Beekley Corporation
<< Back
Lessons Learned Spell CRM Success for Beekley
Having a primary core value in delivering world class customer care through innovative products and strong relationships, Beekley Corporation is always looking for the best way to leverage technology to meet company goals and objectives. At the heart of managing customer relationships is a team of dedicated sales and marketing experts focused on anticipating needs and providing solutions that delight their customers. This team depends on having the proper tools in place that enable them to respond equally well to existing clients and prospects that have expressed interest in Beekley products.
In the past, Beekley attempted to accomplish these tasks through the use of Siebel’s sales and marketing system. Having had a system in place prior to Siebel, Beekley experienced a data conversion project that many in the company labeled ‘a disaster’ - stretching the sales and marketing team to their limits as they worked almost around the clock to get the system up and running. Adding to the migration frustration was the lack of support Beekley received from a local VAR (value added reseller) who proved to be expensive and non-responsive. The Beekley team soon realized that Seibel was not the long-term answer to their sales, marketing and customer care needs for either business unit. A common system was needed for both divisions.
A Better Solution
Turning to Microsoft for recommendations, Ray Thomas, Director of Finance and Technology, knew there had to be a better option and one that aligned well with the company’s existing Microsoft platform. Mr. Thomas got a good look at Microsoft Dynamics CRM at Microsoft’s Convergence event, which gave him a great opportunity to see what the CRM solution had to offer. Liking what he saw, Mr. Thomas began looking for a CRM partner almost immediately and turned to Customer Effective at the recommendation of Microsoft. After reviewing several customer success stories, Mr. Thomas felt comfortable that Customer Effective was the right partner for his CRM project. Before embarking on the project, a Beekley task force was assembled representing sales, marketing, IT, training and customer service. The team’s first action was to document what they needed in a system and how it should address the needs of each business unit. Equally important was documenting their lessons learned from previous sales and marketing system projects. The task force was determined not to be defeated and set out on a path for CRM success. To begin, Customer Effective engaged Beekley in a solution lab designed to fully study the business and determine the best approach for CRM in Beekley’s environment. The solution lab enabled Beekley’s task force to become familiar with Customer Effective’s team, which helped set the tone for the CRM implementation. The findings of the study provided Customer Effective with key information to propose the right solution to meet specific needs identified for Beekley. Based on the needs expressed by the task force, Customer Effective created a project implementation schedule based on its User First Design Formula™ which included milestones and check points for progress. The schedule was custom-designed not only to ensure implementation success, but also successful user adoption and became the reference plan for the entire CRM project with review updates occurring weekly. Everyone involved knew exactly what to expect and when to expect it. The plan also included Customer Effective’s approach to data migration from Seibel to CRM which was a critical element in the overall implementation.
Almost immediately, the Beekley sales teams in both divisions were productively using CRM with initial user response being very positive. The Beekley FastTag team of six users adapted well to CRM by using the system right away for tracking prospects, assigning calls and management of email marketing campaigns. The entire sales cycle from an initial campaign to deal closing is tracked in CRM. Searches are easy with CRM’s advanced find feature, enabling a sales rep to quickly locate information within the system such as common prospect groups using selection criteria. Daily and monthly sales performance reports provide information on new sales as well as deals that may have been lost. This type of intelligence gives Beekley important data to analyze and identify what is working well and where improvements can be made.
“Our expectations with this CRM project were very high,” says Candice LeBlanc, Director of Business Development for Beekley FastTag. “We were impressed early on with how well Customer Effective listened to us to understand our business model. Throughout the entire project, they remained extremely focused and responsive to our needs. We were a unified team with Customer Effective and everything worked seamlessly. They made the project simple and ensured a smooth CRM delivery.”
“Applying our lessons learned from the past helped ensure everything went right,” says Martha Flannery, Director of Sales and Marketing for Beekley. “The way CRM was rolled out in a test environment enabled us to make any required changes to the system prior to full implementation. Customer Effective kept their composure and remained professional no matter how frazzled we became. The brilliance of how everything was handled by Customer Effective made a huge difference. We felt like we were their only client.”
Ms. Flannery and her team have already reached beyond CRM’s sales module where they manage all sales activities and now track marketing campaigns in the system. Campaigns include direct mail programs and trade shows which occur throughout the year. New product launches that frequently have planned promotions are tracked from initial launch to new sales. Tracking and managing all of these activities through performance reporting provides Beekley management with critical data for measuring marketing’s return on investment. Reports include close ratios, new opportunities generated from campaigns and performance of campaigns such as the product launches and trade show events. A key performance indicator (KPI) dashboard is currently being developed to give Ms. Flannery, Ms. LeBlanc and other Beekley managers a quick view of daily sales and marketing performance for the company, by each division and at the individual sales rep level. For Beekley, Microsoft CRM proved to be the right choice as a common solution for two business units. After enduring the intense trials of past sales and marketing system project challenges, Beekley had high expectations for Customer Effective to deliver a smooth, painless implementation. And that’s exactly what they got. Microsoft CRM serves well as the right solution to support Beekley’s commitment for continuous improvement and on-going focus for world class customer care.
For more information, visit www.CustomerEffective.com
For Beekley Corporation, visit www.Beekley.com
For Beekley FastTag, visit www.FastTag.com
