TRL Krosaki leverages Microsoft Dynamics 365 to improve customer experience

The need for a robust CRM solution 

TRL Krosaki (TRL), while being a manufacturing company, has been a customer-minded organization. While traditionally Indian manufacturers focus more on production operations, TRL has not been limited to operational efficiencies alone, but also keeps the interests of the customers at the center of its flow of services from marketing to sales to customer service. This prompted the company to invest in a CRM solution, getting all touchpoints in place and tracking and optimizing the end-to-end customer lifecycle.  

TRL used to manage its customer-related processes manually. Customers were managed through e-mails, spreadsheets and telephonic conversations. Various approvals, creation of pricing policies and mechanisms were conducted in a decentralized way, causing inefficiencies. 

The data needed to generate insights and improve customer relationships was not available in a centralized location but was sourced through multiple stakeholder groups and collated as MIS reports for decision makers. The process was time-consuming, prone to inaccuracies, and affected the quality of decisions.

TRL identified the need for automation to improve customer relationships, services and gauging product performances, by mapping processes in a central repository. This would also help in complying with policy and procedural requirements and guidelines related to pricing. Collecting data in one place would help derive insights and perform analytics to improve processes and predict customer requirements before they are expressed. TRL began the search for a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) solution.  

“After running detailed comparisons among various CRM options available in the market, we felt that Microsoft Dynamics 365  was the most suitable solution for us,” says Kumar Heramba Narayan Naik, Senior General Manager (ICT) & CIO, CISO, TRL KROSAKI REFRACTORIES LIMITED. “We identified user-friendliness, flexibility and scalability, among the features of the application that could add significant value to the business.”

Moreover, TRL had been relying on Microsoft as a strategic partner for its ongoing digital transformation journey. The organization’s digital workplace is on Microsoft 365, making integration of Dynamics 365 smooth. These considerations further cemented TRL’s decision.

Onboarding Microsoft Dynamics 365  

While the need to streamline customer processes was identified way before 2020, the pandemic and national lockdown offered an opportunity to accelerate setting up the CRM solution. It was also during the pandemic that TRL automated some processes as a part of its digital transformation journey. The implementation of Dynamics 365 was done remotely – a colossal task, given the location of the refractory factory in a tier-3 city. Interestingly, as physical meetings were replaced by virtual meetings and collaboration, the deployment was quicker compared to the normal pre-pandemic procedure. 

TRL went live with three modules of Dynamics 365 CRM – Sales, Marketing and Customer Services in April 2021. There are approximately one hundred users of the CRM. TRL has enjoyed a range of benefits since the implementation: 

• TRL could streamline the entire process of pricing approvals and capture data from the stages of lead to opportunity to quotations
• Manual invoicing was replaced with automated invoicing
• Data was captured and collated in a central repository
• Analysts could make more sense of the data and derive valuable and reliable insights
• The entire journey of every customer is tracked on an end-to-end basis
• TRL was now empowered to make well-informed, faster decisions
  
  

Before Dynamics 365, the preparation of the annual business plan, a critical activity, meant many challenges and delays because data was not centralized, and market intelligence data was fetched manually through disparate sources. This affected sales and raw material planning, among other aspects. Using Marketing Module of Dynamics 365, TRL can now easily collect market intelligence data, including competitor data. This has been helping the company in making its annual businesses plan more scientific and more realistic.

Leveraging data and intelligence to improve services

Dynamics 365 helps customer-facing executives become more efficient by providing them a unified view of data sourced from different departments. Equipped with this real-time information, the executives are able to serve customers in better ways. 

Before transitioning to Dynamics 365, TRL was not able to capture product performance data from the customers. These were critical data pieces with the potential to help business in measurable ways. Now, the combined capabilities of Dynamics 365 and Power BI help TRL get the product performance data and allow it to make continuous improvements to the quality of products and services. This has positively impacted customer satisfaction.

With the CRM system driving integration of varied processes within the organization, TRL can get a 360-degree view of its customer-related activities. There is an expectations-solutions thread that runs between logistics, sales and the customers. The complete value chain has been strengthened and is helping TRL achieve its business goals.

The organization is witnessing significant improvement in process management, process efficiency, transparency and compliance with policies.  

“We look at Dynamics 365 CRM as more than a solution,” concludes Kumar Heramba Narayan Naik, Senior General Manager (ICT) & CIO, CISO, TRL KROSAKI REFRACTORIES LIMITED. “It is a company-wide business strategy, designed to improve revenues and profitability by reducing costs and increasing customer loyalty. We can understand customer requirements and expectations on a real-time basis.”