In 2008, the nonprofit group Child Focus processed 109,971 calls to its hot line. To manage the resulting information, reports, child cases, and partner contact information, employees used a number of applications. This resulted in inefficiencies and siphoned off precious time needed to locate missing children. Managers implemented Microsoft Dynamics® CRM 4.0 to provide an efficient, single-solution platform to run Child Focus's case management system.

Customer Effective, a Microsoft® Gold Certified Partner, serves the implementation, customization, and integration needs of midsize companies using Microsoft Dynamics® CRM. With the release of Microsoft Dynamics CRM, Customer Effective began taking on projects with thousands of users. Not only were the stakes higher in terms of Customer Effective’s potential revenue, but the potential risks posed by infrastructure scalability and performance increased as well. Customer Effective wanted the resources to efficiently identify technical requirements associated with these larger and riskier deployments. Microsoft Dynamics Technical Advisory Services filled that gap, reassuring customer technical decision makers, eliminating unforeseen project complications, and allowing Customer Effective to focus on its role as a Microsoft customer relationship management specialist.

A Microsoft® Gold Certified Partner, TGO Consulting Inc. serves enterprise customers located in Canada and the United States. As a large part of its business, TGO Consulting provides professional services for Microsoft Dynamics® GP and Microsoft Dynamics CRM. But the consulting company was struggling to find the balance between maintaining cost-efficient staffing and supporting irregular peaks in customers’ service needs. In teaming with Microsoft Dynamics to provide Technical Advisory Services to its clients, the consulting company has saved U.S.$26,400 in hardware costs and reassigned staff. Now, TGO Consulting can meet its customer expectations for response time and has gained an increased level of client trust. Backed by a strong relationship with Microsoft, TGO Consulting is further positioned to grow and compete.

Managers of IGH Solutions struggled to integrate and share customer data among their ERP and Salesforce.com systems. This resulted in the double-entry of customer and prospect information and drove down the company’s user adoption rate. After implementing Microsoft Dynamics® CRM, data is entered once and user adoption increased by 246 percent. Overall, managers expect the solution to yield a projected return on investment (ROI) of 595 percent over the next three years.

When Baw Baw Shire Council decided to replace its existing customer access request system to improve first-point-of-contact resolution of constituent enquiries, it found that no off-the-shelf application could meet its specific needs. So it built its own, working with the Microsoft Services team and Microsoft partners JayThom and Corporate Strategic Systems. Called CouncilRM™, the solution is founded on Microsoft Dynamics® CRM. It brings together constituent request management data with information about properties, roads and council assets to provide a complete picture of constituents and their interactions. Using familiar tools in Microsoft® Office Outlook®, council workers can view constituent contact details and manage requests, emails, appointments and tasks, helping them respond more efficiently to constituent requests. CouncilRM is available to other councils

Asidua delivers world-class integration, software, and consultancy services to government and corporate clients worldwide. The Microsoft® Gold Certified Partner specializes in application and data integration (ADI), and focuses on helping clients improve both their business bottom line and their service to customers. Asidua was hired by the London Borough of Harrow to design and implement a solution to improve the borough’s internal business processes and its service to citizens. The Asidua solution was built on a suite of Microsoft technologies, including Microsoft Dynamics® CRM, and it has helped the borough increase employee productivity, improve the quality of customer service provided to Harrow residents, and ensure consistency of records across multiple borough offices.

Alberici is a general contractor based in St. Louis, Missouri, that generates U.S.$1.13 billion in revenue a year. Across 11 company divisions, sales staff managed customer and sales information on an individual level by using a combination of spreadsheets and e-mail, and then entering the data into a CRM system. To centralize this information and gain business insight, Alberici teamed with Microsoft® Gold Certified Partner Quilogy and implemented Microsoft Dynamics® CRM. By enabling sales staff to record customer and associated sales information through the familiar Microsoft Office Outlook® interface, Alberici has driven adoption and more effectively captured and centralized key sales information. With the solution in place, the company has saved around 5,000 hours per year while gaining the insight into sales that it needs to operate competitively across the markets that it serves.

Inetium, a Microsoft® Gold Certified Partner, provides consulting services for a variety of customers, and does so with a particular focus on customer relationship management (CRM) solutions based on Microsoft Dynamics® CRM. The company has found that pursuing CRM-related projects increases business throughout its consulting practice; in fact, it has experienced year-over-year revenue growth of at least 100 percent for the past two years. Through CRM projects, Inetium helps customers differentiate themselves and present a unified image to their own customers. For instance, Inetium helped IGH Solutions, a large specialty printer, migrate from SalesForce.com to Microsoft Dynamics CRM. As a result, IGH Solutions has reduced costs, increased visibility into customer-related information, and improved its internal communication and collaboration.

Coating Excellence International (CEI) manufactures high-quality, flexible-packaging products using environmentally friendly practices. To continue to enhance its quality and efficiency, CEI needed to provide its shop-floor operators and business decision makers with real-time production metrics and analysis tools in a solution that was quick to deploy and easy to manage with limited resources. It upgraded to Microsoft Dynamics® AX 4.0, Microsoft® SQL Server® 2005, and Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Reporting Services, deployed Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0, and integrated those with its shop-floor application. As a result CEI enhanced its decision making and customer management tools. And by signing a Microsoft Volume Licensing Enterprise Agreement, it cut software license acquisition and management costs, set a predictable licensing cost per desktop, and gained Software Assurance benefits.

Like many financial institutions during the global economic crisis, Warren Wicklund—a leading asset management firm in Norway—is under pressure to meet new market regulations. To comply with MiFID regulations, the organisation deployed a solution from Columbus IT based on Microsoft Dynamics® CRM. This technology ensures that financial advisors comply with complex guidelines while freeing them up to focus on customer service and new business.