Streamline Customer Service and Improve Sales Productivity with Microsoft Dynamics CRM

Challenge

Lehigh was struggling to reach their true growth potential, meet higher sales goals and improve their customer service. In order to reach these objectives, Lehigh needed to streamline their processes and bring their teams together, particularly when it came to new customer setups and how they served their customers. Working with Lehigh, the Affiliated team developed a vision and a strategy built around Microsoft Dynamics CRM (CRM) to address the following:

1. Improve customer service and retention by developing a collaborative data sharing tool that would be easy to implement and support, while reducing or eliminating many of the manual, inefficient practices currently used to support the organization.Synchronize all data and information with legacy systems, assuring no interruption to business operations.
2. Provide a cost-effective nimble solution that would not have to be re-engineered when a new customer or product is introduced.
3. Develop a framework that supports the upgrade of the legacy systems.
4. Meet or exceed all Sarbanes-Oxley compliancy requirements.

“Before CRM, information about accounts and prospects was largely held at the individual sales rep level. Now, our system provides additional support to our direct sales teams, allows us to quickly add new customers and provides better customer service by having each member of our team understand what is happening at each account.”

Richard A. Simms, Senior Vice President,
Retail Division

Solution

As an award-winning Microsoft Gold Certified Partner, Affiliated used their proven experience in applying Microsoft solutions to solve Lehigh Brands business problems. The Affiliated solution integrated Microsoft Dynamics CRM into their business and the CRM database became the enterprise-wide consolidated Customer Master Record. The solution automated new customer on-boarding processes and reduced the time to add a new customer from as much as 21 days to just 1 business day.

The CRM implementation has empowered Lehigh’s customer service and sales teams to function at increased productivity levels and deliver more responsive service and communications. CRM has become the central system used by each user to complete their entire job function. The CRM solution was customized to integrate with three existing legacy systems making it easier for these teams to build relationships with their customers. The integration allows the Lehigh staff to more efficiently service their customers and use one system to accomplish their support functions.

The CRM solution supports 150 users, allowing the division to support several thousand customers, and helps the company reduce customer turnover and meet growth goals. To meet the Sarbanes-Oxley compliance and legacy system synchronization requirements, Affiliated created a separate framework to track transactions at a field level and report information as requested by management or compliance requirements.

Benefits

After a six-month implementation, the system had paid for itself and Lehigh management declared the project a success. Reducing the number of screens for account set up from 17 to 1 and the entire customer account set up process from 21 days to 1 business day has had a positive effect for both Lehigh Brands and for their customers. Richard A. Simms, the senior vice president of the retail division, noted that having all information related to customers and prospects in a single data base has provided tremendous value. The sales and customer service teams are able to quickly identify all accounts and prospect information using one system in one place. This creates a better opportunity to build stronger customer relationships and drive additional opportunities with both new and existing customers. With the data synchronized in one system, quick customer add capabilities, and activity information that it accessible by all team members, Lehigh Brands now has more opportunities to expand their customer base, keep their current customers satisfied and meet their organizational goals.

Author information

Mike Moran

Mike Moran is the president of Affiliated Resource Group (Affiliated) based in Dublin, Ohio. Moran co-founded Affiliated in 1993 as an ERP implementation and software development firm. Affiliated became a VAR in 1999. As president, he leads Affiliated’s company-wide strategy, marketing, and corporate development activities. The Company has grown into a multi-million dollar technology and business consulting company serving growing and mid-market businesses throughout Ohio. Moran’s passion is helping organizations align their business and technology goals then identify and implement technology-based solutions that increase operational efficiencies, improve customer experience, and drive more profitable revenue. As a member of the Microsoft Partner Network certified in both Platform and Dynamics solutions, Affiliated has won numerous awards including the U.S. Central Region Partner of the Year, and Heartland Area awards for Business Transformation and Customer Satisfaction & Experience. Affiliated is also a VMware Enterprise Solution Partner and has been a successful hardware and software provider utilizing Tech Data for over 10 years. Active within the community, Moran has served on the Dublin City Schools Business Advisory Council, the Technology Advisory Boards for Hocking College and the Marion Technical Institute and the Tech Data Internet Commerce Council. He earned a BBA in Accounting from the University of Iowa.

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