In September 2002 the Government decided to integrate the services provided by Trade New Zealand and Industry New Zealand. Prior to this, Trade New Zealand had a staff of around 380 and was the Government’s international trade promotion agency, while Industry New Zealand employed 200 and was internally focused – helping SMEs grow and also assisting specific regions and industry sectors.

The new organisation, New Zealand Trade & Enterprise (NZTE), became the single body tasked with delivering a seamless service to New Zealand businesses throughout their life cycle – from small start-ups right through to internationally competitive export companies.

Essentially, NZTE’s ‘business model’ is to provide training, consultation and funding to a range of different New Zealand enterprises. Funding is delivered via grants targeted at supporting high growth-potential businesses to purchase external advice and expertise, market intelligence and development services. Grants are up to a maximum of 50% of the costs of qualifying projects.

A diverse client base
NZTE’s business solutions manager, Richard Ashworth, says his organisation manages around 3000 applications for financial assistance a year, and interacts with up to 25000 businesses via its enterprise training programmes and a variety of online offerings.

Aside from charging for some research related to market development services, New Zealand Trade and Enterprise’s assistance to a vast array of New Zealand businesses is offered free. Obviously, managing all these interactions requires a good quality CRM system.

However as at merger time it had two systems in place. “Both organisations were managing different business processes” explains Ashworth, “but after the merger we wanted to have a single CRM system running all of those processes to give us a single view of what we were doing with our clients.”

Although Trade New Zealand was the bigger organisation in terms of staff numbers, Ashworth says Industry New Zealand had significantly more client interactions and assistance programmes in place – and as a result it was decided it would be easier to move the Trade New Zealand solution into Pivotal.

“We had a lot more functionality built into Pivotal,” says Ashworth, “so it was definitely going to be quicker to deploy. Pivotal also demonstrated an indepth understanding of what we were trying to do and where we were trying to take the organisation. So we had confidence in the ability of the Pivotal solution to go along that path with us.”

Merger challenges
Given the scope of the task, Ashworth says there were a number of challenges presented by merging two solutions into one. “The biggest challenges we faced,” he says, “were getting a ‘meeting of the minds’ and trying to get everyone on the same page in terms of establishing a new set of priorities – and then creating new processes and structures to support those priorities. Some areas like enterprise training, grants and foreign investments didn’t change, but others like client management and case management processes changed significantly.

For example, our field staff were delivering different services and expected to deliver these in a standard uniform way. So Pivotal has helped us in terms of unifying those processes.” Training needs were also diverse, says Ashworth, as while the system interaction of some staff changed very little, client managers and call centre staff did need to upskill quite significantly. “Pivotal did technical training for us,” he says, “and we managed the development of the training materials and delivery of training in-house.”

Tracking the process
Although many perceive a CRM system to simply be pop screens in a call centre, Ashworth says NZTE’s demands of its solution are extensive.

“Yes we have a call centre that logs calls,” he says. “But the system is used more widely than that. We have field staff on the road providing advice and assistance and they create ‘case plans’ for clients. That case management is held in Pivotal and the entire workflow around the case management is managed through Pivotal. In the case of a grant application, for example, the entire life cycle of the grant – from application to giving money out to closing it off and reporting on it, is all managed through Pivotal. In addition, our enterprise training program is managed with Pivotal. We have outsourced partners that deliver that training. They book people on to courses using Pivotal, and manage the whole delivery of training via the system – right through to generating invoices.”

The whole purpose behind NZTE’s Pivotal CRM solution, says Ashworth, is to allow its staff, looking at a client record, to get a complete picture of what interactions NZTE has had with that client – regardless of which area of its business the client had dealings with. “We like to talk about a 360 degree view of clients,” he says and that’s what the system is delivering for us.”

Return On Investment
In terms of cost of ownership, Ashworth says there wasn’t much difference between Pivotal and the other incumbent CRM system, SalesLogix – so analysing a return on investment required a different methodology.

“The question it came down to,” he says, “was ‘what’s going to support our business better?’ For us the value in a CRM solution is the business benefit of easily disseminating information to our people. It’s about being coordinated and the left hand knowing what the right hand is doing. NZTE’s delivery metrics are things like ‘how many people are we doing business with, how many foreign exchange jobs have we done, what is the value of our foreign exchange deals?’ And, as we're a government agency it’s also about not wasting tax payers money doing things twice or by doing too much for a client. With Pivotal we’re able to quickly and easy identify the performance of the agency.”

Always a top priority when calculating a return on investment, says Ashworth, is the question of customer benefits. “They have an expectation that their case will be well managed,” he says, “and with the solution we have in place now we’re able to cost effectively deliver the appropriate services, in a timely manner – offering a more professional service to the clients.”

Looking ahead With its CRM system now bedded in, Ashworth says NZTE is developing a wish list to extend Pivotal’s functionality further. “We’ve just started talking to businesses again about what they want to see in the next phase of development,” he says. “We definitely want to incorporate more of our business processes and project tracking into Pivotal, for example taking the management of the grant application process online and integrating project management functionality into the system.

For more information
www.nzte.govt.nz

Pivotal: www.pivotal.com
Helen Robinson
h.robinson@pivotal.com
09 306 2877

October 2004