Audit, accounting and business advisory firm, Grant Thornton South Africa, has implemented Microsoft CRM for its contact database and marketing campaign management requirements.
The integrated CRM solution was designed and implemented by Microsoft Gold Certified partner, IS Partners, and will consolidate and enhance the management of the company's various databases and marketing campaigns.
Pamela Grayman, National Marketing Principal at Grant Thornton South Africa, says the company's marketing vision is to have "the best database in the country. Microsoft CRM offers a platform to establish and maintain a reliable contact list, while giving us the ability to consolidate information from a number of databases across the firm and standardise on a single process for information capture and updating."
The firm has a number of service lines, each operating as separate entities including audit, taxation, specialist advisory services, consulting and business risk services. Microsoft CRM offered Grant Thornton a central repository and single view of all its information.
The CRM system will be used as a management tool for events and campaigns as well as tracking response efficiency of all marketing initiatives. "It will essentially define many of our marketing processes and also ensure that information can be segmented in such a way that a variety of different views of clients, contacts and other market segments can be obtained," Grayman says.
Microsoft CRM has circumvented the limitations of the company's previous approach, which involved extracting information to Excel - a cumbersome process that often resulted in users working with outdated information.
"Once up and running, data will be easy to maintain as users are able to work within the familiar Outlook environment. This ensures individuals are more likely to take ownership of their data and update client information as and when the information is received."
Information from Outlook is also automatically synchronised with the CRM system. "Microsoft is our preferred operating system and everyone is comfortable with the interface. By closely integrating into this environment, Microsoft CRM was our preferred choice," says Grayman.
"Direct marketing forms a significant part of the marketing mix for companies in the service industry. Clients, prospects and partners need to be constantly informed of developments, while events are often targeted at a specific audience. Microsoft CRM ensures that contacts can be easily segmented to find information quickly and extract appropriate invitation lists, for example," says Heath Turner, CRM Director at IS Partners.
Grayman adds that IS Partners has met Grant Thornton's expectations in terms of delivering a tailor-made solution in the required timeframe, and within budget.
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