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Excel Switching Reinvents Itself 

Newly separated from a Lucent, CRM Helps Excel Become a Leaner, More Efficient Company.

At a glance:

Company name: 
Excel Switching Corporation

Challenge:

• Reinvent the company as a more efficient organization

• Create a unified view of the customers with a single application

• Provide a flexible workflow that adapts to established processes

• Easily add customization for unique requirements

• Proceed with a phased rollout moving toward a complete solution

• Implement easily and rapidly with limited resources

Solution:
Soffront CRM

Results:

• One corporate-wide database that streamlined processes and saved money

• Unified view of the customer resulting in numerous improvement companywide

• Process time improved by 60%, saving approximately $72 per transaction

• Completely capture customer data, saving approximately $60 per transaction

• Improved customer satisfaction—64% increase in user satisfaction

Expanded sales Automation

When a small organization breaks from a larger company, it is the perfect time to reinvent itself and implement better, more efficient processes. But when the rebirth must happen rapidly, you need a combination of talented staff, efficient procedures, and exceptional resources to ensure a smooth and successful transition.

Bonnie Gouzias, Business Systems Analyst for Excel Switching Corporation (www.excelswitching.com), found herself in this exact situation. Gouzias was tasked with identifying business process, functions and procedures that could be enhanced, streamlined or eliminated through technology solutions. Her main focus was implementing a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system that would take Excel successfully through a corporate separation and provide an efficient system well into the future of the newly invented company. 

After a quick, yet efficient search, Excel chose Soffront Software, Inc. as their CRM solution. Soffront (www.soffront.com) is a leader in mid-market CRM solutions.

Separating from Lucent

Excel Switching (Hyannis, Massachusetts) was founded in 1988 and went public in 1997. Excel designs and manufactures switching products for telecom software developers and service providers. 

In 1999, Excel was purchased by Lucent Technologies. For three years their business systems were slowly migrated to Lucent platforms and applications. In 2003, however, Excel had the opportunity to separate from Lucent and was re-launched as Excel Switching in June of that year.

Gouzias explained that the original separation plan was to incorporate a 30-60 day platform transition. “However, there was a last minute decision to have a clean-break,” said Gouzias. “This clean-break gave us an extremely short period of time to completely replace our Call Tracking and Defect Tracking Systems without interruption of service or deliverables to their customers.” 

Not to be deterred, they tackled this obstacle by treating it as a unique opportunity to re-invent themselves as a leaner, more efficient company. They were armed with the hindsight of lessons learned both as a small public company as well as part of a very large corporation.

Choosing the best CRM system

CRM was the focal point of Excel’s rebirth plan. Excel’s president had a simple request for CRM. When he queried customer information, he wanted to be able to go to one place for any information he needed – latest activities, recent trip reports, open technical issues, etc. Previously, information was kept in numerous places – Outlook, Word or Excel files, a call tracking database, a defect tracking database, and an ERP system with the only access to the data via Crystal Reports. Excel’s management approved the plan when promised that the new CRM system would present one Unified View of the customer, resulting in an increase in employee productivity, efficiency, and customer satisfaction.

There were several CRM options available to Excel. The could return to their legacy Excel systems and try to “jerry-rig” them into some semblance of a CRM system. They could develop a home grown solution from the ground up based on various data stores. Or, they could purchase a CRM system that would allow them to make good on their promise to Management

Excel decided to go with the third option and began researching several CRM systems including SalesLogix, Siebel, Salesforce, Microsoft, and Soffront. A CRM Steering Committee made up of employees from key departments was formed for the selection process. 

“Using our experience and hindsight, it was easy to determine what we DID NOT want,” explained Gouzias. “We spent time determining what we DID want, what would be best for the new Excel, our sales, and support teams, our customers.” 

One of the main considerations they had was that the dip in the telecom industry during the early 2000’s left them with a much smaller company supporting a customer base that had not changed as much. With the company reduced by approximately 80%, their new CRM system not only had to meet all of the needs of the business, but the selection, implementation and administration of the chosen solution had to be managed by a small group of people wearing many hats.

“After requirements documents were created, the project manager identified vendors (SalesLogix, Siebel, Salesforce, Microsoft, and Soffront) that met Excel’s criteria. Vendor demonstrations were conducted in house and via the web. After reviewing all of the options, the steering committee recommended Soffront CRM to executive management, and Soffront was selected as the best solution for Excel.”


Soffront – the Best CRM Solution for Excel

According to Gouzias, Soffront CRM was selected for several reasons.

Flexible workflow to adapt to established processes - The company’s quality department is responsible for business process efficiency and wanted to be able to retain their current workflow. Being able to adapt the Soffront system to the current workflow was vital because the deployment needed to happen rapidly.

Customizable for unique requirements - Excel also had many unique requirements that were needed at the time of implementation. Soffront CRM was easy to customize to meet those needs.

Modularized for phased rollout - At re-launch, Excel had the immediate need for call tracking and defect tracking, but knew they also wanted to include sales automation and other modules moving forward. Soffront offered a phased rollout that would allow Excel to move toward a complete CRM solution.

Rapid deployment - Time was of the essence! Excel’s initial implementation was for a quick turn around on call tracking and defect tracking. Along with Soffront’s business rules and customization tools, Excel was able to quickly develop the forms, actions, and workflows needed to bring up the new system with very little impact to their customers.

Complete solution - Excel needed a complete solution that would grow to meet their future needs. They wanted to roll out sales automation and entitlement tracking in the summer of 2004 and helpdesk in the fall of the same year. They are currently working on implementation of Outlook synch and development of a customer portal.


The implementation – smooth sailing

Only Gouzias and one other employee developed and implemented the Soffront system. Since both had other responsibilities within the company as well as the implementation effort, they were extremely busy and did not have much time for the user training offered by Soffront. With limited web training and an on-site Soffront developer, Excel was able to roll out several Soffront applications in a very short period of time. “This is truly a testament to the success of Soffront CRM’s architecture and the power and ease of use of their end user tools,” said Gouzias. “End user training also went smoothly. The Soffront solution is intuitive to use and is easy to customize to each user’s preferences.”

Soffront CRM successfully moved Excel from multiple, disparate systems to an integrated, CRM system spanning sales, marketing, development, and service functions. “We made good on our promise to management to have one unified view of the customer,” remarked Gouzias. “In addition to a complete view of our customers, having one application has resulted in a reduction in the administration of multiple applications by our IT team.” 


Successful Results - Excel Firsts

Excel has been successful with the Soffront CRM solution, as evidenced by the many firsts the company has been able to achieve.

First time having one corporate contact database - Previously sales, accounting and technical support used different data repositories to track their respective contacts. With Soffront, Excel now has one common system for tracking corporate wide contracts. Information is synchronized across functional areas, resulting in more satisfied customers.

First time having the ability to accurately track customers and end users - Capturing data on customers/partners and end users was limited at best with Excel’s old system. With Soffront CRM, Excel is able to incorporate customer and site specific data in one area for integrated tracking by the sales and support teams.

First time having call tracking integrated with defect tracking - Prior to Soffront, Excel’s call tracking and defect tracking were managed on separate systems. Technical support engineers were forced to go to a secondary system to enter software defects, duplicating much of the information they had already entered into the call tracking system. Now with Soffront, if a call tracking ticket is the result of a software defect, the creation of the defect record is automatically made by the Soffront system.

First common system for tracking key sales account activities - A common problem with fielded sales personnel is the capturing of account information. Before Soffront, field sales sent in account activity and trip reports in various ways such as email, word documents, etc. With Soffront, all account information, both internally and from fielded personal are captured in activities, giving users all of the latest information on the customer. Coupled with links to call tracking, defect tracking, contacts, entitlement, etc., users can easily retrieve one unified view of a customer.

First user customizable, easily administered, corporate wide application - Previous Excel platforms were difficult to administer. Users typically had to rely on IT employees to successfully retrieve data from the system for them. Simple changes to the system such as field values additions also had to be managed by the IT team. With Soffront, queries, reports, gadgets, and dashboard views are customizable to each user in real time.


The Bottom Line - Return on Investment (ROI)

“Prior to Soffront, escalating customer found defects was a manual, time-consuming process,” explained Gouzias. “With Soffront’s integration and customization tools, we were able to improve that process time by 60%, saving us approximately $72 per transaction.”

Excel also saves money with Soffront because they can now capture complete data in a timely manner. According to Gouzias, this ability has improved 90%, saving approximately $60 per transaction. With the previous solution, Excel encountered problems passing hardware issues from the support team to the return material authorization team. 

Excel has not currently done a formal ROI analysis on their sales automation implementation; however, they have noticed improvement in several key areas.

The ability to easily access a complete view of the customer - In the downsizing of the company several years ago, most administrative positions were removed. Integration of platforms with the Soffront system allowed for readily accessible information for all users.

The ability to easily identify hot customers and opportunities

The ability to easily measure the success of trade shows and campaigns at a glance, such as the number of leads obtained from a trade show, or the percent of leads promoted to accounts

The ability to quickly highlight lost leads and adapt accordingly


Looking at the Big Picture

“A company can have the best CRM system in place, however without user acceptance, the system will not be affective,” noted Gouzias. Two months after rolling out the Soffront modules, we conducted a user survey, asking users to compare the Soffront system to those systems they used at Lucent, as well as the legacy systems they used prior to being purchased by Lucent. The survey compared usability, ease of customization and overall comparison. According to Gouzias, the results of the survey showed that Excel realized a 64% increase in user satisfaction with the Soffront CRM system.

“Excel’s experience with the Soffront CRM application has been very positive,” concluded Gouzias. “The software’s flexible workflow, ease of customization, and implementation allowed us to re-launch the company in a manner that was better for our employees and ultimately better for our customers.”

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