Fisher & Paykel Finance (FPF) provides specialist financial services to merchants and retailers, enabling them to deliver competitive finance plans to their consumers. These services are used by over 400,000 New Zealand customers.

FPF needed a CRM solution that could better manage its large customer and merchant database records and capture information accurately and easily for its sales and administration departments.

Microsoft Dynamics CRM enables the company to integrate information from different channels to create real time visibility across its business. This leads to much greater customer insight, more targeted sales and marketing campaigns as well as superior customer service.

Streamlining customer data
Fisher & Paykel Finance identified a need to condense spreadsheets used by individual employees into one repository to better manage the sales workflow. With a team of twenty five staff each with their own individual version of CRM customer details, an overall solution was needed to formalise the process to be able to get clear visibility of the company sales cycle and administration in a standardised format.

For Peter Roxburgh, channel manager of Fisher & Paykel Finance, an important consideration was to measure customer activity and capture the sales team’s key activities and progress.

“We wanted an application that could effectively record our pipeline of new leads and existing customer opportunities with accurate and updated data, which is crucial to the running of our business and ongoing customer satisfaction,” says Roxburgh.

Phase one of the Microsoft CRM implementation took two months and saw the data from spreadsheets being uploaded onto the system with minimal disruption. The new system has proved to be quick and easy to use with training coinciding with the company’s quietest period in the calendar year, to avoid inconveniencing customers.

CRM can track the workflow of the sales cycle, which can take up to six months, via the customer interactions on one system where previously several databases and systems were used. FPF now holds more information on each customer record, giving one complete view of the customer and better business insight. Also, there is more visibility on customer issues and how they are being dealt with, ensuring that customer service levels remain high and allowing the company to pinpoint areas for staff training.

The CRM platform allows account managers to pick and load up leads, record preplanning and input the whole process including any notes taken during meetings. Various departments such as administration, finance and credit are all tied together under one platform.

A business versus IT decision
Trusting their IT partner Axon’s professional advice, Microsoft CRM was chosen over three other technologies despite a higher price because it integrates with Outlook and is suitable for account managers to use remotely.

“Axon manages all our software and was the natural choice to advise us on what CRM platform to implement," says Roxburgh.

"The experience during the selection was really interesting as they challenged us to make sure we evaluated ourselves in our thinking processes in order to obtain the best efficiency for the company. We saw this engagement as a business decision rather than an IT one.”

The final solution has resulted in better informed staff, a clear overview of potential revenue, individual sales performance and a capacity to track how accounts are progressing with any bottlenecks identified. By fleshing out the processes, FPF has been able to identify areas which need to be eliminated or those which need to be brought into the process. The system provides the company with a full profile of each customer including personal information, transactions made, approvals and account status.

Easy system generates fast results
Roxburgh says there has been a marked improvement in storing accurate information and securing customer data The sales process now allows the business to ask better questions around other activities such as the administrative team’s efficiency and effectiveness in backing up the sales team.

“Within the first month we were able to build a good reporting structure and generate great pitches as well as get a good grasp of the sales funnel. We have been able to flesh things out around performance, and been able to identify where sales staff are exceeding or not doing the necessary activities to achieve that sale,” he says.

“Our previous system did not give us the necessary visibility over the sales process but now we are able to performance manage accurately and retain capital information. New staff can hit the ground running as they have a clear view of what accounts we have in the pipeline.”

Better insight and improved customer service
Better informed account managers know more about their customers’ businesses and their problems and offer a more personalised service.

The company will be bringing in enhancements to the Microsoft CRM platform over the next few months including interaction with their core lending system.

"We will be streamlining additional processes we had not considered before using CRM to speed up our system for a quicker sales and administration process," says Roxburgh.

"Being able to have a central repository of information from various channels has allowed us to strategically monitor our performance and competitor activities, thereby keeping the sales staff one step ahead and helping us develop and refine our marketing strategy by identifying opportunities around that information.”

Going forward
Previously Fisher & Paykel Finance’s planning processes required significant internal resources. Now, strategic planning is much easier and less time intensive because Microsoft CRM provides an overall view of the business in New Zealand including the impact of competitor activity.

“We will be expanding the use of CRM into other business units such as the credit and legal departments, to enable them to interact more electronically and have a better view of the customer,” says Roxburgh.

For more information
Microsoft CRM
www.microsoft.com/businesssolutions

Anne Frith
09 362 5865
askdynnz@microsoft.com

October 2007