Crane Telecommunications, a 175-employee distributor of telecommunications equipment in the U.K. and Europe, was struggling to remain competitive and needed to reduce operating costs in order to expand their services as well as remain profitable. With a network of more than 400 distribution partners, Crane needed to make their customer profiles and inventory data accessible to everyone, all the time, and managing their large amounts of data was becoming difficult. As a business in the high-tech industry, partners and customers expected a very high level of communication and instantly available information. Crane also wanted to improve their customer service operation in order to retain more of their existing customers in the highly volatile telecomm market.

As a Small Business, Crane Telecommunications wasn't able to heavily invest in a customized, in-house CRM solution up front, especially since they had a limited IT department. After researching their options, Crane chose a Hosted CRM package from RightNow - RightNow Web eService Centre - as well as RightNow Metrics. The Web software is an internet customer service solution that automates email responses as well as answers customer questions through a self-service database. This gives the support team more time to build relationships with resellers and customers instead of answering questions, and frees up staff time to focus on business development. The Metrics program allows Crane to establish customized measurement standards used to monitor customer feedback and make better-informed management decisions. Because of the low cost of implementation and maintenance, as well as the increased productivity of staff, Crane views their investment in RightNow‘s hosted solution as an ongoing savings. To maximize and expand those benefits, Crane later launched a full-scale eBusiness strategy, building off the RightNow CRM solutions.

www.rightnow.com/news/article.php?id=206

Deyta, Inc. is a small company specializing in performance management for industries such as healthcare and human services, financial services, and higher education. These organizations outsource their business analytics function to Deyta, who collects and analyzes their customer and management data.

However, while Deyta was exceptional at compiling and analyzing other organizations?information, they were struggling to keep up with their own. Each of their five salespeople had their customer and account information on their own computers in various programs, and the data sets weren't linked or shared, or even standardized. As the business grew, it became increasingly difficult for executives to make planning decisions because sales people were unable to quickly and easily creating current and accurate sales reports ?it would take them hours, and the reports would all be in different formats. As for the sales representatives, none of them could easily see what the others were doing or what the status of their various clients were, making it difficult to expand relationships and maximize connections and strategies.

Taking a cue from their own clients, Deyta determined they needed to implement a CRM solution in order to manage their customer and business information. After considering their needs, resources, and options, Deyta decided on salesforce.com's on-demand CRM Team Edition? a streamlined hosted solution specifically designed for for five or fewer users. Deyta was able to purchase and implement Team Edition in less than one day and begin training and customization immediately. In just a few days, information that had previously been scattered throughout the company on various computers and in various formats was available to all users from any location at any time via the web interface. Reports that previously took staff hours to compile are now available at the touch of a button and are considerably more accurate and effective, increasing the productivity of the entire sales team and enabling them to work in a unified, collaborative way on their sales and marketing outreach.

Deyta expects continued growth, and part of the reason they selected salesforce.com's CRM solution is that it is easily upgradeable to the Professional or Enterprise Editions?should they want or need to expand.

www.salesforce.com/customers/casestudy.jsp?customer=deyta

The End Records is a fast-growing Salt Lake City-based record label and online retailer. Starting out as any Small Business does, The End Records used standard office management software to track their customers, finances, and inventory - Word, Excel, QuickBooks - and was using the service Mycart.net to do online transactions. The label quickly grew from a small local business to a global internet business selling more than 3,000 titles in 30 countries online worldwide. The End Records website now receives more than one million hits per month and more than 10,000 people subscribe to its e-newsletter.

As the label became more popular and their growth skyrocketed, their existing customer service, inventory, and financial systems couldn't handle it, and neither could the staff. Order processing was still mostly manual ?the credit card processing system was not linked to the online ordering system, and neither were linked with the accounting software. All of the data had to be manually transferred and reformatted by hand, and the process was incredibly time-consuming and inefficient. Not only that, but having unlinked data also made it impossible to get an accurate view of the whole system, and managing inventory and supply chains with vendors was difficult.

With such an increasingly large volume of inventory, customers, and transactions, The End Records needed a quick, easy, integrated CRM solution that could manage both their sales and service. The End Records?President Andreas Katsambas choose NetSuite, a hosted CRM solution that unifies all the sales and service processes the company needed. The End Records used NetSuite to create a new, customer-friendly website that not only allows customers worldwide to shop and received service online, but it also integrates all of the functions of the sale on the back end and automatically links sales information to accounting and inventory records. What used to take staff 20 or 30 minutes to do now takes the NetSuite CRM solution 30-60 seconds, end to end, automatically. As well, all this information is available to staff at the click of a button, allowing management to make business-planning decisions without having to dig through paperwork and format reports ?it's all right there.

With their sales and service functions now almost totally automated, The End Records staff and executives focused on business development, and now also uses NetSuite and NetCRM to manage marketing and sales campaigns and grow partnerships with other record labels and vendors worldwide.

www.netsuite.com/portal/customers/cs_endrecords.shtml

Clear to Close is an innovative online mortgage broker that worked with Siebel to create a real-time, online mortgage process tracking interface that can be used by small residential mortgage brokers worldwide. Using Siebel's CRM OnDemand software solutions as the base, CTC created and customized its “Clear-to-Close Desktop™” - a streamlined and extremely cost effective CRM solution designed specifically for residential mortgage brokers. Clear-to-Close Desktop is one of the first small market-specific hosted CRM solutions, and will bring the functionality and benefits of larger CRM solutions to this ever-growing and extremely competitive Small Business market.

The CTC Desktop allows brokers to view all of their accounts in streamlined view, check the status of each with the click of a button, compare rates, and quickly and easily compile comprehensive financial reports, making the process practically paperless and incredibly efficient. More and more homeowners are researching and processing their mortgage options online because they can now compare the rates of several companies with the click of a button - a process that used to take weeks. Most mortgage lenders have brought themselves up to speed in that respect by dramatically shortening their closing times and offering competitive rates to online shoppers. However, not all mortgage companies can offer their customers what those using CTC's Status on Demand - the customer side of the interface - can: real-time tracking of how their financing process is moving along. The Status on Demand dashboard allows customers access to the up-to-the-minute status of their account.

Allowing the customer complete access to the process benefits both the business and the customer. For most homeowners, their mortgage is the largest investment that they have, and many are hesitant to work with lenders that they have no prior knowledge of because of security and trust issues. The transparency that Status on Demand provides is an effective marketing tool, and results in an open communication between the borrower and the lender.

Because customers can monitor the process for themselves, the brokers can be more productive and fully engage each party, and the CTC Desktop allows them to efficiently manage every aspect of each customer relationship. Some lenders have reported that the CTC CRM solution allows them to process three to five times more loans in the same amount of time than their previous systems, enabling them to focus on revenue generating activities instead of customer service queries. Lenders using CTC's Desktop and Status on Demand have also reported dramatic increases in customer satisfaction and loyalty, both of which allow small lenders to remain competitive in this extremely volatile market.

www.siebel.com/smb/success-stories.shtm

Jubilations Cheesecake was started in 1983 by Tammy Craddock, who began selling her hand-made, gourmet cheesecakes out of her home in Mississippi. The popularity of them soon grew, and eventually Tammy moved her business into a commercial kitchen and began selling to local upscale restaurants and retailers, as well as via catalogue mail order throughout the country through other vendors.

Like any other Small Business, Jubilations managed their customer and sales data using traditional software, and had a very basic automated customer service solution. As business grew nationwide and third-party vendors came into play, the company struggled to centralize the information from various parties. At a certain point, the company was virtually unable to immediately track orders or provide service to its customers because the information wasn't readily available. As well, Jubilations had very little feedback on its marketing campaigns due to the lack of information sharing between the company, its vendors, and the customers.

In 2001 Jubilations determined they needed a unified, easily accessible system for sales, service, and deliveries that could be accessed by its employees, vendors, and customers. Jubilations decided to implement Salesnet's hosted CRM solution, a central database that includes a detailed history of all customer and business interactions, as well as sales and marketing functions such as bulk emailing and automated reporting tools. With Salesnet, Jubilations now has one fully integrated solution for managing its sales, marketing, customers, distributors and partners nationwide.

web.salesnet.com/main.asp?urh=us_custpage_Jubilations

While most people don't consider government agencies to be businesses, they are often wrought with the same finance, sales, marketing, and customer service problems. In fact, because of their positions as public agencies, government bodies are generally held to a much higher standard for accurate reporting and customer service. It's no surprise then that many government organizations ?small and large ?are learning from the private sector and turning to CRM solutions to manage their “customers??the world's citizens.

Due to cutbacks in funding and other resources, government agencies, particularly smaller ones, are having to get creative with the way they manage their information and budgets in order to continue to provide the services required of them. Many are turning to web-based interfaces to handle transactions that formerly always took place in person ?renewal of drivers licenses, filing of taxes, issuance of reports, and completing financial transactions ?in order to ease staffing burdens and minimize overhead costs. One such agency is the Hartlepool Unitary Council in the U.K.

Hartlepool teamed with Onyx to implement their e-Shop Government specific CRM application and create the Hartlepool Customer Contact Centre. This CRM solution was integrated with Hartlepool's already existing departmental intranets, allowing each staff member to access agency-wide information and therefore handle a much wider variety of customer service and information requests instead of having each department handle only their specific questions. The Contact Centre also provides citizens with self-service functions such as answers to Frequently Asked Questions and making payments or requesting services online or over the phone. This relieves staff of an enormous amount of paperwork and call center time, and has enabled the Council to put those resources toward other ways of improving their community. Hartlepool has seen incredible increases in resource efficiency and positive customer service experiences, and plans to expand their “e-Government?strategy to as many functions as possible.

www.onyx.com/customers/casestudy.asp?casestudy=hartlepool

The Chesapeake Bay Foundation (CBF) is a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit conservation organization with 165 full-time employees based in Annapolis, MD and in field offices throughout the region. CBF is dedicated to saving the Chesapeake Bay watershed from pollution and urban expansion.

As a non-profit, CBF relies on private funding for most of its budget, making marketing and outreach efforts imperative to fundraising. Competition for donations in the environmental non-profit sector is fierce, and while education and outreach are key to recruiting and retaining donors, fiscal responsibility and organizational performance are highly monitored by those who do the funding. In order to increase the transparency of their operations and streamline organizational and financial management, CBF turned to Business Objects for a CRM reporting solution - Crystal Reports?- that would allow access to centralized information for those in the office as well as in the field in order to promote better organizational efficiency.

The Crystal product line allows organizations to set access levels for information while maintaining security through report access controls, and enables staff to quickly and easily create standardized reports for their projects. Total access to information gives CBF staff members a high level of control over their each aspect of their financial and project management, cumulatively enabling the organization as a whole to maximize organizational performance while building support for additional funding. This allows CBF to put more energy and resources into accomplishing its main goal - to save the bay - and spend less time and money managing its day to day business.

www.businessobjects.com/news/press/press2004/20041025_chesapeake_cust.asp