diacriTech Technologies Private Limited CRM Solution Boosts Sales by 20 Percent

Improves Conversion Rate by 15 Percent

Established in 1997, diacriTech Technologies provides books, journals and multimedia publishing services. Based in Boston, it has multiple offices in the United States, United Kingdom and production facilities in India. Its portfolio includes mathematics, science, medical, and technical books. Besides publishing services, it offers business process outsourcing services, provides XML and data conversion services in addition to data capture services.

diacriTech is an ISO 9001:2000 certified company. With the state of art infrastructure, the company employs approximately 700 employees. It represents big and small publishers in North America, Europe, Asia and Australia. Some of its well known clients are Pearson Education, Elsevier, The McGraw-Hill Companies and Oxford University Press etc.

Earlier, diacriTech was using a disparate set of applications on multiple platforms like Linux, Apple Mac along with Microsoft applications on Windows. Due to cross platform issues, lack of compatibility was evident in the working of the company. Manual interventions were must to transfer data across the applications which was a time intensive as well as error prone activity.

The customary Microsoft Office Excel worksheets formed the basis of functioning at diacriTech. These were used to maintain and track all the sales transactions, estimates, invoices, all accounting related as well as other business activities. All the financial transactions and the data were then manually moved to accounting software Quickbooks.

With strategic planning and shorter sales cycle, the sales productivity has shown a stable increase by approximately 20 percent within first few months of implementation. Mahesh Balakrishnan Vice-President diacriTech Technologies Private Ltd.

With increasing number of transactions, reviewing leads and tracking sales opportunities was becoming all the more difficult resulting in longer sales cycle. Microsoft Office Outlook was thus used to set reminders and tasks besides email communication which obviously was amateurish and unprofessional. Sales pipe line management lacked professionalism that adversely affected the efficiency and productivity.

The company was inept to track business unit performance and country wise performance with the existing system. To mitigate the existing issues, diacriTech identified the importance of a customer relationship management (CRM) solution that could address all its sales, marketing and product pricing areas, offer 360 degree customer view and accelerate project delivery.

To improve corporate profitability and manage customers proficiently, diacriTech was looking forward to implement a completely integrated solution that could turnaround the working conditions. The IT team evaluated Salesforce.com, a few customized applications from various local vendors and Microsoft Dynamics CRM. After a detailed analysis, the management opted for Microsoft Dynamics CRM for its ability in unification of customer data, easy navigation and tighter integration with Microsoft Exchange Server and Microsoft Office Outlook.

diacriTech partnered with Microsoft® Gold Certified Partner, GSR Business Services. GSR with its varied experience and adept team started the implementation in December 2009 and the solution went live in less than 4 months. The solution was implemented in a single phase at all the production facilities in India for sales and marketing users.

The implementation focus was to deploy a solution to automate and address the sales, marketing and product pricing areas and track all the communication activities. The integration and customization capabilities of solution aided by skilled team at GSR helped in addressing all the unique business requirements at diacriTech.

Custom Pricing Grid is one of the perfect examples of the technical flexibility of the solution and the customizations done. The complex pricing structure at diacriTech varies for each publisher. It is based on the type of services rendered wherein each service again accommodates variable properties. A custom price grid was hence built to include all the additional properties. “The custom pricing grid and tracking of service pricing inside CRM has given control in pricing and reduced errors in estimate pricing,” states Mahesh Balakrishnan, Vice-President, diacriTech Technologies.

The solution was customized to include Effective Estimate Management. The default quote form did not include the details related to the publishing industry and was hence customized to address book details like title, international standard book number (ISBN) number, author etc. All the parameters are now tracked for each service for which estimate is sent or rendered.

Another important milestone achieved is the ease with which different customized reports are generated, like account overview report with sub account performance gives real insights into a customer or publisher. A custom report for order tracking gives the ability to view and track source opportunity. Country based revenue report gives a clear view of sales performance based on each country. “Customized reports save time and develop real time insight. Estimates and order values in a single report with owner information and timelines that earlier took half a day to prepare is now readily available,” states Mahesh Balakrishnan, Vice-President, diacriTech Technologies. Besides, powerful integration with Microsoft Office and Exchange made the user adoption easier.

“Microsoft Dynamics CRM develops good insight into the lead management process and creates new opportunities based on existing relationships and error free pricing,” says Mahesh Balakrishnan, Vice-President, diacriTech Technologies. It also supports extensive interactive reporting and analysis that saves precious time and resources.

Lead to opportunity and opportunity to account management has become very effective with centralization. Each appointment with customer is tracked for response and then converted to opportunity resulting in effective response management. Microsoft Dynamics CRM proficiently addresses the lead tracking issues and with few changes the conversion to opportunities happens automatically. “Opportunities are identified, reviewed intricately and planned upon so that can be quickly converted into profitable business,” says Mahesh Balakrishnan, Vice-President, diacriTech Technologies. “Systematic conversion of leads to opportunities with minimal in-between sales stages and reduced tracking time has improved the conversion rate by 15 percent.”

All locations create opportunities and thus centralized customer data from all locations helps to manage the opportunities through the sales cycle. Centralized customer account management develops better perspective into various other opportunities available inside an account which were hard to find earlier since the data was disparate. Tracking of relationships of a contact with an account and sub-accounts is easily managed.

Simultaneously easy availability of estimate records including revised estimates in a single centralized location saves ample time in estimate preparation and tracking. It certainly gives a good insight of top customers and recurring business to top management that aid in good business decisions.

Microsoft Dynamics CRM has significantly improved sales planning and management. Prior to CRM, customer contacts relationship including record enquiries, issue response emails, issue quotes, set actions to be followed up, overdue actions alert etc. within the various departments of publishers were not tracked which resulted longer sales cycle and missed opportunities.

Now with centralized data, reviews are quick and effective which in-turn improves effectiveness of planning. With effective sales pipeline management, each business unit can now clearly see their set of opportunities and are able to plan amongst themselves. “With strategic planning and shorter sales cycle, the sales productivity has shown a stable increase by approximately 20 percent within first few months of implementation,” explains Mahesh Balakrishnan, Vice-President, diacriTech Technologies.

Since integration with Microsoft Office Outlook is readily available, communication trail is always there which saves time. The ability to create estimates or quotes on the fly based on book titles, author, ISBN numbers etc. save a lot of time in data re-entry. “About 5-10 minutes per record are saved by avoiding duplication of records that includes price list generation, customer profile and linking of accounts and sub-accounts,” estimates Mahesh Balakrishnan, Vice-President, diacriTech Technologies. “Automatic assignment of approval activities on the estimates has reduced the amount of emails being sent and thus reduces the process time.”

“Microsoft Dynamics CRM has enabled our resources and processes to work in sync with technology to increase profitability, reduce operational costs and bring a change in overall working environment,” wraps up Mahesh Balakrishnan, Vice-President, diacriTech Technologies. “We are already using an offline client on the laptop that has improved the mobility. We are also planning to use mobile access in near future.”

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

Founded in 1992, Global Software Resources (GSR) is a global IT services and solutions provider headquartered in the San Francisco Bay Area in Pleasanton, California and offices in Chennai, India. It is as an independent custom development and maintenance consultancy. GSR has worked closely with companies ranging in size from start-ups to large enterprises to help them build efficient and agile businesses. It designs, develops, integrates, implements, and maintains IT solutions using latest technologies that address business challenges, streamline operations, optimize collaboration across all groups and boundaries and help companies grow.

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For more information about diacriTech Technologies products and services, call (91)(44) (4288 9000 ) or visit the Web site at: www.diacritech.com

For more information about GSR Business products and services, call (91) (44) (4238 2081) or visit the Web site at: gsr-inc.com