How We’re Using Microsoft Dynamics CRM: A journey of continuous, measured improvement for one global services firm

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Founded in Chicago in 1924, Grant Thornton International is one of the world's largest global accounting and consulting firms. Specializing in independent audit, tax, and advisory services, the company has been using Microsoft Dynamics CRM for the last two years. It has been rolling out the solution to its member firms on a country-by-country basis.

Their U.S. and Canada operations went live with Dynamics CRM in October 2013, according to Rick Stow, Grant Thornton's head of CRM. As part of its CRM solution deployment strategy, the firm has put mechanisms into place to measure the impact of the solution on its operations.

"If you build it and no one uses it, that's a big issue with CRM these days," says Stow, whose team uses two different measures to avoid adoption problems. First, they measure usage - are employees using the CRM system the way it was intended? And they measure metrics that indicate a positive outcome - is the customer pipeline growing? Is the company booking more revenue? Is it closing deals faster?.

So far, Stow says the company's CRM investment is paying off.

"We're pretty happy with what we've achieved so far," he says. Of course, like any major technology implementation, Grant Thornton's new CRM solution presented some challenges during the early stages. For the accounting firm, one of the major obstacles was getting users to input customer data into ...