Altodigital Migrate From GoldMine CRM
to Microsoft Dynamics CRM With Ease

Altodigital logo

The Business Need

Altodigtal had been using GoldMine, from FrontRange Solutions, for 13 years. Having maximised Goldmine to its full potential the Management team felt that Goldmine hadn’t moved on with the times. GoldMine had become outdated and was functionally holding the business back. The decision was made to replace it with a more modern CRM system. In July 2012 the team started to review other leading CRM software packages and suppliers to draw up a shortlist.

What followed was a full and detailed evaluation of some of the market leading CRM software vendors and suppliers, including SageCRM, Salesforce.com and Microsoft Dynamics CRM. Reporting and customisation were critical. They also needed visibility of their sales pipeline, in order to understand their sales funnel and to support their mobile sales teams. Paramount to the evaluation was the new CRM vendor’s commitment to on-going product development. Altodigtal needed to protect their future investment.

The Solution

"We selected Microsoft Dynamics CRM because of their openness around their product road map and commitment to future product development. The customisation and reporting power, combined with the fresh, clean and dynamic user interface were real ticks in the box for us" comments Stuart Dennis,

MIS Group Project Manager.

"We felt that user adoption and learning time would be quicker with Microsoft Dynamics CRM as our staff were already comfortable and familiar with Microsoft products. We also purchased additional add-on products, including the CWR Mobility and Click Dimensions solutions, to provide mobile CRM and marketing automation to our respective sales and marketing teams to drive our business forward."

Key Achievements

Management Information

From a management information level, reporting is now more immediate, in-depth and visual, compared to GoldMine. Information is accessible, easy to query, and provides meaningful insight. Managers are able to create their own ad-hoc reports, and see at a glance, how many appointments a sales person has completed in real-time. This was simply something that was not possible when they used GoldMine.

Altodigtals’ MIS Department report that since the Microsoft Dynamics CRM roll-out, that users have become more empowered and better able to manage their workloads.

About Altodigital

Altodigtal are one of the largest, independent suppliers of digital print and document solutions in the UK.

The firm specialise in supplying and maintaining equipment and software solutions from leading manufacturers.

Altodigtal are experts in managing print and copy environments. They work directly with organisations across the UK to significantly reduce their print costs.

The firm are headquartered in Leighton Buzzard, and have 9 offices across the UK.

"As part of the evaluation, we also measured our existing CRM partner Serversys against other CRM partners. Although deep down, we knew we didn’t want to lose Serversys, the Management team needed to be objective and commercial in their thinking. After the evaluation, the team were unanimous in their decision to continue our relationship with Serversys as our CRM partner. Our evaluation had revealed that they are competitively priced, and that their CRM knowledge and skills are excellent."

"In the 13 years we have worked with Serversys, we have never had a bad situation arise with them. Their support goes above and beyond anything we’d expect. Our relationship with Serversys is excellent, we personally know their team and they know us. Having this kind of relationship with a CRM partner is critical in today’s competitive landscape. We felt that we were in safe hands considering our 13 year faultless relationship with them."

"MS Dynamics CRM was implemented and rolled out across our 9 offices in November, 2013 and is working really well for us. The biggest win for the sales teams was having access to CRM via their mobile devices. It has made things at lot easier for them and just speeds everything up. They can now do their appointments and forecasts on the go. The web interface is very intuitive, and there is no real learning curve."

"We enjoy the fact that there are lots of ways to do things in MS Dynamics CRM, it’s much more flexible. For example, simple things, such as having multiple windows open to compare company details, was simply not possible in our old GoldMine system. On a day-to -day basis, we use the whole solution, from appointments to recording phone calls, leads to customer service. We are trying to get the most out of Microsoft Dynamics CRM as possible, by grabbing it by the horns. We were just so limited when using GoldMine, with MS Dynamics CRM it’s much more open ended" continues Dennis.

Altodigital said:

"Migrating from GoldMine to Microsoft Dymanics CRM was probably the smoothest transition I have ever completed. I cannot fault Serversys. The transfer went beautifully, with no problems at all. Serversys genuinely go out of their way to make everything work perfectly. It’s comforting to know that we have experts working alongside us who will go the extra mile. The level of service Serversys provides is outstanding. The board are delighted that this has been a highly successful transfer and roll-out"

Stuart Dennis, MIS Group Project Manager.

User Adoption

"User adoption was pushed heavily at Board Level. They were invested and committed to Microsoft Dynamics CRM success from the outset. Initial user adoption across all departments was very good. Once the end users had completed a few reports themselves and used the advanced finder, they picked it up really quickly. Managers in our sales regions and our sales secretaries have embraced Microsoft Dynamics CRM in a very positive way. The ease of use and flexibility of the product has helped considerably. We eased user adoption by building out a library of standard reports in advance, so that familiar reports were there from day 1. This was well received by the teams and helped ease adoption"

finishes Dennis.

Early results indicate that the number of appointments made has increased and is much higher than was ever recorded in Goldmine. This is attributed to Altodigtals’ teams preferring to use MS Dynamics CRM as it is easier to update information.

Future Implementations

As Altodigtal become more familiar with MS Dynamics CRM, they expect to do more detailed analytics, which will highlight business gaps and opportunities, helping them to become more profitable and make more informed management decisions.

There MIS team have a number of new projects planned for Microsoft Dynamics CRM. One such project involves automating the sales documentation and process flow. Helping their sales and sales order processing teams become more streamlined and efficient.

Another project is centred on automating leasing agreements. This will allow their sales teams to search for individual lease information at the customer and supplier level. Armed with this up-to-date information, the sales teams are presented with lease agreement renewal opportunities to immediately follow-up.

These are some of the ways in which Altodigtal are going to use Microsoft Dynamics CRM to grow their business.

Future Add-on Applications to Microsoft Dynamics CRM

Altodigtal have recently purchased Click Dimensions a Microsoft Dynamics CRM add-on product for their Marketing team. When rolled out, it will help the business manage and record leads, produce surveys and analyse website visits. The team will also be able to produce their own email templates, landing pages without the help of their IT Department.

Altodigital said:

‘We felt that user adoption and learning time would be quicker with Microsoft Dynamics CRM as our staff were already comfortable and familiar with Microsoft products. We also purchased additional add-on products, including the CWR Mobility and
Click Dimensions solutions, to provide mobile CRM and marketing automation to our respective sales and marketing teams to drive our business forward’

Stuart Dennis, MIS Group Project Manager.