OREANDA-NEWS. October 9, 2009. The I.T. Company has launched the Microsoft Dynamics based CRM system. The new system will ensure higher quality of sales managing and marketing as well as better customization, and provide clear-cut data on marketing efficiency. It is expected that I.T. customers will soon feel positive results of using the CRM system, first of all, for faster and more detailed analysis of the preliminary technical and commercial proposals as to all-round, complex solutions.

During the last 5 years, I.T. Co. has been using a CRM-system of its own making, but, with the lapse of time, the system stopped answering the purpose of the company's growing business, while the permanent improvements became inefficient and time-consuming. Besides, several more functionally interesting solutions appeared in the market. The company's experts analyzed various software products, and, as a result, Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 was chosen. That was a good choice, which was proved more than once during system implementation performed by Aplana, a member company of the I.T. Group.

As a rule, industrial platforms for CRM systems are not fully oriented at the design organizations, where quite a few structures communicate with customers. For example, during the presale preparations in the framework of a single project, dozens of staff members can be involved, representing several technology departments, and all of them should have simultaneous access to the new CRM system. Solving this problem is the project’s major challenge, and the implementation team did really well.

Besides, the project required integrating the platform with Lotus Notes, the corporate mailing system. This was achieved by installing the Aplana-made SyncPoint program at the workstations of the CRM and Lotus Notes users. This ensured sending and receiving e-mail, including bulk mailing (e. g., during marketing campaigns) as well as synchronizing user calendars (meetings, tasks).

A user-friendly Web interface is used to access the CRM system, which makes it accessible to both the central office staff and all the branches. The system controls access to certain categories of functions according to the user's role. The Microsoft SQL Server 2005 database management system performs data storage and processing. To avoid data loss, the system features data backup and data restoration tools.

The project was launched in late 2008. Presently, the system has around 200 users: department managers, sales managers, marketing department staff.

Says Irina Gorbacheva, I.T.’s director of the corporate client marketingdepartment, “The new CRM system is not only an excellent tool for numerous marketing projects. It also provides an unbiased evaluation of the work of our company's sales and marketing departments. The possibility to measure the efficiency of the marketing programs as well as tracking all the stages of the sales tunnel simplify finding reserves and determining directions for better marketing.”

Says Alexander Bogdanov, I.T.'ssalesdepartmentdirector, “The crisis that began in the 2nd half of 2008, was an additional stimulus to implement the system as soon as possible because a better operation of the marketing and sales departments is a must for overcoming the economic cataclysms. We are hoping that the new CRM system will ensure better control of communicating with our existing and future customers.”

“An important result is that I.T., having a history of working in the Lotus Notes environment, had a chance to implement and use the Microsoft CRM system. This allowed us to synchronize the e-mailing, meeting and tasks via SyncPoint and develop a data transfer tool (organizations, contacts, deals) from CRM to Lotus, the latter emulating a real-life user’s work, which, in its turn, results in correct functionality of the new Lotus system,” says Sergei Tsybin, Aplana’s project manager.