CRM- September 2008 - (Page 49) Midmarket CRM MAKING A HEALTHY DATA TRANSFER WITH MICROSOFT AND AXONOM allows VisionShare to have options that would [normally] require a lot of custom, lineby-line coding,” he says, adding that Smerz’s group didn’t want or need the raft of developers some other clients might have brought in. In fact, Smerz says the Microsoft/Axonom solution only requires him to have one developer, along with one project manager/business analyst who understands the features and Steve Smerz, chief requirements of internal customers working information officer and vice president of technical on customization for the solution. operations, VisionShare After a three-month implementation that Smerz says went off without a hitch, the solution went live in March 2007. An automated email system, for example, now reminds customers to complete certain aspects of the installation “This system puts more rigor into the data quality aspects, process, such as opening up a firewall port by a specific date. Within two months, and our sales team now sees the value in reporting and the Smerz says, VisionShare started seeing great ability to manage the total interaction with the customer.” results—including a 51 percent decrease in the installation-ticket backlog. “Now, we’re able to manage by event and exception rather than proactively having to touch each installation,” he says. through. We were calling up customers four to seven times trying Sales professionals were wary at first of having to migrate from to get them to respond, but they might be on vacation or unavailan older version of Sage Software’s Act! solution, but after a few able. All of a sudden, a backlog of installations started to creep up.” weeks those fears subsided.“In Act!, they were able to set up their That backlog also started to creep into VisionShare’s profit outown methodologies of tracking data and essentially type in anylook, Smerz says: Revenue couldn’t be reported until installation thing into any field they chose,” Smerz recalls. “This system puts was complete. “We didn’t have a lot of room to have our employmore rigor into the data quality aspects, and our sales team now ees [engaging in] multiple interactions with customers,” he says. sees the value in reporting and the ability to manage the total “This was chewing up our margins.” Making matters worse was a interaction with the customer as opposed to prospecting.” period of hypergrowth—Smerz says that, in the last 18 months, The project has gone so well that Medicare has approached the company has grown from a customer base of 800 to more than VisionShare about handling some operations on a national basis, 3,000. In short, VisionShare was facing serious scalability issues. something Smerz says would have been a pipe dream before. To get control of the runaway train, VisionShare chose Micro“This would be an order-of-magnitude increase, and we wouldsoft Dynamics CRM and Dynamics GP, as well as the Powertrak n’t be able to handle this without our new systems in place,” he solution from Microsoft partner Axonom. Smerz says familiarity says. “Medicare saw our success, and now VisionShare is seeing and easy customization were two reasons why Microsoft won big opportunities as a byproduct of that.” —Christopher Musico VisionShare’s business. “We already had Microsoft Office, Outlook, and other [Microsoft] tools in-house, so the ability to bring in a CRM tool in a fairly unobtrusive way was very important,” real results : visionshare he says. “Also, capabilities that it brought to the table through ■ Increased revenue by 115 percent. inherent customization features and extended [capabilities] with ■ Maintained a 97.8 percent customer-renewal rate. Powertrak gave us options some of the other systems didn’t.” ■ Reduced backlog of installation tickets by 51 percent Joe Benedict, director of sales at Axonom, says the goal was to ■ Cut by 87 percent the number of tickets that run 90-plus days. provide flexibility without intricate programming.“Our platform ■ Increased same-day closing of trouble tickets by 14 percent. Ensuring a secure transfer of vital customer data is of paramount importance in the healthcare industry, and compliance with strict federal regulations such as the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act means the burden rests with the more than 700,000 healthcare providers in the United States. Enter Minnesota-based VisionShare, an eight-year-old company providing secure data connectivity for the healthcare industry. The company had been managing its order process with a homegrown software system, but there were looming concerns, says Steve Smerz, the firm’s chief information officer and vice president of technical operations.“We have to ship a digital certificate to a customer after it validates who it is,” he explains. “We have to interact with them, configure firewalls, and open up ports to talk www.destinationCRM.com CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIP MANAGEMENT | SEPTEMBER 2008 49 THE ELITE VisionShare http://www.destinationCRM.com
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