Hosted CRM Customer StoriesHow are companies using Hosted CRM? The range of organizations using CRM systems today varies widely. While larger CRM solutions were developed largely for service providers such as banks, hospitals, and universities, businesses small and large have found Hosted CRM useful for their needs and beneficial to their bottom lines, regardless of size. Small businesses are finding Hosted CRM solutions save them time and money by organizing their client information in one universally accessible place, making it easier to provide quick and easy customer service without all the paperwork and staffing, all without having to install software or hire IT professionals. Some organizations that formerly used on-site, fully customized CRM solutions have scaled back and switched to the more simplified and hassle-free Hosted CRM option, especially as Hosted CRM solutions have become more extensive and customizable. Below are a few customer stories about their experiences using Hosted CRM in different industries worldwide. CSG OpenLineCSG OpenLine, a communications management company, used Entellium's eSalesForce product under a hosted model to centralize and format its global sales operations and marketing. Staff were manually tracking their projects using various software programs like Outlook and Excel, and there was little connection between different offices?data. Almost totally “off the shelf? eSalesForce was deployed at CSG OpenLine in one day and employees were being trained in less than 4 hours. CSG now has a unified automated sales process that not only streamlines the customer information but also allows them to forecast and project company-wide reports instead of piecing together disparate information from multiple sources. www.entellium.com/crm_case_studies.html Metrohm-Peak, IncMetrohm-Peak is a producer of ion chromatography instrumentation for the medical research sector. After a large corporate merger, the company faced several challenges due to the amount of un-integrated information ?customer, research and financial - held between the merged organizations. In order to consolidate their information systems and create an efficient company-wide portal, Metrohm-Peak hired ACCPAC to set up a web-hosted centralized customer relationship management and accounting system. While larger, more complicated CRM solutions can often take months to integrate and go live, Metrohm-Peak had their system up and running in less than 3 weeks. In an extremely fast growing and competitive market, this was a top priority when choosing their Hosted CRM Solution. Metrohm-Peak employees can now access company information from anywhere with a Web browser. Their sales cycle decreased significantly, productivity increased, and they saw almost immediate return on investment (ROI). www.accpac.com/success/metrohmpeak.asp MensSanaMensSana is a German company that provides lifestyle and well-being consulting services throughout Europe and around the world. MensSana is a very young but extremely fast growing company ?only one year old, they already have more than 5,000 clients. MensSana found that keeping track of such a large number of clients and analyzing sales and marketing information was virtually impossible without a unified system, and determined that it needed a way to manage all of it in a simple and centralized way. And, being a start-up, MensSana did not want to heavily invest in expensive software and hardware up-front. MensSana turned to Siebel's CRM OnDemand to compile and organize this wealth of information in a simple, cost-efficient, user-friendly web-based format. CRM OnDemand allows MensSana to focus on VIP accounts and easily compare the successes of their different seminars and services, and enables them to automate and share marketing data for more efficient sales strategies. The solution also supports the administration of the seminars themselves - employees can coordinate event information, and create "to-do" lists and delegate tasks ?all remotely, and with little or no maintenance required by the company itself. Like other small start-up businesses, MensSana not only finds that their Hosted CRM solution is essential in helping them efficiently manage their diverse work, but also in helping them grow. www.crmondemand.com/news_events/press_releases/2004/041117_menssana.jsp Engage, Inc.Engage, Inc., a provider of advertising and marketing solutions, is an example of a company that scrapped its internal CRM solution in favor of a simpler, hosted CRM solution - Saleforce.com's Enterprise Edition. Their previous in-house system had become too complex and cumbersome to use and was very costly to maintain. Engage did not feel it needed all of the customized aspects it had previously designed, and determined that the complicated system actually impeded employees from accessing the basic functions and adding new information. The salesforce.com implementation process, including data input and staff training (most of it done online), took less than one month, without the help of outside consultants. Engage estimates that it is saving thousands of dollars a year in overhead and technical costs, and the new solution is showing immediate ROI. www.salesforce.com/newsevents/press-release.jsp?year=2003&month=January&id=030121-2 Elcometer, Inc.Elcometer, Inc. manufactures and distributes inspection instruments for companies in industries such as military, aerospace, and automobile. Elcometer was having an extremely difficult time keeping up in this highly competitive and extremely fast paced industry (they close most of their deals within 7 days) using their current accounting system (Microsoft Great Plains). Most of their marketing, sales and accounting information was being entered manually two to three times into different formats by different people before arriving at the final result. The company researched several options, including an in-house CRM solution, but finally came across NetSuite's hosted application, which provides a complete sales cycle view and only requires one point of data entry, all through a web interface. Since NetSuite is hosting the application, Elcometer estimates that it saved at least $100,000 in server, license, and IT expenses by not going with a customized client-server solution. For a small business, that's an unbelievable savings. www.netsuite.com/portal/customers/cs_elcometer.shtml Specialized BicyclesSpecialized Bicycles, a Bay Area based company that pioneered mountain biking, was starting to get swamped by the questions asked by its thousands of customers, and wanted to revamp its website to help decrease the load of telephone calls and email they got everyday. In 1999, Specialized was one of the first companies to turn to a Hosted CRM solution to help solve their problem. In addition to redesigning their website to include FAQs and full product manuals, Specialized also needed to control its customer service operations, and turned to RightNow Technologies. RightNow helped Specialize implement a hosted CRM solution that provides staff with easily accessible customer service information, routes and tracks emails to make sure they all get answered, and allows customers to retrieve data and answer their own questions online. Specialized says that not only did the hosted RightNow solution pay for itself almost immediately in terms of productivity and customer satisfaction, it has saved them thousands in hardware and software costs and in IT management services and is still saving them money every day. www.rightnow.com/resource/casestudy.php?id=529&product=9 Sovereign BankSovereign Bancorp, Inc. is one of the top 25 largest banking institutions in the United States. Although already a well-established company, Sovereign did not have any formal or unified sales processes in place and a standardized customer relationship management strategy was practically nonexistent. Sales people were replicating work and sometimes even losing customers because of a lack of centralized record keeping. The bank soon realized that it needed help with centralizing, streamlining, and automating its customer relationship and marketing processes in order to build solid relationships with its current clients. Because Sovereign has offices all over the east coast, they also determined that they wanted a simple web-based interface that would be quickly and easily accessible by its employees. After an extensive search, Sovereign selected?b>Salesnet's CRM sales solution because it would be quick to deploy and straightforward to implement and use. Salesnet's customizable CRM solution now helps Sovereign's employees deliver fast, efficient and high-quality customer service and responses. The results were immediately measureable; the bank was not only retaining substantially more customers and gaining new ones, but those customers were now each taking advantage of at least twice as many of the bank's services compared to previous years. |
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