Regnan – an SMB with a tall order

“Nick is the guy who started the whole thing with them,” said JayThom’s managing director, Brett Yorgey. “He is tech savvy and had a good understanding of the business process.

“One of the things he was talking about was that they wanted to be able to get access to the latest technologies even though they were a small outfit.

“JayThom sorted out everything we needed in about two weeks – desktops, laptops, Internet access, email, Microsoft Dynamics CRM and Windows SharePoint Services 3.0,” said Brischetto.

As Yorgey points out, the advantage of the hosted CRM solution is that you can get a server up and running with a template for the business in a few hours. Then you can start to look at the business processes and users can get in and start having a play with it.

“Rather than forcing everyone to work in a different way overnight, we’re introducing new features gradually so people get used to them.”

Regnan pays a monthly fee to JayThom to host its new infrastructure, an approach that means it didn’t have to spend a lot of cash upfront to install its own server and it doesn’t have to think ahead about future upgrades.

“One of the advantages is that we don’t have to deal with a server,” said Brischetto. “We will likely always be a small company, I don’t think that is going to change. We don’t want to spend our time focusing on the IT systems or juggling multiple suppliers.”

Once the server was set up, Brischetto worked with JayThom to roll out more complex templates and customisations over the next two to four weeks.

“The configuration of the database wasn’t your normal template. It wasn’t like it was a sales process or a financial services, they had specific requirements, but Nick was quickly able to start doing those things himself,” said Yorgey.

Key to the system’s success for Regnan is the integration of the CRM with SharePoint. “The integration means Regnan now has one central repository where all its staff can view, access and act on the same data,” said Brischetto.

“We’ve tweaked the CRM software so that has become our new research housing facility, where all our research documents are stored,” said Brischetto.

“Since it’s all integrated, anyone can edit these documents within Outlook, and some areas of it can be accessed through Windows SharePoint.”

Next, the two partners are already trialling the multi-tenanted feature of the latest Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 (code-named Titan). This latest version is designed with a single code base for on-premise and on-demand deployment.

By allowing multiple customers per server, JayThom should be able to reduce the cost to customers such as Regnan.

Ross Dembecki, lead product manager for Microsoft CRM, said the new multi-tenant architecture is important for hosting SaaS in a cost-effective manner.

“Regnan started without multi-tenancy, so JayThom had to amortise the cost of the hardware on such a small user base. With the multi-tenanted architecture, it allows them to get more creative about how and when and where they can offer the notion of software plus service”.

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