CRM Implementation for Construction Company

Executive summary

Our customer is a 100 year old, billion-dollar US based Construction Company providing an extensive selection of bridge, drainage, earth stabilization & storm water solutions. The customer had acquired a number of other companies over past decade and thus had over 40 different applications. ennovate’s engagement with the customer began with supporting their software applications on Microsoft .NET technology.

Gradually, ennovate’s team demonstrated their expertise on Microsoft CRM and Microsoft Great Plains (GP) software through pilot projects assigned by the customer and won the confidence of the customer to customize their existing CRM and ERP systems. ennovate was also instrumental in saving significant cost in technology investment by suggesting appropriate Business Intelligence tools for customer requirements.

For past 2 years, ennovate has served as a technology offshoring wing of this construction giant by offering complete IT services in Microsoft technologies like .Net, Biztalk Server, SharePoint Server, PerformancePoint Server and Microsoft Dynamics CRM & Great Plains.

The Customer

Our customer offers a wide array of innovative solutions for both initial development and rehabilitation of existing structures and sites. Their involvement with products and applications is founded on a century of research and practical field experience. Their products provide effective site solutions for projects with a variety of loading conditions, foundation requirements, soil and water environments as well as varied installation demands.

The Challenge

• The customer had acquired serveral companies over past decade and had data coming from many different applications
• Customer was lacking control over their customer base due to inconsistent customer information from different applications
• It was troublesome and prone to error maintaining credits given to customers
• It was difficult to maintain the leads and opportunities resulting in significant loss
• There was no single system to match up with existing flow of operations and hence required customization for each entity in business operations
• Existing solution had many custom applications adding to difficulties in data processing and validation
• Legacy system in place was lacking in providing consolidated information to the top management

The Solution

• Our team studied each business process and operation carefully to see how existing system can be leveraged and where customizations are required so as to provide optimum solution. As a part of process, we removed redundant custom applications
• We also developed several plug-ins and sub-applications enriching the CRM solution. All the customizations done to the system were carefully catered to preserve accuracy of the information. Some of them are:
  • The customer deals with different types of products where each product has different product families and each family in turn has inter-dependent attributes. Microsoft Dynamics CRM has limited capacity for managing attributes. We developed a .NET plug-in to overcome this limitation and manage Product Attributes efficiently
  • We also extended CRM implementation for Quote Print functionality to have central repository for storing all information relating to Quotes
  • With implementation of Order Push functionality, we got the CRM solution talk with ERP system for accountingAs and when any order is added into CRM solution, an entry is automatically created in relevant ERP system for accounting. It took 10-15 minutes for manual entry of orders but with this feature it takes only 2 minutes for order entry that too without any delay
  • All activities for interaction with customer are entered into CRM. But the CRM solution doesn’t provide any history/trail of such activities by itself. We developed an application to record all these activities and to generate reports for analysis

• We devised a system to consolidate data from all different applications in centralized repository and also implemented checkpoints for data verification before feeding it into the system

The Technology

• Technology: Microsoft .NET
• Package: Microsoft Dynamics CRM
• Database: SQL Server 2005

The Benefits

• Minimum changes to existing way of working and ease of use
• Accurate information with central repository for data across the organization
• Control over customer base and error free processing of credits for customers
• Improvement in response time with automated process and hence improved efficiency
• Better decision making for top management with variety of insightful reports
• Better management and control over of leads and opportunities

Customer Testimonial

"I am extremely happy with our relationship with ennovate. They staffed us with the highest quality consultants; both on-site and offshore. I would recommend them to any company for their flexibility, commitment to service and attention to detail”

Vice President (IT)