Environment Canterbury’s vision embodies ‘a living landscape’ rich in natural resources for all to share and enjoy. Yet the pathway to the sustainable management of the land, coastline and other resources involves considerable consultation, public dialogue and interaction with local bodies, organisations, community groups and individuals.

Previously, Environment Canterbury (ECan) tackled this huge information task with a number of disparate business systems, but was unable to bring consistency and commonality across the agency’s customer contact databases, document management systems and financial systems. The challenge was to introduce a CRM process that would give a 360 degree view of customers across any business unit that the customer has a relationship with.

Environment Canterbury selected Intergen as its implementation partner following a successful project to revitalise its website. Customer services manager Martin Foley says he was looking for CRM expertise but he also says the people side of the equation was a key factor.

“We saw a high level of technical expertise, at a cost that was realistic. Industry rates can be exorbitant but here we felt we were getting exceptionally high quality development at a reasonable price. There was a relationship link here, and a feeling you could talk without the clock ticking.”

CRM at work
Implementing a CRM system can involve considerable change across a large organisation, but the ease of use provided by Microsoft CRM will greatly benefit Environment Canterbury. Complex data can now be represented in a fashion that makes sense and is accessible to a wide range of users. Every bit of information captured about a customer will eventually be totally visible, regardless of where the contact was made, or whether it was by phone, email, or letter. Consistency and the ability to follow-up are two key benefits provided by the CRM system as any action automatically becomes part of a custom defined workflow process.

Customer service reps now have access to a knowledge base of frequently asked questions and common procedures. The CRM design also supports delayed updates when a business system is not available.

The business difference
As the development and piloting stage reaches completion, Environment Canterbury is set to bring its new central business system online. Foley says there is a lot of scope for the customer relationship management system in the future, as the 360 degree view of customers will be the key to a consistent customer centric focus across Environment Canterbury.

“We are getting a lot of business value beyond what we asked for. Intergen has built in more than just the standard CRM features,” he says.

Tim Mole at Intergen says that after going through Intergen’s standard workshop process with ECan, Intergen realised there were benefits to be gained in presenting customer centric non-CRM information from within the one CRM application interface.

“Working closely with ECan, we added a customisable view to CRM that summarised relevant business information from business systems external to CRM without needing to open those interfaces.”

Foley says ECan originally saw CRM as the ideal platform to integrate all of its databases and bring all contacts into one manageable point. “That was the first initiative, but beyond that my vision is for ECan to extend the entire business value focus of CRM, by using it to drive our customer relationship services.”

For more information
Intergen
www.intergen.co.nz

Business Solutions Enquiries:
Richard Malloch
richard.malloch@intergen.co.nz
021 790 178
03 377 3704

November 2006