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Riverhead Building Supply

Building-Supply Company Strengthens Service Edge over Big-Box Stores

“Now that our sales representatives are completely in sync with the back office, they can identify trends

and address customer concerns more quickly.”John Bogdanski, E-Commerce Marketing Specialist, RBS

investment. By integrating with the company‘s existing technologies, including its mainframe, mobile devices, and communication tools, such as Microsoft Office Outlook, the solution helps improve visibility of critical data to drive better customer service. Now, with access to powerful tools for sales force automation and marketing campaign and event management, RBS has strengthened its competitive edge.

Riverhead Building Supply (RBS) serves the needs of professional builders and homeowners throughout the New York metropolitan area. To accommodate current growth and capitalize on future business opportunities, company leaders began searching for a flexible, easy-to-use customer relationship management system. After a thorough evaluation, RBS opted to implement Microsoft Dynamics CRM to better connect its business processes, increase efficiency, and maximize the return on its IT

Customer Case Study

IndustryDurable goods merchant wholesalers—Lumber and construction wholesalers

Straight TalkTo provide critical functionality to its sales and marketing personnel, RBS sought a flexible customer relationship management solution that could help the company maximize its return on existing technology investments.

SolutionWith help from Microsoft Gold Certified Partner UXC Eclipse (formerly Cole Systems)*, RBS implemented Microsoft Dynamics CRM and linked the solution to its mainframe business system and mobile and desktop tools that its people rely on each day.

Benefits• Projected 30 percent increase in marketing efficiency• Improved opportunity management• Enhanced competitiveness and capacity for growth

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Difficulty Creating Targeted Marketing Campaigns

RBS also needed a more systematic way to process customer information captured at the point of sale or at one of the many trade shows that its employees attend. Without the tools or the processes in place to quickly identify which customers preferred which brand of windows or flooring, for example, RBS found that creating marketing campaigns was extremely time consuming. “We really had no systematic way of tracing revenue back to a specific mailing or event. It was always a challenge to justify marketing costs if you couldn‘t point to some kind of ROI,” says Bogdanski.

Based on input from Bogdanski and other leaders at RBS, the company began searching for a solution to automate lead tracking and enable sales and marketing teams to efficiently share information. Executives placed a priority on gaining visibility into sales and marketing performance through built-in reporting tools and customizable dashboards.

SolutionRBS evaluated several customer relationship management solutions, including offerings from Oracle and Salesforce.com. RBS selected Microsoft Dynamics CRM because of its ease of use and extensibility. Executives were

Situation

Family-owned Riverhead Building Supply (RBS) has been in business for more than 60 years. Based in Shirley, New York, the company specializes in distributing lumber, roofing, windows, doors, and other building materials to professional builders, contractors, and architects throughout the New York metropolitan area.Despite the global recession, RBS has expanded its business. In 2009, the company acquired Heritage Wide Plank Flooring and added two dealer locations in Rhode Island, marking the first time RBS has operated outside of New York.

“One of the main reasons we‘ve been able to expand in a down economy is that we‘ve stayed focused on providing the personalized service that some of the bigger dealers, and especially the large retail outlets, are hard pressed to provide,” says John Bogdanski, E-Commerce Marketing Specialist at RBS.

In addition to its chain of 11 stores for professional builders, RBS operates five retail showroom locations under its Perimeters® brand. By offering hundreds of design options—everything from custom molding and cabinetry to distinctive hardware—these stores give homeowners a chance to plan every aspect of a custom remodel project.

Cross-Team Collaboration

With the addition of new stores and product lines and a burgeoning workforce of more than 400 employees, RBS faced the challenge of effectively sharing information across lines of business. For two decades, the company used an IBM AS/400–based system to handle core business functions. Although the system excelled at handling accounting, shipping, and inventory management, it offered limited functionality for sales and marketing staff. “Even in the best-case scenario, when a salesperson had devised a system of tracking leads and opportunities, that data was completely locked down,” says Bogdanski. “No one else in the organization had timely access to that information, so sometimes lucrative deals were left on the table.”

“The Event Management Accelerator dramatically cuts down

on the amount of manual work involved with organizing events. And, it builds on the capabilities

we already have for compiling and analyzing customer information,

providing us with a richer understanding of their needs.”

John Bogdanski, , E-Commerce Marketing Specialist, RBS

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Park Data Systems. The team linked the two systems by using the Scribe Insight adapter to automate the transfer-of-account and product catalog data.

“With the integration capabilities of Microsoft Dynamics CRM, together with Scribe, we created a seamless connection between the two systems,” says Olsson. “Accounts are automatically synchronized with account owners, and custom fields and entities in Microsoft Dynamics CRM are preserved in the data transfer.”

Now, from within Microsoft Dynamics CRM, RBS sales and marketing staff can view detailed, up-to-date account and subaccount details, including transaction history and credit information. A custom tab on account interface also presents manufacturer incentives to facilitate cross-sell and upsell opportunities.

Automating Sales and Marketing

RBS sales staff use the lead-tracking tools in Microsoft Dynamics CRM to ensure responsive, timely communication with prospective customers. The built-in workflow capabilities make it easy for RBS to track and manage the lead-routing process so that sales managers can assess the progression of each lead and troubleshoot delays.

The marketing team also takes advantage of capabilities for managing and segmenting lists, combined with tools for developing and customizing campaign templates to drive more effective marketing initiatives.

In building its campaigns, the RBS marketing team uses workflow tools to create unique activities tailored to distinct customer classes. This gives the team the ability to create focused communications targeting a number of different customer classes under the umbrella of a single campaign.

particularly excited about completing the installation quickly and rapidly gaining self-sufficiency so that RBS could use internal IT resources to modify the solution over time as needed.

“Microsoft Dynamics CRM offered everything we were looking for,” says Patrick Carberry, Project Manager at RBS. “It integrates with Microsoft Office Outlook, so people are familiar with how it works and they want to use it every day. It‘s flexible, so we can easily change a field or the look of a particular screen. And the workflow, reporting, and other tools help us connect processes and track data from end to end, including results from our sales and marketing efforts.”

For help in initially implementing and setting up the system, RBS turned to Microsoft Gold Certified Partner UXC Eclipse. The team from UXC Eclipse deployed the system in eight weeks. This time frame included modifying fields and other database components in Microsoft Dynamics CRM and linking the solution to the IBM AS/400 database and familiar productivity tools, including Office Outlook, and BlackBerry mobile devices.

“The flexibility of Microsoft Dynamics CRM enabled us to easily connect to the platforms and technologies that RBS already had in place so that we could avoid the need to ‘rip and replace‘ and could get them up and running very quickly,” says Michael Olsson, CRM Project Manager at UXC Eclipse.

Connecting Business Systems

To empower its sales and marketing teams, and to connect these teams with other parts of the organization, leaders at RBS sought to merge data from the company‘s IBM mainframe with the database in Microsoft Dynamics CRM. UXC Eclipse worked with the technology team from RBS, including IT Manager Jeffrey Bailey, and a team from Bethpage, New York–based Central

have capability. With help from UXC Eclipse and TenDigits Software, RBS implemented TenDigits MobileAccess to enable the field sales force to interact with Microsoft Dynamics CRM on their BlackBerry smart phones, even without a wireless signal. MobileAccess is a sophisticated customer relationship management mobility product specifically designed to securely extend an organization‘s unique Microsoft Dynamics CRM configuration to mobile smartphones.

“The capability to use Microsoft Dynamics CRM on our existing BlackBerry phones has been extremely important. It means we didn‘t have to purchase new phones and, more importantly, didn‘t have to replace the devices that our sales team is accustomed to using,” says Bogdanski.

Consolidating Information

Role-based dashboards provide snapshots of business performance on a variety of dimensions. Through one dashboard, sales managers can quickly evaluate open and won opportunities for individual salespeople and compare these values to company wide goals for a given period.

BenefitsBy implementing Microsoft Dynamics CRM and linking this system with its IBM mainframe, RBS now benefits from more rigorous and proactive account management, improved marketing efficiency, and enhanced customer service. As a result, even in the face of formidable economic challenges, the company has managed to expand its operations and strengthen its position against competitors.

“When a homeowner browses one of our Perimeters showrooms or wants to know more about specific products for a kitchen or bath remodel, we can capture that information and reach out with a personalized marketing piece at the appropriate time,” says Bogdanski.

Planning and Managing Events

The company relies on its presence at various trade shows and other events to generate leads. Although organizing and managing these events is a time-consuming process, it is a critical component of the company‘s strategy to strengthen brand awareness and drive demand for its products and services.

RBS uses the Event Management Accelerator, a free add-in for Microsoft Dynamics CRM that provides a complete set of tools for planning and budgeting, processing registration, sending attendee mailings, and completing other event-related tasks. “The Event Management Accelerator dramatically cuts down on the amount of manual work involved with organizing events,” says Bogdanski. “And it builds on the capabilities we already have for compiling and analyzing customer information, providing us with a richer understanding of their needs.” Because event management processes are now handled in Microsoft Dynamics CRM, sales leads captured at events and post-event outreach programs are seamlessly integrated with the company‘s other lead-tracking, reporting, and targeted marketing processes.

Going Mobile

For the RBS sales team, the ability to view and update current account data from a mobile device while visiting with a customer is a must-

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might be able to further develop and expand a customer relationship. If a longtime roofing customer doesn‘t buy windows and doors through us, the salesperson now has the intelligence they need to actively pursue and win that opportunity.”

Enhanced Competitiveness and Capacity for Growth

Through custom dashboards, executives now have the ability to instantly evaluate the company‘s performance across a range of metrics—from individual sales pipelines to response rates for various marketing channels. This gives executives the power to rapidly adjust the company‘s response to a particular market opportunity or competitive threat based on empirical evidence, rather than solely on industry experience. Moreover, improved access to information has enabled employees at every level of the company to deliver more personalized service to customers.

“We‘ve always gone to market—even against huge retail stores—based on our ability to outservice and outperform our competitors,” says Bogdanski. “Microsoft Dynamics CRM enables our team to work more efficiently and better connect with customers. It has played a key role in our ability to sustain growth, even in a tough economic climate.”

“The capability to use Microsoft Dynamics CRM on our existing

BlackBerry phones has been extremely important. It means we

didn‘t have to purchase new phones and, more importantly, didn‘t have

to replace the devices that our sales team is accustomed to using.”

John Bogdanski, E-Commerce Marketing Specialist, RBS

Projected 30 Percent Increase in Marketing Efficiency

Now that RBS has a comprehensive set of tools for managing and segmenting lists, building custom campaigns, and modifying templates for reuse, the company has substantially increased the efficiency of its marketing function. Moreover, RBS expects to realize similar efficiency gains in planning and executing on trade shows and other events through the Event Management Accelerator for Microsoft Dynamics CRM. Given the anticipated reduction in time required to create and launch campaigns and organize events, the company plans to increase its annual marketing output by 30 percent without adding staffing or allocating additional budget resources.

Improved Opportunity Management

Microsoft Dynamics CRM synchronizes with the company‘s existing technology, including its IBM AS/400 mainframe and mobile and desktop tools, such as Office Outlook, Office SharePoint Server, and BlackBerry smartphones. This ensures that the entire staff has improved visibility into critical business data without requiring the company to replace the technology that it has depended on for two decades.Merging the accounting and product information stored in the mainframe with the database in Microsoft Dynamics CRM provides salespeople with a clear view into the status and priorities associated with each account. And the ability to access a single, shared view of information anytime, anywhere on a mobile device through integration with TenDigits MobileAccess empowers sales staff to more effectively prioritize and act on key opportunities.“Now that our sales representatives are completely in sync with the back office, they can identify trends and address customer concerns more quickly,” says Bogdanski. “By the same token, the sales team can now instantly see, through visibility into subaccounts, where we

For More InformationFor more information about Microsoft products and services, call the Microsoft Sales Information Center at (800) 426-9400. In Canada, call the Microsoft Canada Information Centre at (877) 568-2495. Customers in the United States and Canada who are deaf or hard-of-hearing can reach Microsoft text telephone (TTY/TDD) services at (800) 892-5234. Outside the 50 United States and Canada, please contact your local Microsoft subsidiary. To access information using the World Wide Web, go to: www.microsoft.com

For more information about Riverhead Building Supply products and services, call (800) 378-3650 or visit the Web site at: www.rbscorp.com

For more information about UXC Eclipse products and services, call (212) 965-6400 or visit the Web site at: www.uxceclipse.com

*UXC Eclipse acquired Cole Systems Associates, Inc. in December 2012. This site was implemented under Cole Systems.

Microsoft DynamicsMicrosoft Dynamics is a line of integrated, adaptable business management solutions that enables you and your people to make business decisions with greater confidence. Microsoft Dynamics works like familiar Microsoft software such as Microsoft Office, which means less of a learning curve for your people, so they can get up and running quickly and focus on what‘s most important. And because it is from Microsoft, it easily works with the systems that your company already has implemented. By automating and streamlining financial, customer relationship, and supply chain processes, Microsoft Dynamics brings together people, processes, and technologies, increasing the productivity and effectiveness of your business, and helping you drive business success.

For more information about Microsoft Dynamics, go to: www.microsoft.com/dynamics

USA+1 212 965 6400info@uxceclipse.comwww.uxceclipse.com

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Canada+1 604 899 6092info@uxceclipse.comwww.uxceclipse.ca