CRM - November 2008 - (Page 46)

system. [Antenna] still had to win our business [In the return-on-investment] and internal business plan, [Antenna’s proposal] was better.” One potential issue involved the actual phone each field worker carried. PBC is moving to exclusively use BlackBerry smartphones, but during the time of implementation still had some Windows Mobile devices. Antenna was able to handle multiple platforms. The two companies completed the implementation in four months, with a golive date in December 2007. L’Africain says his group was well prepared, working with Antenna developers to keep the implementation moving along. “Those are the areas you fall back on,” he bemoans.“The developer team is waiting for answers on [how to proceed], and they’re not getting answers from the business.” Convincing a tenured employee base to make the switch required some skill. “I have a very mature staff, and that’s good for institutional knowledge but not for change management,” L’Africain says. But getting the new applications into their hands led to unanimous approval. “They absolutely adore the application,” he crows.“It makes their lives much easier.” Since December, field workers have been able to save 45 minutes they used to spend at the end of their shifts entering information into the mainframe. The Antenna solution now automatically directs calls to them on the road along with all necessary customer information right on their smartphones. As a result, the number of service calls taken has increased 5.3 percent companywide, exceeding expectations. “We underestimated how pushing services calls to technicians was going to impact that metric,” L’Africain declares. “For us, it’s been an unmitigated success.” —Christopher Musico Invicta’s Thrill of Victory A dealer of wireless products and service conquers the agony of weak processes with LongJump T the payoff WITH ANTENNA’S AMPOWER SERVICE, PITNEY BOWES CANADA WAS ABLE TO: $ save technicians an average of 45 minutes per day; improve response times by 16.1 percent; increase the number of service calls per day by 5.3 percent; and collect more-accurate feedback through the use of drop-down boxes and prepopulated forms instead of free-text input. he cobbler’s children are alive and Salesforce.com, [but] I knew Longand well—and shoeless—in Jump was the right technology the mothe high-technology world: ment I found it,”Ahmed says.“What took Companies focused on pro- seven months to design with Oracle 9i, viding solutions to customers often neg- working with a full staff, I could do alone lect their own infrastructures. Invicta in LongJump in two weeks.” And business has been good since imWireless was such a company before it started using LongJump’s platform to plemention in February 2008. Very good, deliver new applications for its sales and in fact: Sales jumped 300 percent in the next three-month period, despite only havservice teams. Invicta Wireless itself serves as a sup- ing 75 percent of the business mapped port mechanism for other wireless busi- into LongJump. This success was in part nesses, acting as master dealer, branding due to Invicta’s use of LongJump’s preexpert, and service provider. “Our mis- dictive analytics to cross-sell and upsell the right product to the right sion is to design, provide, and segment, leading to an increase support high-quality products Invicta had very in average revenue per user. and services for independent little information Customizing the LongJump wireless dealers to keep them fields with key customercompetitive in the wireless on its customers’ trait profiles helped to better marketplace,” says Asif Ah- target markets. identify customer profiles. med, Invicta’s founder and Invicta also increased productivity and principal. “The solutions we design are cost-effective and can effortlessly be lowered the amount of time it took to plugged into their current infrastructure.” convert leads to prospects and prospects Unfortunately, Invicta had suffered from to customers. And customer service imthe cobbler’s dilemma since its 2005 proved as the company became better founding. “Even though cell phones are able to address bottlenecks quickly and very advanced—with cameras, video streamline its processes. “LongJump will screens, and text—most operators still do adapt to your business—that’s the biggest business in the old way,”Ahmed says.“We benefit,” Ahmed says. “It lets the busimake heavy use of IP technology to man- nessperson do what they envision without age cellular-technology sales and service,” needing to explain that vision to IT.” Invicta’s success with LongJump is so he adds, noting that keeping it all in line was a challenge.“We constantly search for compelling that he’s lobbying his own cusnew ideas and emerging technologies to tomers to use the platform-as-a-service improve our infrastructure and deploy provider.“We want to bring LongJump to other companies,” he says. So much so, in new services to empower our partners.” The problems were most noticeable in fact, that Ahmed is presently considering the sales department. Invicta had very lit- a partnership with LongJump as a reseller tle useful information on its customers’ or integrator. —Marshall Lager target markets, or institutional memory of customers’ preferences, so each pitch was hit-or-miss. There were also inefficiencies BY AUTOMATING ITS PROCESSES WITH LONGJUMP, INVICTA WIRELESS: in the sales process, but they were hard to increased sales 300 percent in three identify because of the lack of analytics. months; Ahmed began looking to combine gained insight into customer needs for cross-sell and upsell; good off-the-shelf CRM and sales force streamlined its sales and customer automation capabilities with a robust service processes; and development environment. “I looked at gained a potential new source of revenue Oracle, since I had experience with it, as a possible LongJump partner. the payoff $ 46 CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIP MANAGEMENT | NOVEMBER 2008 www.destinationCRM.com http://www.Salesforce.com http://www.destinationCRM.com

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

CRM - November 2008 Contents Front Office Feedback Reality Check Customer Centricity The Tipping Point Working with the Years CRM on Twitter Virtual Spenders Contact Centers Chatting to Success The Complexity Chasm Required Reading Generational Spending: A Special Report Who, What, Where, When, Y The Slackers’ X-cellent Adventure The Boomer Boom The Matures Endure Boosting Productivity North of the Border Changing the Channel Invicta’s Thrill of Victory Secret of My Success Connect Re:Tooling Pint of View

CRM - November 2008

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