Focus on the standard.
Take company-specific customizing into account.
Involve employees.
With over 90 years of expertise and quality in technical and industrial education and training, the Christiani brand has developed from a distance learning institute in the early days into one of the leading providers of teaching materials for the entire technical education sector - always with the aim of being at the cutting edge of education.
Similar to the way it handles its products, Christiani also looks to the future when it comes to the digitalization of its own company and keeps pace with the digital transformation of the global working world.
On closer analysis of the Christiani sales and marketing processes and the systems used for the product portfolio, the need was identified to establish a centralized sales system based on a standard configuration and a uniform data basis that could be used by both the sales and marketing teams.
The following main question therefore proved to be essential for the project approach: How can a global 360˚ customer view be achieved at a global level on a system standard basis with the Microsoft D365 CRM already in use?
By combining strict standards, best practices and customer-specific requirements, a holistic "lead-to-order" end-to-end process was implemented in Dynamics D365 CRM Sales. The result enables quotations to be created and orders to be triggered in CRM and orders to be processed via a bidirectional interface to the AS400 (i-Series Power 9) in ERP. The employees were continuously involved in the change process from the start to the end of the project.
Order closings are initiated in the CRM and transferred to the ERP AS400 used by Christiani. Processed orders are transferred from the AS400 back to the CRM, thus ensuring an updated view of the sales process and the associated data.
Ultimately, the CRM acts as the data source of truth and provides a data basis that can be used by the field sales force as well as the internal sales force and marketing.
The entire lead-to-order process is mapped for the sales team in CRM on the basis of the standard. This means that all process steps from the appearance of a potential customer, the creation of a sales opportunity, the creation of the offer through to the conclusion of the order take place in the CRM and ensure a standardized way of working. In addition, the connection to the snapADDY trade fair report and lead capture system means that contacts and their activities are automatically recorded and updated in CRM.
