C.H. Robinson solves logistics problems for companies across the globe and across industries, from the simple to the most complex. To best serve its customers, C.H. Robinson requires a 360-degree view of each one, with deep visibility into their needs, so that it can offer optimal solutions. C.H. Robinson adopted Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales and Microsoft Power Platform to deliver personalized customer engagement and gain the contextual insights necessary to meet a broader range of customer requirements. Deployed to 2,700 employees in 180 days, the company’s solution paid for itself in just 11 months.
“We’ve created and captured more than 14,000 individual sales opportunities in the first six months, and we’ve increased the quality of data on potential sales opportunities by 89 percent.”
Jennifer Stocco, Director of CRM, C.H. Robinson
With nearly USD20 billion in freight under management and 18 million shipments annually, C.H. Robinson is one of the world’s largest logistics platforms, with more than 119,000 customers and 78,000 contract carriers. The company’s success lies in its commitment to its customers, which it bases on four key pillars:
- A global suite of services—work with a provider that can reliably meet all of your logistics services and technology needs today and in the future
- Technology built by and for supply chain experts—tailored, market-leading solutions that work for supply chain professionals and drive supply chain outcomes
- Information advantage driving smarter solutions—drive better outcomes for your business by taking advantage of our experience, data, and scale
- People you can rely on—our global network of experts acts as an extension of your team
“Our ultimate goal is a more coordinated voice in the marketplace—so that everyone knows all that we do, or, more accurately, all that we can do for our customers,” says Santy. “That requires a fully customer-centric perspective, with deep visibility into customer needs and how we can help address them. All that information must be easily captured and centrally cataloged in a way that makes it immediately accessible to our sales force.”
Finding the right partners
The turning point in C.H. Robinson’s digital transformation came in early 2018 when, after capturing its requirements, the company put out a formal RFP to Microsoft and Salesforce.com. “As we started to educate ourselves, we quickly recognized Microsoft as the right technical and cultural fit,” recalls Santy. “We put out a formal RFP to Microsoft and Salesforce.com. Microsoft came in fully prepared with an approach tailored to our needs. It was clear that Microsoft was the partner we wanted to have working alongside us to digitally transform our business.”
At this point, however, it remained unclear what specific value the company could achieve through digital transformation. “Microsoft spent the next three months working shoulder to shoulder with us to understand our business, people, and processes,” says Santy. “After that, they delivered a comprehensive business value analysis that helped us understand what moving to Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales would do for each division at C.H. Robinson and for the company as a whole—including a full ROI in less than 18 months.”
In April 2018, C.H. Robinson decided to go “full speed ahead” with Dynamics 365 Sales and set out to find the right implementation partner. The company chose PowerObjects—an HCL Technologies company and a Microsoft Partner Network member with Gold competencies—which Microsoft had introduced to C.H. Robinson during the business value analysis phase. “We were blown away by PowerObjects’s ability to understand our business and their knowledge of what Dynamics 365 can do—and, more importantly, how to marry those two things together,” says Santy.
Over the following months, C.H. Robinson worked with PowerObjects to implement Dynamics 365 Sales, which replaced several homegrown systems. As a result, C.H. Robinson can now deliver personalized customer engagement that builds relationships and helps close deals. Salespeople spend less time finding opportunities and more time closing them, and they no longer step on each other’s toes within the same accounts. Instead, they work smarter, relying on unified data and intelligent, automated workflows to provide contextual insights and streamline sales processes.
Streamlined capture of detailed customer data
The company’s specific goals included capturing customer shipping volumes and other supply chain data to give salespeople and account managers insight into which customers had the greatest potential to benefit from additional C.H. Robinson services. To save employees time and effort, the company wanted its salespeople to be able to input and access such data from within Dynamics 365 instead of having to use other apps or websites.
PowerObjects proposed using Power Apps to build a canvas app that salespeople and others can use within Dynamics 365 or as a standalone app. The app’s seamless, streamlined user experience helps salespeople stay focused on the customer and the opportunity. While talking to customers, salespeople typically start using Dynamics 365 Sales on its first tab within a “Phone Call” or “Appointment” activity, the standard model-driven experience in Sales. They can switch fluidly to the next tab to capture more detailed supply chain data and other valuable information via the canvas app. At any point, salespeople can also access the canvas app as a secondary tab from the Account, Lead, or Opportunity forms within Sales.
Immediate visibility into unmet customer needs
To make the additional data that salespeople now capture truly useful, the company also had to surface it in a meaningful way. Working together, C.H. Robinson and PowerObjects designed and built a Power BI report that’s embedded within C.H. Robinson’s Dynamics 365 dashboard to help salespeople and account managers easily identify opportunities where customer needs may be going unmet.
Using this report, sales managers can now have coaching conversations with salespeople and account managers about why they aren’t pursuing more volume with those customers and actions they can take. Managers can also easily identify accounts that appear to be outliers, with very large potential unmet opportunities, and then validate that data prior to acting on it. Since launching the report, the company has adjusted the data surfaced within it by approximately 89 percent, illustrating the amount of bad information that has since been cleansed from the system.
C.H. Robinson’s executives use another Power BI report to monitor the cumulative ROI on its investment in Dynamics 365.
Full deployment in six months, training included
C.H. Robinson deployed Dynamics 365 Sales in three “go lives” over a period of six months, beginning with a small group of 300 salespeople and their managers in June 2019. In September 2019, it deployed Sales to an additional 1,800 employees, followed by the remaining 600 in December 2019. About 3,000 people at C.H. Robinson use Dynamics 365 Sales today, 90 percent of whom use it at least once per month.
PowerObjects also helped ensure a smooth rollout through an active focus on training and change management, which C.H. Robinson recognized as important enough to capture in its initial budget. This focus included taking the time to understand the culture of the teams that would use Dynamics 365 Sales, their histories, and where each of them saw room for improvement. That information formed the basis for a set of “leadership change workshops,” which took place before training even began—so that managers at all levels could understand the “why” behind the changes that were coming, learn who would be affected and how, and ultimately anticipate the questions that their teams would ask.
“We worked hard to get buy-in ahead of time from top to bottom,” says Jennifer Stocco, Director of CRM at C.H. Robinson, who joined the company in November 2018. “In terms of the training itself, we started by working with PowerObjects to train 60 to 70 facilitators, mostly managers, who then proceeded to train some 1,700 people over a period of two weeks. Everyone from salespeople to directors and VPs participated in the training.”
A foundation for further business transformation
According to Stocco, the company’s rollout of Dynamics 365 Sales to more than 3,000 customer-facing employees worldwide is just the first phase of the company’s all-up digital transformation. “In 2019, we built the foundation,” she says. “Moving forward, we’ll continue using Microsoft Power Platform to further transform the business. For example, we’re now in the midst of automating lead distribution, with one region done and others to follow. We’re also looking at creating additional Power BI reports for pipeline health, individual employee performance, and trend analysis for executive leadership. We’ll build on what we now have in place to drive even greater collaboration and seamless experiences for our customers.”
Through ongoing benchmarking of key performance indicators, supported by its Power BI report for monitoring Dynamics 365 ROI, C.H. Robinson now has actionable insights into the Microsoft features, functionality, and technologies it can add to drive further innovation and business outcomes. For example, the company is already testing Dynamics 365 Sales Insights, evaluating ways to apply its adaptive AI capabilities to help teams better predict, support, and accelerate sales. “Throughout our journey, Microsoft has been by our side every step of the way,” says Santy. “Based on our tremendous success to date, we’re eager to consider other business applications from Microsoft.”
A centralized, 360-degree view of each customer
Through its deployment of Dynamics 365 and use of Microsoft Power Platform, C.H. Robinson has digitally transformed its sales environment. The company has moved:
- To a single, centralized, 360-degree view of each customer—and of the company’s customer ecosystem as a whole.
- To intelligent opportunity capture and lead distribution.
- To knowing if an account is doing well—and just what actions need to take place.
- To strong, end-to-end visibility and accountability within the sales organization.
C.H. Robinson credits its combined use of Microsoft Power Platform and Dynamics 365 as instrumental in achieving the above benefits. For example, salespeople launch the canvas app—built with Power Apps—about 450 times a day to quickly capture the full range of opportunities at each customer. “We’ve created and captured more than 14,000 individual sales opportunities in the first six months, and we‘ve increased the quality of data on potential sales opportunities by 89 percent,” says Stocco.
Having used its Power BI reports to note and address data quality issues, C.H. Robinson now has a centralized repository of trusted data that salespeople can access from within Dynamics 365 Sales to immediately identify and prioritize accounts where a greater business opportunity may exist. More accurate data also lets sales managers conduct more specific, effective conversations with their teams about how to close those sales.
“With Dynamics 365 and Microsoft Power Platform, we now have deeper visibility into customer needs and can deliver more fully on our customer promise,” says Stocco. “We’re spending a lot less time chasing sales leads and a lot more time having meaningful customer conversations. During those conversations, we’re able to develop a more detailed understanding of their needs and then propose more optimal and comprehensive solutions.”
Full ROI in just 11 months
Through its Power BI–based ROI report, which draws on the vast amount of data now centrally captured in Dynamics 365, C.H. Robinson can qualitatively confirm the business value resulting from its digital transformation.
“The original business value analysis performed by Microsoft called for a 17-month ROI and significant new business value over the first three years,” says Santy. “But we actually broke even in terms of ROI just 11 months after the first wave of our Dynamics 365 Sales deployment, a full 6 months ahead of schedule.”
Happier customers—the ultimate measure of success
Beyond the ROI numbers, Santy says the real satisfaction comes from what the company hears from its customers. “We embarked on our digital transformation because our customers were giving us feedback that they needed us to help them in new ways,” he recalls. “We still have work to do, but today, with Dynamics 365, we now have the foundation we need to get there.”
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“We actually broke even in terms of ROI just 11 months after the first wave of our Dynamics 365 Sales deployment, a full 6 months ahead of schedule.”
James Santy, Vice President of Sales Operations, C.H. Robinson
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