With 9000 customers across the country, The Motor Trade Association (MTA) is New Zealand's leading association of motor industry professionals. With numbers like this however, MTA chief financial controller Justin Joseph, says personalising relationships with a diverse range of customers was extremely difficult for the MTA using its 10-year-old financial system.

Nonetheless Joseph says it was imperative that the MTA communicate with every member on a personal level. To achieve this goal, the organisation adopted Microsoft Business Solutions Dynamics AX, in December 2002. A versatile business solution, Joseph says Dynamics AX is helping the MTA strengthen customer relationships, while offering members more flexibility in the way they receive the association's services.

"Our members are our most important asset," says Joseph, "and it's vital we provide them with the highest quality service. Under our legacy system, customer information was decentralised, so we couldn't track our members' needs effectively or personalise member communication easily. The information was difficult to merge and we often had no choice but to send members a generic piece of communication, like a newsletter."

Joseph notes that Dynamics AX has also streamlined the MTA's financial and distribution processes - with tasks that once took days now completed in hours.

Finding the right solution and technology partner
Early in 2001, the MTA began searching for an integrated business application that could deliver the CRM functionality it needed. Joseph says that more than 17 vendors tendered for the project, before three were short-listed and the final decision was made to adopt  Dynamics AX - supported by implementation partner Solution Partners.

"Once we agreed on our core requirements," he says, "the selection process was rigorous and spanned three months. Senior management evaluated all the products against our criteria and decided that Dynamics AX was the easiest and most flexible solution available - offering a fully integrated business solution that could cater simply for our financial, distribution and most importantly, customer relationship management needs. Because Dynamics AX's architecture is layered, we could also easily customise the solution and upgrade to future versions without worrying about losing any modifications."

Joseph notes also, that as product and vendor go hand in glove, Solution Partners was an equally important factor in the association's decision to use Dynamics AX.

"We placed a strong emphasis on the vendor and their ability to support the product," he says. "Solution Partners proved to be a highly skilled and supportive partner and were genuinely interested in helping us. They didn't make false promises and were committed to ensuring Dynamics AX delivered."

Dynamics AX went live in December 2002, after a three-month implementation. Forty staff members use the new system, which is hosted at the MTA's headquarters in Wellington and accessed remotely through Microsoft Windows 2000 Server.

Dynamics AX - CRM in action
Joseph says that first and foremost, Dynamics AX is helping the MTA significantly improve customer service levels and communication with members. The association now sends customised announcements and other items of interest to individual members.

"With Dynamics AX," he says, "we can identify the services our members utilise and why. More importantly, we use this information to proactively alert members to services we think may be most valuable to them. We can also offer members more flexibility in the way they receive our services, and they can choose to receive any of our communications and newsletters by fax, email or post."

Easy customisation suits unique business requirements
Solution Partners managing director Debbie Altham, says the integrated Dynamics AX CRM functionality provides the MTA with one source of reference for all its customer information.

"Financial and non-financial data is stored in one place, delivering a complete view of all customer relationships to the MTA." Interestingly, the MTA is New Zealand's largest vendor of gift vouchers, available through its member businesses, and Solution Partners also customised Dynamics AX to streamline the MTA's gift voucher redemption. "The system allows us to easily track voucher serial numbers," says Joseph, "and reimburse customers more efficiently."

Not to forget financial functionality
In addition to delivering strong CRM capability, Joseph says Dynamics AX provides the MTA with broad financial functionality, and the association has automated a number of financial processes, requiring less staff time to create reports.

"Our financials are much more efficient," he says. "For example, the system can produce cash-flow statements automatically. Previously this was a laborious exercise involving up to three people." Invoicing and debtor management is also more efficient says Joseph.

"We offer a number of services to our members and can issue from 200 to 250 invoices per day. With our previous system, supplier invoices were created manually and we never knew their status on an invoice until it had been approved. Dynamics AX allows us to generate invoices automatically and track their progress from the moment they're entered into the system. The system also generates reminder letters to debtors - the credit controller simply decides when to push the button. This is creating huge time savings because to manally prepare the letters took us up to two days."

The workbook within the Dynamics AX Sales Force Administration module is also helping MTA staff manage debtors more efficiently. "Everything you need to do on the day pops up on screen when you open the workbook. For example, it reminds us which debtors we need to chase up on whereas previously, we had to check each individual account to see what was outstanding."

Finally, Joseph says financial reporting is now more versatile. "We can create pre-defined reports and custom reports, which are much more accurate and valuable in helping the MTA make better business decisions."

More distribution accountability
The depth of data now available is also increasing the accountability of the MTA's distribution processes, from dispatch through to delivery. "We had similar distribution functionality prior to Dynamics AX but it was more complex and a small mistake could cause serious headaches," says Joseph. "Dynamics AX provides more information which helps us easily locate any mistakes. Every field can be tracked so we can quickly find and fix problems - and identify who was responsible for the changes."

.NET presents new opportunities for the future
Joseph says that the MTA is excited about moving its Dynamics AX solution to the Microsoft .NET platform. "Long term, we plan to offer our members web-based services, including electronic ordering and the ability to access and edit their profiles and view account information online. It will be much easier to link Dynamics AX with our website once we shift to .NET."

In the meantime the MTA is working with Solution Partners to further refine the system to maximise their Dynamics AX investment. "We've identified about six areas within Dynamics AX that we'd like to enhance to deliver even greater value. We're confident we'll gain a return on investment in the long term - all the small savings here and there add up. Dynamics AX is future proof and has the capability to expand with our organisation."

David Guy, of Microsoft Business Solutions New Zealand, says that the MTA is just one of many customers already recognising the benefits that Microsoft .NET delivers to its existing Microsoft Business Solutions investment.

"All Microsoft Business Solutions" applications, including Dynamics AX, will be shifted to a unified .NET platform within the next three years," says Guy. "This will enable our customers to take advantage of XML Web services in a more efficient manner and it will be more cost effective for them to automate the business interactions with their clients and suppliers."

For more information

Solution Partners
Roger Clearwater
09 366-3920
roger.clearwater@solutionpartners.co.nz
www.solutionpartners.co.nz

Microsoft
Anne Frith
09 362 5865
askdynnz@microsoft.com
Microsoft New Zealand
PO Box 8070, Symonds Street, Auckland

June 2003

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