Australian Information Industry Association case study
Organisation
The Australian Information Industry Association (AIIA) www.aiia.com.au is the nation’s peak industry body for the technology sector. AIIA sets the strategic direction of the industry, influences public policy and provides members with productivity tools, advisory services and market intelligence to accelerate their business growth.
AIIA’s core business is to represent the IT industry in Australia and as a not for profit association relies on income from the sale of memberships, events and sponsorship. A member of the AIIA is an organisation who is either part of the IT industry in Australia or a supplier to the IT industry.
Challenge
AIIA had deployed of Microsoft CRM a couple of years previously. However the initial implementation did not really meet the operational needs of the association. The functionality hadn’t been fully scoped and integration with the website resulted in significant customer and user dissatisfaction. As AIIA is meant to lead the IT industry they are expected to lead the way with CRM and similar items. However continuing issues perceived to be CRM problems were causing them considerable embarrassment.
Solution
Opsis, through an introduction via NSW.Net earlier this year, were invited to assist AIIA to enable them to get better use from Microsoft CRM. To date we have conducted a workshop assessing business process and to map it to CRM, trained their users, provided on call support and done some minor repairs and hot fix upgrades.
Recently we ran a few hours of training to show some key AIIA people how to run a personalised campaign from inside CRM and to track the responses. Previously this was something that they were using an external email marketing application and so were unable to use the responses with their other customer information inside CRM. They are now able to profit from their member information in a much more effective way.
Soon AIIA will be embarking on a larger project to integrate a new website to Microsoft Dynamics CRM so that their members can interact directly with AIIA and self serve where appropriate. AIIA’s goal is to be able to manage all relevant information via the website interface that will be passed directly through to CRM which will then respond automatically. Finally delivering the full benefits that Microsoft CRM can provide. Opsis is proudly an AIIA Digital Partner and joins other leading technology firms to redevelop a new online future for the association and industry.
Benefits
Opsis has helped us to better understand campaigns and the sales process in CRM and we can now see where productivity can be improved across the business. The training and support we so desperately needed has been great for my team who have really appreciated Gill’s advice as have I.
Kelly Hutchinson – General Manager, Corporate Relations and Program, AIIA
Applied Training Case Study
Organisation
Applied Training (www.appliedtraining.com.au) is a Registered Training provider based in Sydney, NSW with offices in Wollongong and Newcastle. Their primary business is the provision of training to companies and individuals, especially using government grants to assist with the payment. The directors of the company also own other businesses including Greenhouse Strategies.
Challenge
During 2008 Applied Training realised that they needed to improve how they conducted their marketing and customer administration to enable them to capture and successfully manage a larger market to compensate for some of the changes that were being introduced in government funding. They investigated a couple of different CRM solutions including Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0. Their challenges were that their processes were very manual, with unlinked spreadsheet reports and they had no real time view of sales across the business. Management had little confidence in the reports that they were receiving.
Solution
Opsis deployed Microsoft CRM 4.0 as a hosted solution using a hosting partner. The hosted solution was particularly attractive to Applied Training because of the ease with which they could add new users. Applied Training selected Opsis for their CRM deployment / project because they believed that they were able to lead the changes in the way that the Applied Training team worked, moving them from a very manual process where the reports were a separate task to being more effective and efficient. This has subsequently been proven in a different project in a sub-division of the business - Greenhouse Strategies which enables consumers to insulate their homes using the Government grants. They are looking forward to seeing the same benefits in the training business during 2010. By customising Microsoft Dynamics CRM, Opsis created a solution for Greenhouse Strategies that enabled the screening of prospects over the phone and the tracking of the customer from initial call to completion of the installation.
Benefits
The management of Applied Training love their reports and the ease with which they were configured – almost before their eyes. They are now confident in the reports that they are receiving and feel confident that they are making decisions based on real information and not emotion. The employee satisfaction has increased because the team are not creating reports as a separate activity – they just do their jobs and reports happen in the background. Lost customers are a thing of the past.
Applied Training originally contracted Opsis to implement Microsoft Dynamics CRM to help them manage their training clients. However, when another project suddenly became critical, they were very happy with the ease with which the Opsis team were able to switch stream and get a solution for this project. They are looking forward to seeing the same benefits in the training arm of the business early in 2011.
