CDS Global, a subsidiary of the Hearst Corporation, is an international data management company that provides customised fulfilment services to publishers and direct marketers of all sizes.

The company manages more than 150 million names of active subscribers for more than 400 magazine and product fulfilment clients in the direct-to-consumer and business-to-business markets.

In business since 1972, CDS Global manages fulfilment for many of the leading United States publications, including Good Housekeeping; Cosmopolitan; O, The Oprah Magazine; Architectural Digest; Better Homes and Gardens; and National Geographic magazines.

The company operates five call centers in the United States, two in Canada, and is implementing a global expansion strategy.

Based in Des Moines, Iowa, CDS has more than 3,000 employees worldwide.

Setting the strategy
CDS Global was facing pressure to reduce the price of its fulfilment services to help its customers cope with declining subscription rates. As major magazines sought to retain their existing subscribers as well as increase revenue from each subscriber, they were increasingly viewing the high-quality fulfilment services of CDS Global as a commodity.

“Our customers were expecting us to match the price of competitors who weren’t delivering the same level of service as we were,” explains Marc Francisco, director of digital services, Information Services Technology, CDS Global, Inc. “We had to show how we were bringing additional value in ways that helped our customers reduce their costs and increase their revenue.”

CDS Global made a strategic decision to build on the advances that its customers had made in their direct marketing techniques. “Many of our customers were using sophisticated direct marketing strategies, so we decided to develop capabilities to help them replicate these strategies in our call centers,” Francisco says.

“In order to transform our seven call centers into profit centers for our customers, we needed to implement a customer relationship management (CRM) solution that could help our 400 customer service representatives (CSRs) efficiently upsell callers during inbound calls.”

Getting business specific
According to Joan Coady, process improvement specialist, Customer Service, CDS Global, Inc., the company evaluated five CRM solutions based on a very specific set of criteria. The primary objective was to find a solution that could address the unique nature of the CDS Global call center environment.

“Upselling during an inbound call is difficult enough when the CSR only has to know the offers of one company,” she explains. “Because our call center employees take calls for more than 250 clients with more than 3,000 active offers, the new solution had to automate the process so our CSRs could focus most of their attention on the caller’s initial request.”

In addition, CDS Global needed a solution that would be easy to use and could deliver functionality to measure the effectiveness of the offers its employees were making.

“We chose Infor CRM Epiphany Inbound Marketing because it was the only solution that delivered the business-specific functionality we needed,” Francisco says. “The solutions from other vendors were very large packages that would have required CDS Global to purchase a lot of capabilities we didn’t need.”

For CDS Global, Infor CRM Epiphany Inbound Marketing is being used to create real-time customer profiles based on historical, personal, and contextual data. Using a combination of real-time analytics and business rules, the data is analysed to identify the highest-impact offers in real time so that the CSR can make an attractive offer during the call.

Seeing results
Infor CRM Epiphany Inbound Marketing began delivering value to CDS Global and its customers in less than two months. “It took us only 54 days to implement the solution and begin using it to help our customers generate new business,” says Francisco, noting that Infor Professional Services played a critical role in successfully integrating the solution in such a short amount of time.

“Since implementing Infor CRM Epiphany Inbound Marketing, our clients have realised more than $11 million in incremental sales,” Francisco explains. “This has been extremely good for our business because we operate in a revenue-sharing environment. Infor CRM Inbound Marketing generated enough new revenue for CDS Global that we had a complete return on our investment in only 14 months.”

CDS Global’s clients are increasingly interested in improving the customer experience. CDS Global is using Infor CRM Epiphany Inbound Marketing to capture and analyse additional information its clients can use to better understand their customers and increase retention.

This is particularly relevant for business-to-business markets in which there may not be an upsell opportunity during every interaction. For example, the solution is being used to capture e-mail addresses, demographic information, auto-renewal enrolments, event registrations, retention/loyalty information, details about local business partnerships, and personal interests that can be used by its clients in future interactions with their customers.

Francisco attributes much of his company’s success with the product to the ease with which CSRs can present compelling offers to callers while keeping customer service as their priority. “We hire for customer service skills because most of the time people are calling for help,” he says.

“Infor CRM Epiphany Inbound Marketing has made it easy for our employees to present offers as part of the service we are providing. Because the offers are aligned so well with the caller’s wants and needs, our CSRs know they are offering something the customer really wants.”

According to Francisco, the solution enables CDS Global to show its customers the results they are getting from inbound marketing activities. “Because our clients pay us on the incremental sales we deliver, we have to provide lots of validation,” he says.

“With the reporting capabilities built into the software, we now have the measurements in place to report on the success of individual campaigns.”

Infor CRM Epiphany Inbound Marketing also has delivered unexpected benefits to CDS Global and its customers. The ability of the solution to capture and analyse results for individual campaigns is being used by CDS Global clients to test new offers without the time and expense of conducting a formal direct marketing campaign.

“We didn’t tout the potential for using Infor CRM Epiphany Inbound Marketing in outbound marketing activities, but our clients are certainly taking advantage of this capability.”

Being open to an enterprising future
CDS Global is expanding its use of Infor CRM Epiphany Inbound Marketing into new channels. “We are moving toward offering our clients the same type of upsell capabilities on the web and through intelligent voice response (IVR) systems,” Francisco says. In addition, CDS Global is adding Infor CRM Epiphany Outbound Marketing to expand the capabilities of its outbound services.

“Infor has consistently been a great company to work with,” Francisco says. “I look at the current relationship as a true partnership.”

For more information

EMDA NZ Ltd
Ph: + 64 3 379 9530
Ph: + 64 9 623 3001

Web: www.emda.co.nz
email: info@emda.co.nz

About Infor
Infor makes business software better by acquiring and improving proven, functionally rich software backed by domain experts. Infor makes it better through continuous innovation, faster implementation options, global enablement, and flexible buying options. In a few short years, Infor has become the third largest provider of business software. For additional information, visit www.infor.com.

9/1/28_ex_h_nl