Services in the farm industry: purchase and sale of vegetable products and vegetable product-based production. Annual turnover of about CZK 2.5 billion.
Managers of divisions, departments, and sales are connected to the whole system, so they are not overloaded with information, and can clearly specify any issues they have to solve and handle them within a short period of time. Clear accountability for business operations has been defined in the system and can be checked easily.
Ing. Boleslav Krejčíř, Chief Financial Officer
Task
Sales managers communicate the most with business partners at MJM Litovel a.s. Before Microsoft Dynamics CRM was deployed, sales managers had administered a huge amount of information, such as contacts, requirements, actual business, customer needs, and the share of competitors, on their own. The information, however, was not “100 percent” utilized.
The main disadvantages were as follows:
- Sales managers collated information in MS Word documents and then circulated them to their superiors via e-mail. Finding information in these documents and assigning it to customers was problematic. Comprehensive reporting of the obtained information was impossible.
- Sales managers recorded their contact information about business partners individually (in a diary or custom lists in MS Excel or MS Outlook). They did not share contact details with other employees or the management. Thus, sales managers were indispensable and MJM Litovel ran risks related to absent sales managers due to sickness or when the employment contract with a sales manager was terminated.
- Superiors mostly used e-mail to instruct sales managers on customers to be visited and issues to be discussed with them. Thus, it was often the case during business dealings that sales managers failed to discuss all the required issues with customers or even failed to visit customers because they were simply unable to find all these instructions. This approach may alienate customers and the efforts to win further contracts may be a losing battle.
- It was not possible to evaluate activities conducted by sales managers.
- The superior manager did not have an available overview of scheduled visits to customers.
These shortcomings prevented MJM Litovel from further improving its customer care. This is the main reason why MJM Litovel decided to implement modern information processes. The aim was to improve, streamline, and accelerate the information flow at the company.
It was a new way of communication between individual sales managers and the employees in divisions.
In 2009, the management of MJM Litovel decided to deploy an information management system for customer relationship management.
Solutions
The management of MJM Litovel turned to Infinity for recommendations. Infinity specialists proposed a solution based on Microsoft Dynamics CRM. Managers of divisions and sales managers are connected to the system. Customers are assigned to sales managers. Sales managers plan visits to their customers on the basis of the requirements of the division managers registered in the system. Every requirement is always related to a specific division. A division manager may place a request related to a specific customer or may specify a general requirement. A division manager also has t option of assigning a requirement to a specific sales manager or to direct a requirement to the whole team of sales managers. After visiting a customer, a sales manager records the minutes of a business meeting, creating a detailed record for each individual division.
Achievements
The main benefits of Microsoft Dynamics CRM implementation at MJM Litovel include:
- effective information sharing across divisions at MJM Litovel, related to individual customers with a simple back-trace of the history of activities
- targeted and well-arranged information available to employees, so division managers and sales managers can easily view the requirements and minutes of the meetings for which they are responsible or which concern a particular division or a customer
- on-site visits to customers are more efficient because really all requirements can be discussed with a customer who is finally more satisfied
- automatic notifications about selected events are sent to the responsible staff
- savings of the operating costs of employee business trips approximately a week in advance, division managers can optimize the requirements placed to sales managers, because they will take into account already scheduled meetings with specific customers
- identification of inadequately or too-frequently visited customers
- the management of MJM Litovel obtained a tool for evaluating the activities carried out by sales managers
- when a sales manager is ill, the business agenda can be simply transferred
- the user-friendly interface intuitively arranges controls for users with basic knowledge of Microsoft products simple initial training
Business Impacts
Effective information sharing across divisions at MJM Litovel, related to individual customers. A simple traceable history of activities performed with a customer and overall cooperation in the area of corporate customer care. More satisfied customers as a result.
