Construction Company implements CRM Solution, Increases ...



Overview

Country or Region: United States

Industry: Construction

Customer Profile

McKinstry Company is an engineering, mechanical construction, and facilities management firm that offers a range of design-build delivery services. The company employs approximately 1,000 people.

Business Situation

With many different services handled by separate divisions, the company’s fragmented sales databases were not only hindering efficiency and productivity, but also leading to lost sales opportunities.

Solution

McKinstry implemented Microsoft® Business Solutions CRM to centralize sales data and Microsoft BizTalk® Server 2004 to connect disparate systems and route information through the organization.

Benefits

■ Improved efficiency by 25 percent

■ Increased sales opportunities

■ Reduced administrative costs by 15 percent

■ Saved U.S.$30,000 per year on sales

| | |“Microsoft CRM is a great way for people to collaborate,” says Frey. “We’re definitely seeing more cross-selling and upselling throughout the company.”

Bob Frey, Vice President of Service Sales, McKinstry Company

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| | | |McKinstry Company provides construction services to clients throughout the Pacific Northwest. The |

| | | |company has six different business units, each with different sales forces, unique sales cycles, and |

| | | |even separate repositories of sales and customer information that previously could not be shared |

| | | |easily between groups. Because of this, multiple sales groups either approached customers separately |

| | | |or were unaware of additional sales opportunities for the same customer. Working with Microsoft Gold |

| | | |Certified Partner Interlink Group to address this issue, McKinstry implemented Microsoft® Business |

| | | |Solutions CRM to centralize its customer relationship management and used Microsoft BizTalk® Server |

| | | |2004 to connect disparate database applications. Since then, McKinstry has improved efficiency by 25 |

| | | |percent, streamlined forecasting, and reduced operational costs by 15 percent. |

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Situation

With offices in both Seattle, Washington, and Portland, Oregon, McKinstry offers a range of construction services throughout the Pacific Northwest. The company designs, builds, operates, and maintains building systems, including heating, ventilation, air conditioning, plumbing, piping, fire sprinkler, and electrical systems.

These discrete services are represented by different divisions, each of which has its own sales group and sales cycle. By dividing its services into divisions, McKinstry can tailor its sales activities and move more quickly on projects. These separate sales groups hindered cross-divisional sales efforts, because each group had access only to its own customer data. As a result, customers were sometimes approached by multiple sales groups, each offering a different service. This issue was compounded by the company’s size and geographic spread; McKinstry operates two main offices and employs more than 1,000 people. “The different silos of information spread throughout the organization made us less efficient and affected our ability to close the deal,” explains Dean Allen, President of McKinstry Company. “We do a lot of work to understand a project, and it wasted time when each sales group did this work independently.”

Each of the groups also uses specific software applications. For example, the maintenance group was already using an application called Service Alliance. This group contracts with companies—many of whom have multiple buildings—to provide maintenance for all their facilities. Not only does Service Alliance store customer data and track the work conducted on each building, but it also acts as a truck-dispatch system when a customer calls in a service issue.

To be more effective, McKinstry knew that it needed a solution that could make the sales information within the separate divisions available to all divisions—regardless of which division owned the account. The solution needed to be able to integrate with different applications such as Service Alliance. It also needed to provide the ability to track performance by salesperson and to provide better visibility into the sales process. Finally, the solution needed to be able to integrate with the company’s existing IT systems, which included Microsoft® Windows Server SystemTM integrated server software and programs in the Microsoft Office System.

Solution

In July 2003, McKinstry started looking at solutions ranging from Oracle to J.D. Edwards. Because the company wanted to continue using its existing accounting system, which was already integrated with Service Alliance, McKinstry opted to implement a customer relationship management (CRM) solution rather than an enterprise resource planning (ERP) system. The company chose Microsoft Business Solutions CRM. “Microsoft CRM gives our company the kinds of detailed data usually found in a full-blown ERP system, but without the cost or hassle.” says Bob Frey, Vice President of Service Sales for McKinstry Company.

McKinstry contacted Microsoft Gold Certified Partner Interlink Group to implement Microsoft CRM in October 2003. After an 11-week implementation period, the new system went live in January 2004. Today, McKinstry has a sales tracking system that stores all customer information in a single location and automatically routes new sales opportunities to the correct department.

Salespeople enter their customer interactions—such as e-mail messages, meetings, or closed deals—into the Microsoft Office Outlook® 2003 messaging and collaboration client, part of the Microsoft Office System. These customer interactions are automatically entered into Microsoft CRM, which then consolidates contact lists and customer data into a single shared Microsoft SQL ServerTM 2000 database. SQL Server 2000 provides the data management and analysis infrastructure for Windows Server System. Microsoft BizTalk® Server 2004, also part of Windows Server System, connects the disparate systems and software, including Service Alliance. In addition, BizTalk Server 2004 is used to set up the rules that dictate how sales information is routed throughout the organization. “With this solution, McKinstry can consolidate all its opportunities against one account,” says Justin Mathena, the Technical Lead of Interlink. “Microsoft CRM gives them the flexibility they need.”

With a solution based on Microsoft CRM, McKinstry has been able to connect the different repositories of information. Members of the sales force can access all data about a particular customer—even if their particular group has not had any interactions with that customer. And by using Microsoft SQL Server 2000 Reporting Services, the company is able to run a variety of reports based on real-time information.

Benefits

By implementing a solution based on Microsoft CRM, McKinstry has been able to change how it stores customer information and how that information is shared between the sales forces in different divisions. As a result, the company has seen many benefits, including improved workflow efficiency and decreased administrative costs.

Improved Efficiency by 25 Percent

With a combination of Microsoft CRM and BizTalk Server, the company has re-engineered its workflow processes. In the past, members within each sales force didn’t have access to data within other divisions. Salespeople couldn’t tell whether they were pursuing the same customer for a different project, even if their particular service dovetailed with another service the company was providing. Or, if divisions did share information, it was a largely manual process. Today, the company has set up workflow rules within BizTalk Server 2004 to route information about customers and projects automatically.

For example, if the construction division wins a project, the system recognizes if the customer might be a good candidate for one of the other divisions, such as fire protection or maintenance. In addition, Microsoft CRM tracks all the construction jobs automatically, eliminating the need for an employee to track information manually. “We put workflow rules in place to send information about opportunities to different departments,” says Frey. “Just the tracking of all the construction jobs and special-project work alone has saved the service division 50 hours a month.”

Increased Sales Opportunities

By using Microsoft CRM, members of the sales group—no matter which division they work in—now have access to the same data about customers because the information is centralized. Each division can clearly see additional sales opportunities. “With Microsoft CRM, all of our sales teams have the same information about a customer,” says Allen. “This allows us to track sales opportunities more effectively—both today and several years down the road.”

McKinstry is already seeing the results of centralizing its data. “Microsoft CRM is a great way for people to collaborate,” says Frey. “We’re definitely seeing more cross-selling and upselling throughout the company.”

Reduced Administrative Costs by 15 Percent

The fact that McKinstry has improved its efficiency has also translated into substantial savings for the company. Frey explains that once the company started using Microsoft CRM workflow rules based on opportunities from different divisions, it saw an immediate savings because employees no longer had to manually track jobs and opportunities. “McKinstry started saving more than 15 percent per month in administrative time that was previously spent tracking construction and service jobs from other departments just looking for cross-sell opportunities,” Frey says.

Saved More Than $30,000 per Year Coordinating Sales Pipelines

Sales forecasting had been a challenge for McKinstry as the company grew and added new offerings and departments. Before implementing the new solution, each department was responsible for maintaining its own sales pipelines. Each of these sales pipelines was managed manually--a viable process when the company had been smaller, but that ended up costing the business hours each month in both running and updating reports. With Microsoft CRM, however, the process has been fully automated. After information has been entered into the system, it is automatically linked to the appropriate division. From there, sales managers can run detailed reports. “By setting up workflows with Microsoft CRM, we were able to bring a lot of structure to the company’s forecasting,” says Mathena.

In fact, the company forecasts substantial savings. “With Microsoft CRM, we estimate that we will save 10 percent of our total administrative cost per year in time and effort spent coordinating sales pipelines,” says Frey. “It has also added tremendous flexibility and made data timelier.”

Improved Services

Unlike many construction companies that offer only one or two services, McKinstry has offerings that range from preconstruction to maintenance after construction—aggregating many offerings into a single delivery package. Microsoft CRM has helped McKinstry improve the way it approaches customers by making its entire history of client interaction available within the system. Now, instead of having multiple groups contacting the same customer at different times, McKinstry can present a more organized and comprehensive proposal.

Allen attributes this benefit to the ability to run reports as they are needed. “People do so much better when they are using their own data as opposed to a reporting function,” he says. “With Microsoft CRM, employees have fun playing with the information to see what light they can shed on their sales forecasts.”

Lowered Training Costs

One of the company’s key requirements in considering a new system was that McKinstry employees actually use it. Allen’s experience indicates that, regardless of how good a solution is, a lack of companywide adoption dooms any system upgrade to failure.

But because Microsoft CRM integrates with other Microsoft desktop productivity tools, McKinstry has been able to implement a solution that has been readily adopted and that requires little training time. In fact, the company spent only two hours training each sales representative on the new system during the initial implementation. “McKinstry has been a very loyal Microsoft shop for a lot of good reasons,” says Allen. “We like the products and we like the commonalities between products. With Microsoft CRM, all the tools that employees need are right there in Outlook.”

Adds Frey, “Microsoft CRM is so intuitive that people just start using it. It’s all a logical extension of what people are using in Outlook and Microsoft Project, Word, and Excel, so there’s not much to learn.”

Microsoft Business Solutions

Microsoft Business Solutions offer integrated business applications and services that allow small and midsize organizations and divisions of large enterprises to connect employees, customers, and suppliers for improved efficiency. The financial management, customer relationship management, supply chain management, and analytics applications work with other Microsoft software, including the Microsoft Office System and the Windows® operating system, to streamline processes across an entire organization. This gives businesses insight to respond rapidly, plan strategically, and execute quickly. Microsoft Business Solutions are delivered through a worldwide network of channel partners that provide specialized services and local support tailored to a company’s needs.

For more information about Microsoft Business Solutions, go to:

businesssolutions

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“Microsoft CRM is so intuitive that people just start using it. It’s all a logical extension of what people are using in Outlook and Microsoft Project, Word, and Excel, so there’s not much to learn.”

Bob Frey, Vice President of Service Sales, McKinstry Company

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“With Microsoft CRM, all of our sales teams have the same information about a customer. This allows us to track sales opportunities more effectively—both today and several years down the road.”

Dean Allen, President, McKinstry Company

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| |Software and Services

■ Microsoft Windows Server System

− Microsoft Business Solutions CRM

− Microsoft BizTalk Server 2004

− Microsoft SQL Server 2000 |Microsoft Office System

− Microsoft Office Outlook 2003

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© 2005 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. This case study is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY. Microsoft, BizTalk, Outlook, Windows, and Windows Server System are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and/or other countries. The names of actual companies and products mentioned herein may be the trademarks of their respective owners.

Document published January 2005 | | |

For More Information

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For more information about Interlink Group products and services, call (888) 533-1307 or visit the Web site at:



For more information about McKinstry products and services, call (206) 762-3311 or visit the Web site at:

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