Leading construction company penetrates new markets

Smart is... Strengthening decision-making, automating workflow and collaborating in real-time by extending access to data and CRM functionality to smartphones. As a growing midsize business that continues to expand into new markets, VCC wanted to empower its project managers with real-time access to the critical information needed to service accounts, build relationships, retain profitable customers, collaborate with colleagues and quickly retrieve client information. VCC contracted with iEnterprises to provide its mobile sales force with a CRM solution and the ability to access business critical customer and project related information, remotely and in real-time via their Blackberry® as well as their Apple iPads. Leveraging a range of IBM technologies in its iExtensions CRM system and smartphone client, Mobile Edge®, iEnterprises synchronized the company’s existing Lotus Domino platform with its sales, marketing, executive and customer service teams. “The bottom line is, our sales within new vertical market categories have increassed 40% during a time when we were fundamentally expanding our business,” says Wayne Alley, vice president VCC.

Business Benefits• Provides ability to analyze, organize and distribute data throughout the organization in real-time• Improves executive decision-making and saves approximately 400 employee-hours per month previously spent on manual, paper-based processes• Improves decision making, shortens sales cycles and significantly increases new business opportunities by making client interactions and client contact information accessible to all sales representatives through their smartphones• Automates workflows and proactively funnels information to sales representatives without prompting, allowing them to quickly access information for RFPs and RFQs.• Real-time analytics and mobile capabilities eliminate the 3-day time lag previously required for project feasibility study • Contributes to 40% year-over-year increase in new business within new high growth industries• Reduces processing time for inbound customer service inquiries by 30 to 50 percent
Smarter

An established construction company with a reputation built primarily on its work on large scale retail projects, Little Rock, Arkansas-based VCC relied extensively on word of mouth and reputation for ongoing business generation. That is, until downturns in the economy began taking a toll on the retail sector.

With opportunities dwindling in its traditional niche, VCC embarked on a campaign to establish a foothold in other sectors, primarily targeting healthcare, government and educational institution-related projects.

This move placed a new emphasis on proactive lead generation and the ability to provide remote project managers with immediate access to data critical to identifying opportunities, servicing accounts and building relationships. Beyond this external collaboration, VCC project managers also needed the capacity to update data from the field, distribute real-time information throughout the organization and provide executive decision-makers with crucial real-time analytics.

Configurability and Mobility are “must-haves”
The legacy CRM system in place at VCC - essentially a stand-alone, static contact database - provided none of these capabilities. A highly configurable and smartphone-enabled CRM solution from IBM Business Partner, iEnterprises, called iExtensions CRM, did.
With salespeople and project managers spending most of their time working remotely at prospective project sites, and having instituted explicit workflows and procedures, VCC looked to iEnterprises for a CRM solution that met two major criteria: it had to be easily configurable and it had to be mobile. “iExtensions CRM has a very, very high level of configurability, with a point-and-click interface that enables us to script process management intelligence - called automation - directly into the solution without writing any code. So our solution adapts to their business processes,” explains John Carini, CEO, iEnterprises. “And the mobility piece is a big differentiator in that we’re not just providing a browser-based solution. Our application actually gets loaded on mobile devices and we have a local data store on the device so VCC project managers on a job site can exploit that intelligence in real-time. We’re using the mobility in tandem with a smarter solution to do things differently.”

Smart process management
As an example, Carini cites how VCC project managers, by accessing iExtensions CRM via BlackBerry, are able to much more efficiently and effectively manage the process for evaluating the viability of prospective projects. “VCC calculates whether or not a project is feasible based on a formula weighing about 20 different criteria. Project managers used to email each project’s criteria back to the central office, where someone did the calculations and sent their answer back two to three days later. Now, through an automation we have in place, iExtensions CRM computes the project’s value to VCC instantaneously and extends it out to the mobile device. Rather than waiting three days, a project manager standing at the site can punch in the information, click a button and receive the project’s score within moments.”

By virtue of its integration with IBM’s Lotus Notes and Domino 8.5.1, Websphere, DB2, the iExtensions CRM Smartphone client instruments VCC staff in ways previously not possible. VCC project managers now bypass laptops in favor of their BlackBerry when reporting activity, and that activity is instantly reflected within the central iExtensions CRM database. Other project managers have accessed information that resides in iExtensions CRM through their iPads.
Analyzing information on-the-go “Using wireless technologies, we can capture and tap all our information wherever we happen to be, improving the way we work and the speed and effectiveness in which we service customers, collaborate, communicate, and close new business,” says Wayne Alley, vice president, VCC.

Instrumented: Sales and project management personnel access, share and analyze business critical information from the VCC database from any remote location via Blackberry® smartphones and Apple iPads

Interconnected: Seamless integration of database, CRM and smartphone client enables VCC to manage and update contact information, log activities and call reports, and view related contact and status information across the organization.

Intelligent: By using these wireless technologies, VCC personnel can capture and exploit information from any location, improving workflow, generating new business and increasing the speed and effectiveness of customer service and internal/external collaboration.

“We’re analyzing information on-the-go to make intelligent, real-time decisions -- it’s changing the way we work.”
Today, VCC no longer prints multiple reports, manually tallies trends or runs ad hoc analysis for lead generation. iExtensions CRM automatically alerts managers to trends and proactively funnels information to project managers, providing them with the visibility needed to identify new leads and quickly pull information to support requests for proposals and quotes.

The solution, which won the IBM Best in Showcase award at Lotusphere 2010, can trigger a series of workflows based on input from mobile devices. For instance, when a message is received from a VCC project manager on the BlackBerry that an opportunity has transitioned into a win, that information is fed into the iExtensions CRM solution, which may then launch a job scheduling application, attach a workflow to it and distribute that workflow throughout the organization through Lotus Notes and BlackBerry calendars. The system is also able to react to, and learn from discrepancies within the workflow, providing alternative sets of instructions should a task or deadline be missed or changed.

Growing business, increasing productivity
According to Alley, such productivity and information sharing enhancements have resulted in an average savings of 400 employee hours per month, even as VCC has increased its new client roster by 40% within new industry sectors over the previous year. “VCC’s business expansion into new high growth industries have been made easier because of the capabilities iExtensions CRM gives us, because those capabilities are immediately accessible to our
project managers in the field and because intelligence can be shared in real-time throughout our organization. It has allowed us to be much more proactive and smart about how to approach this brand new marketplace.”

“We’re analyzing information on-the-go to make intelligent, real-time decisions -- it’s changing the way we work.”
– Wayne Alley, vice president, VCC

The Inside Story: Getting There

Enabling cultural change
The decision to depart from its traditional niche to pursue mainly publicly funded construction projects was both necessary and prescient, but it introduced significant cultural change to VCC. Rather than relying on a long-established reputation in retail construction to drive business activity, VCC salespeople and project managers now had to proactively uncover and manage new business in a new market. They needed tools that would allow them to analyze opportunities and make better decisions in the field, which would require a highly configurable and mobile CRM solution.

“Our sales team was initially hesitant to use the solution, but iExtensions CRM’s mobile technology overcame that barrier. They soon realized how much more productive and effective they could be by virtue of being able to access a very robust solution on their Blackberry,” explains Wayne Alley of VCC. “That was key. Our executives, marketing, project managers and IT teams each had their own requirements, but we all had a common goal, which was to enable the organization to conquer a new market.” Alley has seen that goal realized. “ Results speak for themselves. The bottom line is, our sales within new vertical market categories have increased 40% during a time when we were fundamentally expanding our business. The iEnterprises solution, along with IBM products, like the Lotus suite and Websphere, have played a critical role in that and will continue to play that role in the future.”