Keep All the Balls in the Air: Microsoft Dynamics CRM as a Service Firm's Total Operations Solution

When a small business makes an investment in new CRM software, even just a few seats, it needs to deliver some tangible value and address real pain points, often those outside of the typical realm of the customer relationship.  And when the requirements can be met with xRM capabilities - with a little creativity - that solution can bring better control to other key operational challenges - from quote approval to order management to shipping.

"Microsoft Dynamics CRM has offered us an opportunity to track our operations from start to finish," says Fabrizio Cicchelli, operations manager at Industrial Electronic Services (IES), an industrial electronics repair business in Mississauga, Ontario, Canada. The company's CRM success was recently profiled in the new white paper 24 Wildly Creative Ways Companies Use Microsoft Dynamics CRM to Drive Revenue and Serve Customers.

Until about a year ago, IES had been managing most parts of its operations via Excel spreadsheets, Cichelli says, and as a small business with a desire to turn around service jobs on time and improve customer satisfaction, they knew that simply tracking customers and prospect data online wasn't going to be enough to justify a CRM investment.  IES needed to improve its overall customer experience, and as the company's operations manager, Cicchelli knew that a better customer experience meant going beyond sales and marketing to track the performance of service jobs from start to finish, bringing in departments and steps behind the scenes that run the risk of falling through the cracks, leading to unexpected delays and dissatisfied customers.  IES needed more than CRM - they needed a solution that could boost their performance along the full range of operations, from quoting new business to gathering ...