CRM to view changing quotes up until the day of sale. Columbus also created custom reports in Microsoft Dynamics CRM that quickly generate booking letters which are sent to customers to indicate that a group purchase has been made and invoices based on sales information. Running Marketing Campaigns To help drive sales, the Toledo Mud Hens Baseball Club creates marketing campaigns in Microsoft Dynamics CRM. By searching through customers based on a range of 4

5 With Microsoft Dynamics CRM, we can get more detail and actually measure the success of our campaigns. criteria, such as number of tickets purchased, zip codes, or type of seats purchased, sales staff can create highly targeted campaigns. The club can also import purchased marketing lists into Microsoft Dynamics CRM as leads. These campaigns generally focus on 1,000 contacts each, which are distributed among sales staff. Explains Jeffer, Before Microsoft Dynamics CRM, we would ask, How are the calls going? and people would reply, Great. With Microsoft Dynamics CRM, we can get more detail and actually measure the success of our campaigns. For example, when the staff reaches out to potential customers during a campaign, the contact is labeled as interested, not interested, or request for more information. Sales staff can then use the Advanced Find feature to search for all their accounts labeled as interested and sell to them. Scott Jeffer, Assistant General Manager and Director of Marketing, Toledo Mud Hens Baseball Club and Toledo Walleye Hockey Club In addition, the club deployed a newsletter solution for Microsoft Dynamics CRM that measures customers responsiveness to campaigns. This solution tracks customer clicks on the hyperlinks in electronic newsletters, such as the club s Mud-E-Times, and records this information in the customer s account history. Sales staff can then measure the effectiveness of a campaign with a particular customer segment, or conduct a followup targeted campaign to individual customers about an offering that they have shown interest in, such as luxury suite rentals. Extending the Solution Already number one in Minor League Baseball merchandise sales, the Toledo Mud Hens Baseball Club plans to accelerate its sales efforts by integrating Microsoft Dynamics CRM with its merchandise and food and beverage point-of-sale systems. The club also plans to connect ticket sales information from its electronic ticketing system to Microsoft Dynamics CRM. By taking advantage of the 5

6 features within Microsoft Dynamics CRM, the club plans to create workflows to streamline internal processes to further improve efficiencies. The Toledo Mud Hens organization and partners are expanding operations to include a U.S. $105 million multipurpose arena a venue that will be used by the Toledo Walleye Hockey Club and handled by the same office staff. Through a fiber-optic network, all facilities will have access to Microsoft Dynamics CRM and Microsoft Dynamics GP, and they will share the same central business information. BENEFITS For the Toledo Mud Hens Baseball Club, customer relationship management means ticket sales. The operational efficiencies facilitated by Microsoft Dynamics CRM and its integration with Microsoft Dynamics GP have helped the Toledo Mud Hens Baseball Club support increased sales with confidence. Says Jeffer, Coincidentally, right after we deployed Microsoft Dynamics CRM, we began our streak of championships. Enhance Customer Service and Identify Sales Opportunities With an average of 570,000 ticket sales a year at Fifth Third Field, providing personalized services to each fan could be a daunting task. With Microsoft Dynamics CRM, however, sales representatives easily track the interests of customers and provide better service. Says Jeffer, We can now associate personalized notes with each account so that when a sales representative is on a call, they can quickly get up to speed on the customer. For example, a sales representative could find out if the person has any special interests. With the Advanced Find feature, identifying sales opportunities no longer rests on the organizational skills of a single sales representative. Any sales representative can search for fans who purchased smaller miniplans, picnic outings, or even nonrenewed ticket options, and ask them if they want to purchase a full-season ticket package or luxury suite rental for the next season, says Jeffer. Being able to identify sales opportunities has been a huge improvement, and it helps us know our customers a little better. The Advanced Find feature in Microsoft Dynamics CRM also plays a fundamental role in setting up large-scale events. Says Jeffer, With the Advanced Find feature, we can search all events over the course of a given number of years by different criteria. We can look up school groups and quickly set up large-scale outings for them. Managing all the accounts for 20,000 to 25,000 students was a burden before, but now all the records are there, making a field trip an easy event to arrange. Our school outings have become very popular schools will drive an hour and a half to see a Toledo Mud Hens game at a special 10:30 A.M. game time. Facilitate Teamwork Before integrating sales and accounting software, the accounting department operated independently from other departments. Says Jeffer, In the sales department, we didn t have the insight into operations to know how we were affecting accounting, such as how much time the accountants had to spend reconciling an account or journal entry. With Microsoft Dynamics CRM, we can get the money in when we make the sale and send the sales order automatically to accounting. Nothing falls through the cracks. Now that sales staff and accounting staff work from the same centralized information, they speak the same language. Says Jeffer, With Microsoft Dynamics CRM, we 6

7 are working harder to ensure that we provide accounting with information that we can better analyze just the fact that sales is now talking with accounting and making sure things are going to the right accounts has been huge. We are even more careful about how we name a product, such as scoreboard or video scoreboard. Now that our sales staff is in better tune with our accounting staff, our yearly budget, which we do together as an organization, goes much more smoothly. Being able to identify sales opportunities has been a huge improvement, and it helps us know our customers a little better. Scott Jeffer, Assistant General Manager and Director of Marketing, Toledo Mud Hens Baseball Club and Toledo Walleye Hockey Club Save Time and Resources Microsoft Dynamics CRM has led to significant time and cost savings for the Toledo Mud Hens Baseball Club. For example, the booking letter and invoice reports have eliminated the need to manually create reports in Office Word, saving ticket sales staff a total of 500 hours a year across 3,000 accounts. In addition, because sales information is paired with customer contact information, change requests are quickly handled by updating quotes in Microsoft Dynamics CRM. This saves ticket sales staff an additional 350 hours a year in tracking down and updating account information. The ability to quickly retrieve current customer profiles during calls saves representatives an additional 150 hours a year as well. Says Perkins, With Microsoft Dynamics CRM, I can spend less time servicing an account and more time focusing on sales. For accounting, the experience has been similar. The sharing of orders between accounting and sales has saved accountants an estimated 400 hours a year in not having to manually enter sales information into Microsoft Dynamics GP. In addition, accountants have saved an additional 200 hours a year in not having to track down customer contact information and 150 hours a year in not having to make contact-related changes, such as address changes and changes to billing information. 7

8 WANT TO KNOW MORE? For more information on Columbus, including case studies, videos and white-papers, visit Using Microsoft Dynamics CRM to deliver food sales information to the ballpark concessionaire has led to time and cost savings as well. Says Jeffer, With Microsoft Dynamics CRM, we can order the correct amount of food, and we don t have to worry anymore about over ordering or rushing food deliveries because our sales staff was out of sync with the concessionaire staff. The food cost savings are approximately U.S. $50,000 a year. This saves concessionaire staff about 300 hours a year in not having to track down information related to group picnic outings. Because Microsoft Dynamics CRM and Microsoft Dynamics GP share the same database, the accounting staff no longer needs to spend time correcting data entry errors or reaching out to sales staff to confirm account contact information. Jeffer estimates an overall staff time savings of more than 2,050 hours this year. For sales alone, this comes to a savings of nearly U.S. $55,000, not including the time that sales staff can spend on more important tasks, such as making sales calls and visits. Says Jeffer, While the evidence is anecdotal, the infrastructure to facilitate such drastic change is unarguably in place. The time savings facilitated by Microsoft Dynamics CRM is helping us increase our profit margins and give back to the community. As a private nonprofit organization, any profits that we make go right back to Lucas County and help pay off our ballpark construction debt at a much quicker rate than predicted. ABOUT COLUMBUS: Columbus currently employs over 1,000 dedicated professionals working out of 41 offices in 21 countries. With more than 20 years experience and 6,000 successful business cases, Microsoft recognizes Columbus as a top global partner and has presented the company with virtually every award and certification available. Columbus is a part of the registered trademark Columbus IT