Case Study #2
Overview of the business problem
Before Implementing Microsoft Dynamics customer relationship management system, STIHL Inc. had contact management software in place to give its field sales force a way to record sales call appointments, and record notes from dealer interactions. The current software package was not solving its purpose as it had many issues in its operational and analytical component. Joe Quartararo ecommerce & branch distribution manager describes that they quickly outgrew the previous software package, which never worked all that well for them in the first place. Territory managers were finding other representatives data in their own database. This caused confusion and frustration among managers. Many times previously entered information into the database was not available when they went back to look for it. There were no improvements when STIHL upgraded to the more advanced version. So as a consequence many managers stopped using it all together. This resulted in complete ignorance of a CRM system.
The reason the system became obsolete is because it’s analytical component which is focused on the intelligence mining of customer related data and capturing, storing, extracting, processing, mining and analyzing customer related data, was not very functional as STIHL found it difficult to connect the contact management software with a sales force analysis application that the company had developed to deliver sales data to the field. Territory managers were only able to download updated list of dealers just once per month. Moreover sales and dealers service databases did not connect, leaving an incomplete picture of dealer relationships. STIHL couldn’t sync information with its ERP software. This left STIHL extremely unsatisfied and searching for a CRM system that would be applicable and successful in their industry. Eventually many