CRM- September 2008 - (Page 50) Sales Force Automation Toledo Mud Hens A MINOR LEAGUE TEAM PLAYS LIKE IT’S IN THE MAJORS WITH MICROSOFT AND FIRST TECH DIRECT in August 2007 to handle the integration. “Reporting was done The Toledo Mud Hens have been having a good decade. The in Microsoft Access, which wasn’t ideal, and salespeople were minor league baseball team, the Triple-A affiliate of the Detroit using Microsoft Office Word to generate invoices.” Tigers and a favorite of M*A*S*H’s Max Klinger, has been breakThe initial goal was to eliminate those pesky duplicate ing ticket-sales records ever since it moved to its new home at records—but even that required preliminary efforts. “We first Fifth Third Field back in 2002. Since then, it’s been a story of winneeded to streamline account tracking and then integrate Microning seasons and rising attendance, topping out at nearly 600,000 soft Dynamics CRM with Microsoft Dynamics GP to automate attendees in 2007—an 88 percent jump that year alone. Great the delivery of sales orders to accounting,” Cox says. news—except the team’s sales division hadn’t upgraded its sysFirst Tech Direct customized the sales screens of Dynamics tems or processes since before the move, and agents were having CRM to map to the ticket department’s two primary revenue a tough time keeping up on all fronts. streams—season tickets and group sales. Another tweak enabled Sales reps were writing completed the corporate sales staff to manage advertising packages. Custom sales information on scratch paper or, reports now generate invoices and booking letters that are sent on a good day, filling out a form— to customers to indicate that a group purchase has been made. either way, they had to hand that off Staff can now create highly targeted marketing campaigns to the accounting staff, who had to within the CRM system by searching through customers based key the information into Microsoft on a range of criteria, such as number of tickets purchased, ZIP Dynamics GP. And if a sale happened Codes, or type of seats purchased. “Before Microsoft Dynamics to include a food order, that had to be Scott Jeffer, assistant general manager CRM,” Jeffer says, “we would ask, ‘How are the calls going?’ and hand-delivered to ballpark concesand director of marketing, advertising, and sales, Toledo Mud Hens people would reply, ‘Great.’ [Now] we can get more detail and sionaire staff, who spent a total of 300 actually measure the success of our campaigns.” hours a year double-checking account The ballclub is so happy with the results that it’s trying for a information with sales and accounting personnel. triple play: As it expands operations to include a $105 million “The last thing we wanted was to force sales representatives to multipurpose arena that will be used by the Toledo Walleye do busywork during normal business hours when they could be selling instead,” says Scott Jeffer, assistant general manager and director of marketing, advertising, “Before Microsoft Dynamics CRM, we would ask, ‘How are the calls and sales for the ballclub. This going?’ and people would reply, ‘Great.’ [Now] we can get more meant reps often waited until the end of the day to create invoices. detail and actually measure the success of our campaigns.” “The manual invoice process led to orders falling through the cracks or Hockey Club and an arena football team, the same office staff will major issues on corporate sales, where tens of thousands of dolshare central business information for cross-selling opportunilars could be involved,” Jeffer says.“In addition, invoices could pile ties across all three sports clubs—something that might never up, leading to an unpredictable workload for accountants.” have been possible without the new system. —Marshall Lager The company had some CRM—FrontRange Solutions’ GoldMine as a glorified Rolodex, and an effort with Microsoft CRM 1.2 in late 2005—but the setup wasn’t built for the expanded tasks. real results : toledo mud hens baseball club The Mud Hens looked at other vendors, including Salesforce.com, ■ Saved the staff 2,050 hours by eliminating manual processes and but since Microsoft products were already in place, decided to duplicate records. pursue an upgrade to Microsoft Dynamics CRM 3.0. ■ Reduced the ballpark concessionaire’s annual spending by $50,000. “They were using CRM, but it wasn’t really integrated. There ■ Freed salespeople up to make more visits and sales calls, resulting in $55,000 in additional revenue. were lots of duplicate accounts and contacts, which led to lots of ■ Simplified the handling of more than 20,000 student accounts. wasted time,” says Hollie Cox, vice president of consulting for ■ Expanded the CRM system to simultaneously service another venue First Tech Direct, the Microsoft partner that the ballclub hired with two other sports teams. THE ELITE 50 CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIP MANAGEMENT | SEPTEMBER 2008 www.destinationCRM.com http://www.destinationCRM.com
For optimal viewing of this digital publication, please enable JavaScript and then refresh the page. If you would like to try to load the digital publication without using Flash Player detection, please click here.