Riverhead Building Supply implemented Microsoft Dynamics CRM to better connect its business processes, increase efficiency, and maximize its return on existing technology investments. This allowed RBS to integrate customer data from its mainframe system into Dynamics CRM and provide mobile access to sales representatives. As a result, RBS has improved marketing efficiency, opportunity management, and customer service. This has strengthened RBS's competitive position and enabled continued growth even during economic challenges.
1. 1
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
Industry
Durable goods merchant wholesalers—Lumber
and construction wholesalers
Straight Talk
To 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.
Solution
With 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.
Solution
RBS 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
3. 3
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
4. 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.
Benefits
By 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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5. 5
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
6. For More Information
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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 Dynamics
Microsoft 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
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+1 212 965 6400
info@uxceclipse.com
www.uxceclipse.com
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