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“More than 30 percent of our customers have migrated from other solutions, many from open source platforms. They see the benefits of Microsoft CRM and migrate to a Microsoft infrastructure.”

Egon Coradini, Founder and Sales Director, Tridea Consulting

In 2004, Tridea Consulting began operations to coincide with the first release of Microsoft® Business Solutions software in Brazil. Tridea provides only Microsoft CRM solutions, and has partnered with Microsoft to help build a new market in Brazil and to win over open-source customers with its solutions. In the last two years, Tridea’s revenue has grown by 400 percent; its licensing revenue has increased sevenfold since its first year.

Business Needs

Tridea Consulting was formed in 2004, the first year that Microsoft began selling Microsoft® Business Solutions CRM 1.2 (now part of Microsoft Dynamics™ CRM) in Brazil. Based in Sao Paulo, Tridea began when three IT professionals decided to pool their expertise in the successful implementation of customer relationship management (CRM) solutions. Tridea is a full-service CRM system integrator, focusing exclusively on the Microsoft CRM product. The company’s goal was to not only provide the best CRM technology solutions for the Brazilian market, but also augment those solutions with professional consulting services, including a workshop called Business Game, which uses Microsoft CRM; gap analysis workshops; training; and post-implementation support, to name a few.

“The Brazilian market was ready for the vision and the technology that Microsoft has to offer,” recalls Egon Coradini, Tridea Founder and Sales Director. “There had been a strong CRM market in Brazil with Siebel, Datasul, Vantive, PeopleSoft (now part of Oracle), and smaller vendors, but none of them had the value proposition of Microsoft CRM. Either the products were very expensive and complex and difficult to integrate into existing infrastructures, or they were too inflexible, with poor functionality.”

While there is a huge market in Brazil, Tridea faced an uphill battle introducing a brand-new product into the country. “We knew that Microsoft CRM was a great fit for the Brazilian market. It has a great price point, it’s easy to use, and it integrates with [Microsoft] Office Outlook®. It also comes with a roadmap based on seamless integration with the Microsoft solution stack that’s attractive to customers who want the reduced costs and maintenance of an integrated infrastructure,” adds Coradini.

Solution

Tridea became a Microsoft partner in order to work together towards building up the market. “Microsoft was looking for a partner with a vision to increase Microsoft CRM deployments with a comprehensive service offering, and we were looking for a strong fit in CRM technology for the Brazilian market,” says Coradini.

Over the next two years, Tridea worked with a dedicated Microsoft Partner Account Manager to drive business and develop the partner channel in Brazil. Tridea has participated in every Microsoft CRM beta program available, and Microsoft invites company representatives to all CRM product development meetings. “Microsoft offers us very rich documentation with all the information Tridea consultants need to deliver a solution,” says Coradini.

Microsoft invites Tridea to corporate events and provides co-marketing opportunities to introduce the product to customers. “Microsoft does not compete with its partners; we have received many leads from the Microsoft Sao Paulo office,” says Coradini. “The Microsoft brand opens doors for us. When I visit a customer with my account manager, it really helps to close deals because the customer knows Microsoft and they feel comfortable with Tridea being backed by a world-class technology provider. Customers are thinking of Microsoft as a trusted advisor, which complements our business model of providing consulting services and support for a full-service CRM solution. ”

For its part, Tridea is actively evangelizing Microsoft CRM among other partners in the country, and has helped Microsoft with localizing the Implementation Tool Kit and marketing material into Portuguese. Tridea is also the first Microsoft Certified Trainer for Microsoft CRM products in Brazil.

Benefits

Tridea has grown to 20 full-time consultants, and it has single-handedly generated 8 percent of Microsoft Brazil’s total CRM revenue, significantly contributing to a healthy 16 percent surplus over last year’s sales quota. This year, Tridea expects that surplus to be about 20 percent.

“We have experienced revenue growth of 400 percent over the last two years,” explains Coradini. “Our product licensing revenue is 7 times higher than in our first year and the service revenue is expected to grow accordingly.”

Tridea is also one of the first partners in Brazil to build vertical solutions based on the out-of-the-box Microsoft CRM solution and is gaining in vertical markets like professional services and manufacturing.

Coradini attributes this success to a marketing strategy—offering user-friendly, cost-effective CRM solutions that integrate with customers’ infrastructures and desktop tools—that builds on the benefits of its partnership with Microsoft.

Freedom to Innovate

“Microsoft gives us freedom to build our own solutions to fit customers’ needs, thanks to the rich material in the software development kit,” says Coradini. Tridea’s product, Tridea Essentials, offers a powerful set of add-on capabilities to enhance the functionality in Microsoft CRM. “We can easily customize Microsoft CRM to meet our clients’ needs, while keeping development costs low. This gives us a competitive advantage.”

The Argument Against Competitors

Tridea also faces challenges getting a foothold into companies running other CRM applications, like Mercado Eletrônico from . However, when Coradini presents the value proposition behind a Microsoft CRM solution, he wins business from competing CRM solutions for these reasons:

■ Low total cost of ownership. Seibel is cumbersome and expensive, making it ineffectual for most Brazilian companies. And while has a low initial cost, yearly subscription payments make Microsoft CRM a better ongoing value.

■ Better support. There are few partners in Brazil, and limited knowledge in the field about the product.

■ More flexible. Hosted applications are less flexible than Microsoft CRM, and do not integrate well with a business’s legacy solutions and IT infrastructure.

■ Microsoft Office Outlook integration. No competitor to Microsoft CRM provides Outlook integration, which many companies stipulate as a mandatory requirement for their CRM solution.

“More than 30 percent of our customers have migrated from other solutions, many from open-source platforms. They see the benefits of Microsoft CRM and migrate to a Microsoft infrastructure,” concludes Coradini.

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For more information about other Microsoft customer successes, please visit: resources/casestudies

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Partner: Tridea Consulting

Web Site: .br

Partner Size: 20

Country or Region: Brazil

Industry: Professional Services

Partner Profile

Based in Sao Paulo, Brazil, Tridea Consulting is a full-service systems integrator focused on Microsoft Dynamics™ CRM. Tridea provides consulting, integration, and support.

Software and Services

■ Microsoft Dynamics

− Microsoft Dynamics CRM

■ Microsoft® Office System

− Microsoft Office Professional Enterprise Edition 2003

− Microsoft Office Outlook® 2003

■ Microsoft Servers

− Microsoft SQL Server™ 2000

■ Technologies

− Microsoft Windows® SharePoint® Services

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