CRM - February 2008 - (Page 42)

TYING UP CABLE’S LOOSE ENDS Molex Premise Networks (MPN) has annual global revenue in excess of $70 million, providing structured cabling systems to enterprises, but busywork—tracking and recording customer and project activities—was getting in the way of business. According to Neil Taylor, global information systems manager, MPN needed to be able to record projects and their expected life cycle and review them on a global basis. Previous systems attempted to share databases, but proved unmanageable. Cooperation was difficult, and reporting was fragmented across systems. To log project, customer, and contact information—and share all of that among locations—MPN turned to b2bCRM for its CRM application. “It wasn’t a large, complicated system, but it still had all the elements we were looking for, including the ability to customize fields so that the system reflected the way we worked, not the other way ‘round,” Taylor said in a statement. “Because it is Web-based, we could coordinate globally without having to invest in infrastructure.” The monthly price tag? Less than £10 ($20) per user. “Reporting is definitely faster—we didn’t use anything on a widespread regional basis before,” Taylor said, adding that the company previously relied on informal networks and anecdotes of contract proposals and wins. MPN staffers can now share information when fielding multiple bids, where before they had to rely on personal networks. Additionally, completed installation sites can now be used for reference, something not previously possible. “We have a system in place that allows us to cooperate on sales and projects where before we had nothing,” Taylor said. —Marshall Lager Burning Up the Paper Trail Origen Financial turns to automation to minimize a mountain of mortgage paperwork M ortgages are the most sales, the lender (which had become a pubpaper-intensive aspect of lic company in 2004) required a less cumbera still-very-paper-oriented some system to satisfy Sarbanes-Oxley rules financial services industry. for an easy audit trail across the enterprise. Mortgage lenders operating across states The system also had to automatically proneed not only to be able to create all the doc- duce all the necessary paperwork—lending uments for producing, closing, and servic- forms, notices, and other documents—for ing a loan, but also to have those numerous origination, processing, and servicing of documents adhere to the regulations of each mortgages. Gauging enterprise content management (ECM) offerings from a handful of state as well as those of federal statutes. The volume of documents—and the con- different vendors, Galaspie learned these sysstant modifications required for business tems were primarily for document retention and regulatory reasons—was becoming a and recall, not new-document generation. Also, most vendors leveraged Microsoft problem for Michigan-based Origen Financial. Origen, which specializes in originating, Office, which Galaspie found inadequate for producing, and servicing loans for the manufactured-housing industry, wasn’t able to take on any additional lending or to pursue a desired expansion into a new line of business, according to Paul Galaspie, the lender’s chief information officer. “We wanted to go into the direct lending channel, but we had paper stacked three to four feet tall of documents that needed changes—and they sat there for three to four months,” Galaspie says.“The document origination system was inside the loan origination system—there was no easy way to generate documents without going into [it].” The queued-up paperwork would have taken a year to tackle, A full-time employee limiting the lender’s potential used to spend his entire time workload. “Our sales guys were going nuts—we couldn’t take on making document changes; any more business,”Galaspie says. the new arrangement requires In addition to enhancing customer service and expanding just 20 hours a month. www.destinationCRM.com 42 CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIP MANAGEMENT | FEBRUARY 2008 http://www.destinationCRM.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of CRM - February 2008

CRM - February 2008 Contents Front Office Reality Check Customer Centricity The Tipping Point The Loyalty Riddle CRM Drives Down-Market Out of the Gate: Marketers Rate ’08 Traits The Pulse Consultants Adapt to CRM’s Changing Landscape Required Reading Cover Story: CRM Gets Serious Contact Center Solutions Always On Rumble in the Office The Smallest Slice Tying Up Cable’s Loose Ends Burning Up the Paper Trail Sunny Skies for Knology No More Bumps for BlueRoads Secret of My Success Re:Tooling Scouting Report Pint of View

CRM - February 2008

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