Adventure Training Company Streamlines Business with CRM Solution
“A small business that deploys Microsoft Dynamics can start thinking and operating like a big company without having to invest a lot of money in expensive CRM software. I highly recommend it to other small businesses.”
Andrew Chua, Managing Director, Focus Adventure Focus Adventure, a Singapore-based training company, offers corporate training programmes that feature adventure and experience. As a young company, Focus Adventure found it extremely challenging to manage its customer contacts, enquiries, and accounts with its rapid growth.
Then, in December 2004, the company deployed Microsoft® CRM 1.2, now part of Microsoft Dynamics™. In 2006, the company upgraded to Microsoft Dynamics™ CRM partly for its new marketing module. With its integration into the company’s Microsoft infrastructure and the familiarity of staff with Microsoft software, the implementation went smoothly. Now, the company can easily track its customer and programme data.
Reporting and customer service have improved, and the sales closure rate has risen by more than 50 percent. With its modest investment in Microsoft Dynamics CRM, Focus Adventure has the presence of a much larger company.
Situation
Focus Adventure, a Singapore-based corporate training firm, designs courses in leadership development, team-building, and change management. More than 50,000 people have participated in its learning programmes, which include activities such as climbing poles, raft-building, and kayaking.
Focus Adventure structures the activities and uses facilitators to help participants process their experience. By actively participating in activities that are fun and challenging—rather than passively sitting in a classroom— employees engage deeply with the experience, gaining insights about themselves and their interactions with others. By 2004, however, rapid growth was presenting challenges to the company. Its paper-based processes were no longer adequate to efficiently handle its 500-client customer base.
Project managers—who engage with and sell to the customers—used paper and pen to make notes about enquiries and client requests, but inevitably, some papers were lost, and follow-up was incomplete.
In addition, information was re-entered into Microsoft® Office Word 2003 documents or forms more than once. “We needed to streamline our systems,” says Andrew Chua, Managing Director, Focus Adventure. “We needed a better way to track enquiries and gain visibility into customer data with a customer relationship management (CRM) system.” Fortunately, Focus Adventure was conducting a course for Microsoft employees at the time and learned about Microsoft® CRM 1.2, now part of Microsoft Dynamics™.
Solution
In December 2004, working with Microsoft Gold Certified Partner, IdealSoft, Focus Adventure deployed Microsoft CRM 1.2, taking the first step in developing a sophisticated CRM system.
So when Microsoft released Microsoft Dynamics™ in late 2005, Chua was interested in expanding the capabilities of the system with the new features that were available, including the integration with Microsoft Office Outlook® 2003 messaging and collaboration client. The company set three phases for developing its CRM system:
* Phase One: Setting up accounts, contacts, and enquiries (opportunities) in Microsoft CRM 1.2.
* Phase Two: Incorporating proposals, confirmations, and invoices into Microsoft Dynamics CRM and adding the marketing module.
* Phase Three: Integrating Microsoft CRM with Microsoft Dynamics™ GP to add accounting functionality and to create a comprehensive business management solution.
Microsoft CRM integrated well with the company’s existing Microsoft infrastructure, which is based on Microsoft® Windows® Small Business Server 2003 software, which helped the deployment go smoothly with help from Microsoft Gold Certified Partner, IdealSoft. Focus Adventure completed Phase One in December 2004 and plans to complete Phase Two by August 2006. Phase Three is scheduled for full implementation by January 2007.
Benefits
As a small but rapidly growing business, Focus Adventure finds that Microsoft Dynamics provides an advanced CRM solution that is well suited to its needs. Project managers at Focus Adventure—the main users of CRM and the ones who engage with the customers—can view critical data that is always up-to-date, as can the management.
Having a complete picture of each customer at any point in time helps project managers and management better meet customer needs while increasing the company’s own productivity and sales.
Benefits to Project Managers, Activity Facilitators, and Executives
Provides Visibility into Key Data
“Before we deployed Microsoft CRM, we had a lot of paper-based processes. Activity facilitators and project managers kept their own records, which could be easily lost.
When we first started, we had 1 or 2 programmes a week, but now we have 10 to 20. There is no way we could manage with our old manual processes,” says Chua. Today, project managers can quickly view a complete history of all the company’s customers and the programmes designed for them.
“The integration of Office Outlook with Microsoft Dynamics is really superb,” says Chua. “At the click of a button, you can go to a Web page and track all the incoming and outgoing e-mail messages, whether they are related to proposals, accounts, contacts or enquiries.” If one employee is absent, another can easily take over the work.
Focus Adventure also appreciates the ease of customisation with Microsoft Dynamics to support the way the company does business. Focus Adventure has seven custom reports that it created in Microsoft® Visual Studio® 2006 development system. The company also uses Office Excel to create ad-hoc reports with data from Microsoft Dynamics.
Improves Customer Service and Planning
With its CRM solution, Focus Adventure can respond quickly to customers. Often, after one department of a company hears the details of a course, another department will want to arrange a similar programme.
“One company had a new buyer and when she called and asked what we had done before, she was amazed we could provide the answer at once,” says Chua. “We can also respond instantly to other customer requests and plan more effectively for the future with such complete records.”
Benefits to Sales and Company overall
Accelerates Closure Rate
The adventure training company also finds it is turning more leads into sales with Microsoft CRM. “When we had a manual system, we would usually only follow up for a few months with a prospect,” says Chua.
“The paper for old leads would stay on the bottom of the pile. Now, with electronic reminders, we can follow up for six months or more. And that is making a difference.” Chua estimates the number of enquiries has risen by 100 percent, and the closure rate has increased by 50 percent.
Increases Productivity
Although it has done no formal study on productivity, it is obvious to the executives at Focus Adventure that the elimination of the need to re-enter information into Microsoft® Office Word 2003 documents, as it did prior to its deployment, has increased productivity.
In addition, project managers no longer have to spend time manually counting enquiries and tabulating sales figures. “It helped considerably that our employees were familiar with other Microsoft products, because the user interface is so similar,” says Chua. “Little training time was required. It was easy to use and easy to manage.”
Supports Current and Future Needs
One of the reasons that Focus Adventure chose Microsoft Dynamics was because it can be deployed in stages and added to as the company grows.
“Because we teach courses in change management, we know that staff resistance can be a challenge if change is not handled correctly,” says Chua.
For More Information
For more information about Microsoft products and services, call the Microsoft Sales Information Center at (800) 426-9400. In Canada, call the Microsoft Canada Information Centre at (877) 568-2495.
Customers who are deaf or hard-of-hearing can reach Microsoft text telephone (TTY/TDD) services at (800) 892-5234 in the United States or (905) 568-9641 in Canada. Outside the 50 United States and Canada, please contact your local Microsoft subsidiary.
To access information using the World Wide Web, go to: www.microsoft.com For more information about IdealSoft Pte Ltd products and services, call or visit the Web site at: www.idealsoft.com.sg
“By choosing a Microsoft product, our staff expected it to be easy to learn, and by phasing it in, the change was easily managed.”
Microsoft Dynamics can also scale to meet business growth and an increasing volume of business, and when the company integrates the Microsoft Dynamics CRM software with Microsoft Dynamics GP, it will have a completely automated business management system with accounting components.
Focus Adventure has found that Microsoft Dynamics CRM enables it to compete as though it were a large enterprise. “A small business that deploys Microsoft Dynamics CRM can start thinking and operating like a big company—without making a large investment. I highly recommend it to other small businesses,” says Chua.
Microsoft Dynamics
Microsoft Dynamics is a line of integrated, adaptable business management solutions that enables you and your people to make business decisions with greater confidence.
Microsoft Dynamics works like familiar Microsoft software such as Microsoft Office, which means less of a learning curve for your people, so they can get up and running quickly and focus on what’s most important. And because it is from Microsoft, it easily works with the systems that your company already has implemented.
By automating and streamlining financial, customer relationship, and supply chain processes, Microsoft Dynamics brings together people, processes, and technologies, increasing the productivity and effectiveness of your business, and helping you drive business success.
For more information about Microsoft Dynamics, go to: www.microsoft.com/asia/dynamics