Construction Company Implements CRM Solution, Increases Efficiency by 25 Percent

Microsoft Business Solutions Customer Solution Case Study

Overview “Microsoft CRM is a great way for people to Country or Region: United States collaborate,” says Frey. “We’re definitely seeing Industry: Construction more cross-selling and upselling throughout the Customer Profile company.” McKinstry Company is an engineering, mechanical construction, and facilities Bob Frey, Vice President of Service Sales, McKinstry Company management firm that offers a range of design-build delivery services. The McKinstry Company provides construction services to clients company employs approximately 1,000 people. throughout the Pacific Northwest. The company has six different business units, each with different sales forces, unique sales Business Situation With many different services handled by cycles, and even separate repositories of sales and customer separate divisions, the company’s information that previously could not be shared easily between fragmented sales databases were not only hindering efficiency and productivity, groups. Because of this, multiple sales groups either but also leading to lost sales approached customers separately or were unaware of additional opportunities. sales opportunities for the same customer. Working with Solution Microsoft Gold Certified Partner Interlink Group to address this McKinstry implemented Microsoft® Business Solutions CRM to centralize issue, McKinstry implemented Microsoft® Business Solutions sales data and Microsoft BizTalk® Server CRM to centralize its customer relationship management and 2004 to connect disparate systems and route information through the used Microsoft BizTalk® Server 2004 to connect disparate organization. database applications. Since then, McKinstry has improved

Benefits efficiency by 25 percent, streamlined forecasting, and reduced  Improved efficiency by 25 percent operational costs by 15 percent.  Increased sales opportunities  Reduced administrative costs by 15 percent  Saved U.S.$30,000 per year on sales “Microsoft CRM is so Situation does Service Alliance store customer data With offices in both Seattle, Washington, and track the work conducted on each intuitive that people and Portland, Oregon, McKinstry offers a building, but it also acts as a truck-dispatch just start using it. It’s all range of construction services throughout system when a customer calls in a service the Pacific Northwest. The company issue. a logical extension of designs, builds, operates, and maintains what people are using building systems, including heating, To be more effective, McKinstry knew that ventilation, air conditioning, plumbing, it needed a solution that could make the in Outlook and piping, fire sprinkler, and electrical sales information within the separate Microsoft Project, systems. divisions available to all divisions— regardless of which division owned the Word, and Excel, so These discrete services are represented by account. The solution needed to be able to there’s not much to different divisions, each of which has its integrate with different applications such as own sales group and sales cycle. By Service Alliance. It also needed to provide learn.” dividing its services into divisions, the ability to track performance by Bob Frey, Vice President of Service Sales, McKinstry can tailor its sales activities and salesperson and to provide better visibility McKinstry Company move more quickly on projects. These into the sales process. Finally, the solution separate sales groups hindered cross- needed to be able to integrate with the divisional sales efforts, because each company’s existing IT systems, which group had access only to its own customer included Microsoft® Windows Server

data. As a result, customers were SystemTM integrated server software and sometimes approached by multiple sales programs in the Microsoft Office System. groups, each offering a different service. This issue was compounded by the company’s size and geographic spread; Solution McKinstry operates two main offices and In July 2003, McKinstry started looking at employs more than 1,000 people. “The solutions ranging from Oracle to J.D. different silos of information spread Edwards. Because the company wanted to throughout the organization made us less continue using its existing accounting efficient and affected our ability to close the system, which was already integrated with deal,” explains Dean Allen, President of Service Alliance, McKinstry opted to McKinstry Company. “We do a lot of work implement a customer relationship to understand a project, and it wasted time management (CRM) solution rather than an when each sales group did this work enterprise resource planning (ERP) independently.” system. The company chose Microsoft Business Solutions CRM. “Microsoft CRM Each of the groups also uses specific gives our company the kinds of detailed software applications. For example, the data usually found in a full-blown ERP maintenance group was already using an system, but without the cost or hassle.” application called Service Alliance. This says Bob Frey, Vice President of Service group contracts with companies—many of Sales for McKinstry Company. whom have multiple buildings—to provide maintenance for all their facilities. Not only McKinstry contacted Microsoft Gold interactions with that customer. And by Certified Partner Interlink Group to using Microsoft SQL Server 2000 implement Microsoft CRM in October 2003. Reporting Services, the company is able to After an 11-week implementation period, run a variety of reports based on real-time the new system went live in January 2004. information. Today, McKinstry has a sales tracking system that stores all customer information in a single location and automatically Benefits routes new sales opportunities to the By implementing a solution based on correct department. Microsoft CRM, McKinstry has been able to change how it stores customer information Salespeople enter their customer and how that information is shared interactions—such as e-mail messages, between the sales forces in different meetings, or closed deals—into the divisions. As a result, the company has Microsoft Office Outlook® 2003 messaging seen many benefits, including improved and collaboration client, part of the workflow efficiency and decreased Microsoft Office System. These customer administrative costs. interactions are automatically entered into Microsoft CRM, which then consolidates Improved Efficiency by 25 Percent contact lists and customer data into a With a combination of Microsoft CRM and single shared Microsoft SQL ServerTM 2000 BizTalk Server, the company has re- database. SQL Server 2000 provides the engineered its workflow processes. In the data management and analysis past, members within each sales force infrastructure for Windows Server System. didn’t have access to data within other Microsoft BizTalk® Server 2004, also part divisions. Salespeople couldn’t tell whether of Windows Server System, connects the they were pursuing the same customer for disparate systems and software, including a different project, even if their particular Service Alliance. In addition, BizTalk service dovetailed with another service the Server 2004 is used to set up the rules that company was providing. Or, if divisions did dictate how sales information is routed share information, it was a largely manual throughout the organization. “With this process. Today, the company has set up solution, McKinstry can consolidate all its workflow rules within BizTalk Server 2004 opportunities against one account,” says to route information about customers and Justin Mathena, the Technical Lead of projects automatically. Interlink. “Microsoft CRM gives them the flexibility they need.” For example, if the construction division wins a project, the system recognizes if the With a solution based on Microsoft CRM, customer might be a good candidate for McKinstry has been able to connect the one of the other divisions, such as fire different repositories of information. protection or maintenance. In addition, Members of the sales force can access all Microsoft CRM tracks all the construction data about a particular customer—even if jobs automatically, eliminating the need for their particular group has not had any an employee to track information manually. “With Microsoft CRM, “We put workflow rules in place to send information about opportunities to different Saved More Than $30,000 per Year all of our sales teams departments,” says Frey. “Just the tracking Coordinating Sales Pipelines have the same of all the construction jobs and special- Sales forecasting had been a challenge for project work alone has saved the service McKinstry as the company grew and added information about a division 50 hours a month.” new offerings and departments. Before customer. This allows implementing the new solution, each Increased Sales Opportunities department was responsible for us to track sales By using Microsoft CRM, members of the maintaining its own sales pipelines. Each of opportunities more sales group—no matter which division they these sales pipelines was managed work in—now have access to the same manually--a viable process when the effectively—both today data about customers because the company had been smaller, but that ended and several years information is centralized. Each division up costing the business hours each month can clearly see additional sales in both running and updating reports. With down the road.” opportunities. “With Microsoft CRM, all of Microsoft CRM, however, the process has Dean Allen, President, McKinstry Company our sales teams have the same information been fully automated. After information has about a customer,” says Allen. “This allows been entered into the system, it is us to track sales opportunities more automatically linked to the appropriate effectively—both today and several years division. From there, sales managers can down the road.” run detailed reports. “By setting up workflows with Microsoft CRM, we were McKinstry is already seeing the results of able to bring a lot of structure to the centralizing its data. “Microsoft CRM is a company’s forecasting,” says Mathena. great way for people to collaborate,” says Frey. “We’re definitely seeing more cross- In fact, the company forecasts substantial selling and upselling throughout the savings. “With Microsoft CRM, we estimate company.” that we will save 10 percent of our total administrative cost per year in time and Reduced Administrative Costs by 15 Percent effort spent coordinating sales pipelines,” The fact that McKinstry has improved its says Frey. “It has also added tremendous efficiency has also translated into flexibility and made data timelier.” substantial savings for the company. Frey explains that once the company started Improved Services using Microsoft CRM workflow rules based Unlike many construction companies that on opportunities from different divisions, it offer only one or two services, McKinstry saw an immediate savings because has offerings that range from employees no longer had to manually track preconstruction to maintenance after jobs and opportunities. “McKinstry started construction—aggregating many offerings saving more than 15 percent per month in into a single delivery package. Microsoft administrative time that was previously CRM has helped McKinstry improve the spent tracking construction and service way it approaches customers by making its jobs from other departments just looking for entire history of client interaction available cross-sell opportunities,” Frey says. within the system. Now, instead of having multiple groups contacting the same customer at different times, McKinstry can present a more organized and comprehensive proposal.

Allen attributes this benefit to the ability to run reports as they are needed. “People do so much better when they are using their own data as opposed to a reporting function,” he says. “With Microsoft CRM, employees have fun playing with the information to see what light they can shed on their sales forecasts.”

Lowered Training Costs One of the company’s key requirements in considering a new system was that McKinstry employees actually use it. Allen’s experience indicates that, regardless of how good a solution is, a lack of companywide adoption dooms any system upgrade to failure.

But because Microsoft CRM integrates with other Microsoft desktop productivity tools, McKinstry has been able to implement a solution that has been readily adopted and that requires little training time. In fact, the company spent only two hours training each sales representative on the new system during the initial implementation. “McKinstry has been a very loyal Microsoft shop for a lot of good reasons,” says Allen. “We like the products and we like the commonalities between products. With Microsoft CRM, all the tools that employees need are right there in Outlook.”

Adds Frey, “Microsoft CRM is so intuitive that people just start using it. It’s all a logical extension of what people are using in Outlook and Microsoft Project, Word, and Excel, so there’s not much to learn.” For More Information Microsoft Business Solutions For more information about Microsoft Microsoft Business Solutions offer products and services, call the Microsoft integrated business applications and Sales Information Center at (800) 426- services that allow small and midsize 9400. In Canada, call the Microsoft organizations and divisions of large Canada Information Centre at (877) 568- enterprises to connect employees, 2495. Customers who are deaf or hard- customers, and suppliers for improved of-hearing can reach Microsoft text- efficiency. The financial management, telephone (TTY/TDD) services at (800) customer relationship management, supply 892-5234 in the United States or (905) chain management, and analytics 568-9641 in Canada. Outside the 50 applications work with other Microsoft United States and Canada, please software, including the Microsoft Office contact your local Microsoft subsidiary. System and the Windows® operating To access information using the World system, to streamline processes across an Wide Web, go to: www.microsoft.com entire organization. This gives businesses insight to respond rapidly, plan For more information about Interlink strategically, and execute quickly. Microsoft Group products and services, call (888) Business Solutions are delivered through a 533-1307 or visit the Web site at: worldwide network of channel partners that www.ilg.com provide specialized services and local support tailored to a company’s needs. For more information about McKinstry products and services, call (206) 762- For more information about Microsoft 3311 or visit the Web site at: Business Solutions, go to: www.mckinstry.com www.microsoft.com/businesssolutions

Software and Services  Microsoft Office System  Microsoft Windows Server System − Microsoft Office Outlook 2003 − Microsoft Business Solutions CRM − Microsoft BizTalk Server 2004 Microsoft SQL Server 2000 © 2005 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. This case − study is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY. Microsoft, BizTalk, Outlook, Windows, and Windows Server System are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and/or other countries. The names of actual companies and products mentioned herein may be the trademarks of their respective owners.

Document published January 2005