KAZ's CRM master

There wouldn’t be too many people in the global IT industry that could say they worked with a member of any royal family.

But Danish-born CRM specialist Marianne Broeng did just that during her time at Navision in Copenhagen, Denmark, where she had the pleasure of working with Australia’s own Princess Mary, the Tasmanian who won the heart of Crown Prince Federick of Denmark.

Mary Donaldson was working in the HR department of now Microsoft-owned CRM player Navision at the time. “We used to warn her when they were photographers outside the building,” Broeng recalls.

These days, Broeng -- who is married with two children -- runs KAZ’s newly developed Microsoft Business Solutions practice. KAZ has around 100 Microsoft-certified employees here.

Broeng’s background is very much centred on business applications, in particular CRM solutions.

Her journey in IT started while she was at high school in Denmark when she decided to undertake a course in computer programming. “I was the only girl [in the course] for two years, then I convinced one of my friends to join me. It was quite interesting because we actually entered a competition in Denmark amongst different schools and we won, so we had a big trip to Copenhagen,” she says. “That’s really what got me started.”

At university from 1986 to 1991, Broeng completed a Master of Science in Economics and Business Administration at The Aarhus Graduate School of Management in Denmark. Her undergraduate degree also involved a computer science component.

She moved into sales as an export coordinator for Palsgaard Industri (Denmark), assisting the export director and responsible for all offers to international customers in the food industry. However, she had other fish to fry. Her passion for IT quickly came into play where she implemented and trained account managers in the organisation’s sales force automation software.

“I needed something to support our customers while our sales guys were away. I went out to see if there was a solution in the marketplace. I convinced the IT [department] that it was something they needed to support as well.”

From there, she starting working for Danish CRM vendor MultiMark A/S, where she spent five years. CRM was quite new in Denmark at that stage. “I took it to some of the customers -- who weren’t using anything -- talked to them about what they wanted to achieve, how they could achieve it. It was good to go in and do the implementation, it was a solution where you could tailor it.”

With a lot of CRM experience under her belt, Broeng was hired as senior product manager at Danish software company Navision (acquired by Microsoft in 2003) and essentially worked out a CRM strategy for the vendor. She was responsible for all product marketing and material on “CRM and ERP” and sales campaigns, and wrote a CRM white paper and developed sales training.

Broeng had a one-year stint as manager of the 22-employee CRM team at Navision -- where she negotiated contracts with external companies including a contract for 30 developers and testers working under her.

Then when Microsoft acquired Navision in July 2003 for US$1.45 billion, Broeng was immediately responsible for the international launch of Microsoft CRM in Europe, Africa, the Middle East, Australia and South America. She says she was something of a CRM evangelist for partners and ISVs developing solutions around the platform.

Broeng has been in Australia for nine months -- after making a commitment with her husband 10 years ago to live here after travelling around Australia and falling in love with the country. “Of course the weather is much better,” Broeng says. “It took a year or so to do the planning for Microsoft CRM, and I was ready to move on and consider what I wanted to do. I wanted to work with a partner again, work with customers and get my hands dirty again.”

So, she decided to join KAZ in February. Broeng was brought into KAZ because of her knowledge of Microsoft CRM and Axapta. She says trends such as “mobility” with CRM solutions in areas such as Europe have started to filter through to Australia. “We [KAZ] had some capabilities in Western Australia previously but now we want to do it nationally and that’s what I’m doing now.”

KAZ is heavily promoting the Navision and Axapta platform at the back end.

“It’s really depending on what the customer needs, which one we would recommend, and what type of vertical or industry they’re in [determines] what fits the best. And Microsoft CRM -- we’ve been leading with that to provide better service.” She says quite a few organisations here have adopted the Microsoft CRM platform. “We want to develop vertical modules as well. Yes, you can tailor it, but if you go down and really target a specific vertical I believe it’s good to have those vertical modules as well that’s really tailored to them.”