Direct Mail Company - cloud-based sales management
In just five months, and with as little involvement as possible from the IT department, ELCA created a cloud-based software directly with the business departments
Direct Mail Company, the Swiss specialist for direct advertising, wanted to optimize its customer relationship management (CRM), marketing and sales processes. The company lacked a centralized view of the client and distribution situation. In just five months and with as little involvement as possible from the IT department, ELCA created a cloud-based software solution directly with the business departments. This solution has speeded up the marketing and sales processes and the response times, while also providing management with higher transparency and consequently improved sales control. Other innovations such as direct client bookings and Power BI (Business Intelligence) are in the pipeline.
Direct Mail Company delivers printed advertising material (Directs) on behalf of more than 1,000 different business clients to more than two million households throughout Switzerland. To this end, the company, which since 2012 has belonged to Swiss Post, employs an approximately 50-strong marketing and sales team. In the extremely tight market for direct advertising, distribution – and its automation – play a very important role.
However, the company did not have a central software solution either for CRM or order management, with sales employees instead working with their own copies of Microsoft Outlook and Excel. Direct Mail Company lacked a consolidated and transparent view of clients and order status. In 2016, the company management wanted to change this state of affairs, and therefore brought ELCA’s specialists on board.
Centrally controlled and transparent sales process in just five months
Within just five months, ELCA implemented a cloud-based software solution for the sales and marketing departments that offers Direct Mail Company the following advantages:
- Acceleration of the sales team’s reaction times so that client enquiries are dealt with more quickly.
- Optimization of the marketing and sales processes using a digital and mobile solution for CRM, and marketing and sales force automation, which the sales team can access via smartphone or tablet while on the move.
- Improved control of the sales team through transparent, centralized tools and better tracking of key performance indicators
- More transparency regarding the current client and sales situation for the management.
- Reduction of the administrative workload through seamless, standardized and efficient processes.
A lot of business, and just a little IT – a cloud solution from the business for the business
Overall, Direct Mail Company is now applying a hybrid approach: classic applications such as Microsoft Outlook continue to run on premises, while the new Microsoft Dynamics CRM software solution and various Microsoft Azure services are sourced from the cloud. For example, the integration of local systems with the cloud was quickly achieved using Azure message queues without much involvement from the IT department.
In view of the rapid implementation, Direct Mail Company is already working on further cooperation with ELCA and planning new features:
- ELCA experts for geographic information systems are developing an online portal based on Microsoft Azure, including a swisstopo-based map. Using this map, clients can easily book their direct advertising and its regional distribution.
- By integrating Power BI from the cloud, Direct Mail Company will soon have access to even more complex analyses, dashboards and reports.