Case Study - First Cambodia
CRM analytics boost forecasting accuracy
Sales forecast report on Microsoft Dynamics CRM data provides an immediate ROI
As a leading IT provider with almost 200 staff and representing more than 40 of the world’s top technology vendors, First Cambodia operates in a highly competitive and dynamic environment. More than 50 staff access Microsoft Dynamics CRM to manage the sales and service functions within the company, covering 1,000+ business and government customers.
Aims
Reporting off this data is important to First Cambodia to stay on top of performance, trends and forecasts. Historically, the company’s IT department used Microsoft Reporting Services to prepare reports, but Group President and CEO Erya Houn Houng explains the limitations of this approach. “Reports took too long to produce, about one or two months, and my team needed to go back to the IT department every time they wanted a report changed,” he said. “To really gain some insight into the raw data from the CRM, we needed an analytics tool.”
Solution
First Cambodia evaluated several leading analytics solutions from global vendors, with the primary criteria of ease of use for business users and strong customer service. Zap’s web-based Zap Business Intelligence for Microsoft Dynamics CRM solution was selected, and then deployed for 32 users within a week.
Results
Sales data is the primary area of CRM being analyzed. For example, analyzing competitors helps the company keep track of the changing market, and most importantly, weekly sales forecasting is critical to the business. It was forecasting that provided an immediate return on investment for First Cambodia. “We had been using static forecasting reports and reporting in the same way from the same perspective for a long time,” Erya explained. “But with Zap Business Intelligence for Microsoft Dynamics, I immediately came across problems that I didn’t know existed. A single report in Zap Business Intelligence for Microsoft Dynamics exposed holes in the way I had been analyzing sales, in particular that some longer term forecasts were inflated by redundant data. The return from this discovery justified the entire investment in the Zap solution, as I now have an accurate picture about the state of the business and can set strategy accordingly. I also discovered issues with our CRM data quality that meant that we needed to embark on a data cleansing exercise.”
In implementing the solution, First Cambodia started by converting existing reports into the new analytics solution. “Our aim was to make sure our users were exposed to familiar reports, and then introduce some of the more advanced functionality, like viewing data from different perspectives, and slicing and dicing it. I think it’s very important for analytic reports to be closely aligned to operations. Also, this type of solution needs to be driven by top executives to ensure user acceptance, and there must be a dedicated project team managing the implementation. Data must go through a cleansing process before analytics will add value, although analytics can also be used to identify holes and gaps in the data itself.”
The long term plan at First Cambodia is to open up company data so that analytics are available across SAP ERP, Microsoft CRM, and Avaya Contact Center. Another plan for the CRM itself is to start using the marketing functionality and analyze results for campaigns.