For more than 130 years, Ball Corporation has led its industry by providing innovative, valuable packaging products. A strategic initiative, which challenged Ball to ensure the sustainability of the company’s success, named closer alignment with the right customers and markets as an important lever of success. To help manage customer accounts more effectively, Ball deployed Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online in two divisions in North America and one in Europe and is planning to make it available to its operations in Asia and South America. Now, Ball’s customer-facing employees and activities are closely aligned with customer and company goals and benefit from global, collaborative account management across organizational and geographical boundaries. Increasing Ball’s and its customers’ competitiveness, the solution is anticipated to provide a strong return on investment.

Situation

Since the founding of Ball Corporation in 1880, the company has grown into a global entity that serves many of the world’s best-known brands with packaging products, including an enormous variety of recyclable metal containers for food, beverages, and aerosol applications. Once famous for the ubiquitous glass canning jars that it no longer makes, Ball today is also a leading aerospace player, providing technologies, instruments, programs, and services to support space exploration. The company, headquartered in Broomfield, Colorado, reported 2011 sales of more than US$8.6 billion.

Goals for Sustainable Growth

Ball’s “Drive for 10” initiative builds on the company’s rich history to continue its growth and achieve long-term success in a sustainable manner. A main component of the initiative is alignment with the right customers and markets. A complete understanding of customers plays a huge role in achieving this alignment and building a competitive differentiation for Ball.

By using Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online, it’s easy for us to scale to the global reach of even our largest customers and find ways to deliver the most valuable products in all their areas of engagement. Bob Tettero Director of Corporate Strategy and Business Intelligence Ball Corporation

The company reviewed its technologies and processes with those objectives in mind. Rob Miles, Senior Vice President, Sales, North American Metal Beverage and Global Accounts at Ball Corporation, says, “Increasing our knowledge of our customers’ preferences, while improving internal communications and visibility of the customer across business functions, puts our focus squarely on the customer. More focused interactions lead to increased customer satisfaction, better customer retention, and, ultimately, more sales.”

Effort to Align with Customers’ Objectives

More specifically, Ball team members who engage with customers were looking for a way to track their progress against the goals for each customer account so that they could always ensure that their work contributed to customer success. For example, Ball wanted to meet customers’ performance requirements for containers and meet their objectives for supply chain efficiency, competitiveness, and market growth. For both economic and environmental advantages, Ball wanted to continue making the lightest containers possible and bring about a closer customer alignment by streamlining customer communications, especially in the areas of inventory management and scrap notifications and overall customer administration.

Decision for Microsoft Dynamics

Ball decided to replace existing software tools, including a system used in the company’s European operations called DocHouse, based on Lotus Notes, and chose Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online after reviewing leading vendors. Bob Tettero, Director of Corporate Strategy and Business Intelligence at Ball Corporation, says, “Of the technology providers we reviewed, Microsoft was the most closely aligned with our business and technology strategies. We felt that Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online had the best potential for helping us to achieve our goals for meeting customer needs and managing our complex customer relationships on a global basis.”

Solution

For Ball, Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online, which Microsoft hosts, is the company’s first cloud application. Natalie Henderson, Information Technology and Services Director of Governance, Risk and Compliance at Ball Corporation, says, “Taking advantage of cloud-based technology helps us reduce the administrative burden on our IT staff and reduce the costs of technology ownership. We expect other business systems to follow our customer relationship management system into the cloud.”

Solution Scales Across Worldwide Operations

In Ball’s North American Beverage, Metal Food and Household Products, and Ball Packaging Europe business units, which are located in the United States, western Europe, and eastern Europe, close to 600 employees use a single instance of Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online. Ball will soon extend the solution to its operations in Asia and South America.

With Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online, we gained a global account management solution that requires no additional funds for administration. What’s more, in the hosted scenario, Microsoft automatically takes care of all solution updates and ensures the integrity of application and data. Natalie Henderson Information Technology and Services Director of Governance, Risk and Compliance Ball Corporation

To perform the design, deployment, and data migrations for all regions, Ball engaged with Pariveda Solutions and Microsoft Services in the United States and in Germany. “Ball’s CRM solution is more than software,” said Jim West, Vice President of Pariveda Solutions’ Denver office. “It is a process that pieces together information from different sources about customers, sales, contracts/pricing, marketing effectiveness, responsiveness, and market trends into one global resource.”

Employees from Ball’s diverse geographies and all involved business groups collaborated in setting the goals and standards for the adoption and use of the new solution and any process changes that would accompany the implementation.

Integrations Extend Technological Functionality

Ball integrated Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online with Microsoft SharePoint Server to support easy management of customer-related documentation and data, including metal management analyses. Employees access the solution through their browser or the Microsoft Outlook client, managing customer accounts and interactions within a consistent, comfortable user interface.

To furnish employees with customer insight, Ball linked the solution with sources of information and feedback from customers: Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online connects with a survey tool that Ball uses to gather customer feedback and establish its Net Promoter Score, which is a measure of customer satisfaction.

In addition, by integrating the online solution with LexisNexis, employees gain an extended view of their customers, including news about companies, events, individuals, and market trends.

Finally, Ball’s integration of Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online with the organization’s Oracle JD Edwards and QAD MFG/Pro enterprise resource planning systems and internal data warehouses provide connected, efficient business management and insight capabilities across customer engagements, manufacturing, and financials.

Users Gain Advanced Relationship Management Capabilities

Users of Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online include employees in sales, sales administration, marketing, customer assistance, quality management, plant management, technical service, and production planning roles. Across organizational groups and geographies, Ball employees collaborate and document all their activities that are pertinent to account management within the same resource. With access privileges determined by employees’ roles, users can review customers’ contract terms, configurations, and account detail. They can also track the key performance indicators (KPIs) for each account, such as sales-to-budget and quality metrics. Automated workflows in the solution trigger email notifications regarding such crucial events as contract deadlines, contract creation approvals, and account team activities.

Benefits

For Ball, deploying Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online enables a global approach to managing customer relationships in a measurable and highly manageable way that strengthens customer loyalty and profitability. “Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online assists us in achieving objectives that are part of our Drive for 10 strategy, such as aligning ourselves with the right customers and markets and broadening our geographic reach,” says Tettero. “We look forward to growing our business with the support of the solution as we extend its use to our employees in Asia and South America.”

Align Closely with Account and Customer Goals

Many Ball customers look to achieve certain results in such areas as supply chain efficiency or market growth. “Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online helps us stay aligned with our customers’ goals and KPIs,” notes Gary Woeste, VP Sales and Marketing for Ball Metal Food & Household Products Packaging Division, Americas at Ball Corporation. “We can now review our activities at any moment and ensure that their progress actually matches the customers’ objectives and the goals we have set for doing business with specific accounts.”

Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online helps us stay aligned with our customers’ goals and KPIs. We can now review our activities at any moment and ensure that their progress actually matches the customers’ objectives and the goals we have set for doing business with specific accounts. Gary Woeste VP Sales and Marketing for Ball Metal Food & Household Packaging Division, Americas Ball Corporation

The solution also plays an important role in the critical, closely connected business areas of economic and environmental sustainability and metals management. As Tettero explains, “Producing the lightest containers possible while meeting performance requirements has both financial and environmental advantages. We employ Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online to track and coordinate our activities to realize these advantages. And, by incorporating metals management analysis and related workflow alerts into the solution, we ensure that we manage our operations in a timely manner to benefit from changes in the market.”

Practice Globally Synchronized Account Management

By using Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online, Ball employees synchronize their activities to practice global, collaborative account management across geographical and organizational boundaries. “For our people in sales, technical service, plant operations, or other business groups, no matter their geographical or organizational position, Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online will make it very easy to track and share customer communications, meetings, concerns, and action items,” says Gerlof Toenhake, Director of Marketing for Ball Packaging Europe.

“All team members who engage with a given customer now know all of what’s going on, so they can review account activities and perform strategic planning based on complete, timely information. That enables us to be more responsive to customers and maintain individual, local relationships with customer contacts in the context of the global account. It also helps us work much more efficiently and direct our resources for the best advantage.”

Strengthen Customer and Company Competitiveness

Ball customers, who include some of the world’s largest companies, strive to operate as efficiently and compete as powerfully as they can. By staying in close touch with customers’ innovative efforts and pursuing new opportunities with Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online as the hub of all customer-facing activities, Ball itself becomes more competitive. “We have more complete and timely insight into our customers, which means we can help them innovate, for example, with specialty cans,” says Tettero. “By using Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online, it’s easy for us to scale to the global reach of even our largest customers and find ways to deliver the most valuable products in all their areas of engagement.”

Reduce IT Overhead

“With Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online, we gained a global account management solution that requires no additional funds for administration,” says Henderson. “What’s more, in the hosted scenario, Microsoft automatically takes care of all solution updates and ensures the integrity of application and data.”

Ball anticipates generating a measurable return on investment (ROI) from Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online in a variety of areas. Factors expected to contribute to a healthy ROI include effective tracking and action on new opportunities; time savings and efficiencies in communicating and engaging with customers; and improving operating margins.

Additional Resources

Connect with Microsoft Dynamics.

Explore Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online.

Learn about Microsoft Dynamics CRM in manufacturing.

Microsoft Dynamics

Microsoft Dynamics is a line of integrated, adaptable business management solutions that enables you and your people to make business decisions with greater confidence. Microsoft Dynamics works like familiar Microsoft software such as Microsoft Office, which means less of a learning curve for your people, so they can get up and running quickly and focus on what’s most important. And because it is from Microsoft, it easily works with the systems that your company already has implemented. By automating and streamlining financial, customer relationship, and supply chain processes, Microsoft Dynamics brings together people, processes, and technologies, increasing the productivity and effectiveness of your business, and helping you drive business success. 

 

For more information about Microsoft Dynamics, go to:

www.microsoft.com/dynamics

For More Information

For more information about Microsoft products and services, call the Microsoft Sales Information Center at (800) 426-9400. In Canada, call the Microsoft Canada Information Centre at (877) 568-2495. Customers in the United States and Canada who are deaf or hard-of-hearing can reach Microsoft text telephone (TTY/TDD) services at (800) 892-5234. Outside the 50 United States and Canada, please contact your local Microsoft subsidiary. To access information using the World Wide Web, go to:

www.microsoft.com

For more information about Ball Corporation products and services, call (303) 469-3131 or visit the website at:

www.ball.com

For more information about Pariveda Solutions services, visit the website at

www.parivedasolutions.com or contact Jim West, Vice President, (303) 587-0528.

For more information about Microsoft products and services, call the Microsoft Sales Information Center at (800) 426-9400. In Canada, call the Microsoft Canada Information Centre at (877) 568-2495. Customers in the United States and Canada who are deaf or hard-of-hearing can reach Microsoft text telephone (TTY/TDD) services at (800) 892-5234. Outside the 50 United States and Canada, please contact your local Microsoft subsidiary. To access information using the World Wide Web, go to:

www.microsoft.com

For more information about Ball Corporation products and services, call (303) 469-3131or visit the website at:

www.ball.com

This case study is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY.