No compensating on IT

Workers’ compensation company, Cambridge Integrated Services, was looking for a new system to improve its ability to track sales leads and better service its existing and future clients.

The company chose to use Microsoft Dynamics 4.0, a CRM application hosted and implemented by Microsoft partner JayThom, to achieve a cost-effective, flexible and time-saving facility.

Founded in the US in 1998, Cambridge Integrated Services is a single purpose company established to manage workers’ compensation. Cambridge provides a broad range of claims services designed to assist injured workers return to a full and productive life as quickly as possible, control workers’ compensation costs and reduce the associated financial risks and exposure.

Clifton Warren, manager business development at Cambridge Australia, said while the company is well established in Australia, it had no systems for following up pipeline opportunities and sales, instead heavily relying on Excel spreadsheets which were not sufficient to deliver on long lead times.

Cambridge wanted a CRM system that would decrease the amount of time spent on
administration, and time wasted on duplicating data.

“Previously, Cambridge’s 250-plus staff were working from spreadsheets and Excel which were cumbersome and too frequently resulted in errors,” he said.

“Our initial problem was that we had no systems in place for following up opportunities and pipeline sales. We needed a system that could help us track leads and improve customer service. I had some background with CRM solutions and quickly identified that we needed a
CRM solution,” Warren said.

However, most vendors did not fit well with Cambridge’s plans. Cambridge looked at CRM solutions from vendors including Seabol, ACT and Goldmine before selecting Dynamics 3.0 in October 2007.

Following this extensive research, Warren came across Microsoft partner JayThom offering a hosted CRM solution that met his requirements: low cost of integration, hosted servers, low training costs, ease of use, ongoing maintenance and low implementation cost.

Having JayThom host Microsoft Dynamics CRM helped Cambridge avoid the installation and maintenance challenges of an in-house system.

With Microsoft’s hosted CRM solution, Cambridge is able to take advantage of sophisticated customer acquisition and retention tools that can help build its business, without a significant, upfront capital investment. Cambridge pays a monthly fee to JayThom to host its new infrastructure, which meant the company did not have to spend a lot of cash upfront to install its own server.

Also, as the solution is hosted, Cambridge was automatically entitled to upgrade to Microsoft Dynamics 4.0 when it became available last February.
Cambridge staff record a vast amount of data for each case such as contact information, case descriptions and status updates, all previously held in silo systems and duplicated.

Data was also stored on paper and written by hand. Mistakes were frequently made due to misreading scruffy handwritten notes. Documents were often difficult to find, if they could be traced at all.

“With the new system, now all case histories and details are kept in a single, easily accessible place, which avoids duplication, errors and AWOL data,” Warren said.

The integration of Dynamics CRM with Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 means Cambridge can easily access information while working in Microsoft applications such as Office Outlook.

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 integrates with existing systems to help break down information silos. It harnesses the power of web services through the Microsoft .NET Framework.

This latest generation of technology enables businesses to connect isolated, legacy business systems and applications. Cambridge now has one central repository where its staff can view, access and act on the same data. The integrated structure means anyone can edit saved documents within Microsoft Office Outlook, and some areas of it can be accessed through Windows SharePoint Services 3.0.

As the solution is hosted, staff can now access it from anywhere with an Internet connection. JayThom’s hosted Microsoft Dynamics Solution has allowed Cambridge to treat IT more as a service rather than an investment.

Microsoft Dynamics 4.0 also provides Cambridge with room to grow and the opportunity to add more users. “JayThom offered a whole suite of services and a team to support us, and also provided good training,” Warren said.

“What led us to choose this solution was that we could use the legacy Microsoft Office suite and integrate it with the CRM suite using Outlook as the interface. This reduced training time and allowed for a smooth transition and to use the latest technology with existing systems, while making sure the software is up to date.”

Warren said the implementation was very quick compared to previous solutions where they were forced to buy a server and upgrades.

“The hosted facility enabled us to launch in weeks instead of months with minimal training and reduced the amount of support needed from IT departments with the use of a hosted environment and provides obvious cost advantages,” Warren said.

“The other part is that we rolled the system out in stages and now we have it across the whole enterprise. Having it hosted allowed us to implement the CRM package in chunks, with JayThom providing support in our own
timeframe and process,” he said.

Warren said the return on investment of the system happened quickly, with the facility to forecast and integrate the sales pipeline to save 50 percent on administration.

“We have spent a few thousand dollars, which wasn’t a lot compared to the alternative of buying servers, but the environment and startup costs were relatively inexpensive and our sales guys can now spend less time on admin and more in field following up sales opportunities more quickly. We have recouped our investment in a matter of weeks.

“The system has helped us to simply respond more quickly to market, track leads and further improve customer service, while offering the opportunity to integrate more modules of CRM and SharePoint in the future.”

Brett Yorgey, director at JayThom, said through the latest release of Microsoft Dynamics, business solutions for ERP and CRM in a hosted environment are moving more inline with the trend of providing Software as a Service.

“We were one of the first to be offering the hosted service starting about two years ago and Software as a Service is now becoming a big focus of Microsoft and will continue well into the future,” Yorgey said.

“What it allows us to do as an on premise deployer of solutions is to give our clients the option of having a fully hosted system with all technical area looked after by us. We have found that companies such as Cambridge can trial the system before getting on premises.

“Many businesses find it difficult to justify the upfront investment in a new CRM system. For these organisations, deploying a hosted service represents
a cost-effective alternative.

“Also when looking at spending big dollars for a roll out, companies like to be able to suck it and see by using a core group of users and deploying the software in a hosted environment before moving to implementing the full system or with companies such as Cambridge they want to use the package as the need occurs.”

Yorgey said Cambridge is similar to a lot of companies – its information resides on disparate systems such as Excel spreadsheets and Outlook running a combination of workstations and laptops and with all data in
separate applications.

“You couldn’t get an overview from one central spot,” said Yorgey. “So you need to centralise information and allow the customer to understand conversion rates and have their leads put into a CRM module and be able to source those leads and quantify them, while also seeing who are converting those leads.

Once qualified and converted they can then go through a sales process for pipeline reporting and forecasting sales in a centralised system.

“Microsoft Dynamics CRM and SharePoint look after the document management area of deployment, what we have done is written an integration facility between those two applications, but centralised from one record,” Yorgey said.

According to Yorgey, choices in the hosted CRM market are limited at best. “For the most part, hosted CRM is only offered as a one-size-fits-all solution without the functionality to easily support unique sales and business process requirements,” he said.

“For the small business or at the enterprise level, right across the board, we are able to host the Software as a Service, provide it to every level of business and can be paid for per month on the applications used,” he said. “So the size of business is irrelevant. We have anything from three users to hundreds or thousands of users, which we can cater for in one deployment.

“We can provide the benefits of a CRM deployment in about an hour or two, with the user able to log in and start configuring with a template specific to their business. We have built up a number of templates from past implementations which users can configure themselves after that.”

Office SharePoint allows teams to create websites for information sharing and document collaboration, benefits that help increase individual and team productivity.

It also serves as a platform for application development. Including such IT resources as portals, team workspaces, email, presence awareness and web-based conferencing, Windows SharePoint Services enables users to locate distributed information quickly and efficiently.