Orix CRM Case Study

Competitive Strength through Successful CRM and Sales Management Integration

While many companies rate the adoption of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) as a growing priority, maximizing the performance of any CRM technology requires on-going business integration and commitment across the whole sales and customer service function.

Peter Walsh, General Manager ORIX New Zealand said, “internal buy-in and understanding has to happen before a CRM strategy can really work”.

“ORIX realized that in order for the implementation of the CRM technology to be a success, the company needed its sales and call centre staff to understand the reasons for the implementation of CRM,” Mr Walsh said.

With a wide range of fleet and financial service offerings, ORIX New Zealand has faced considerable competition over the last decade. As a result, StayinFront, Inc, provided ORIX New Zealand with a highly relevant and cost effective CRM solution to better manage their marketing, sales and customer service initiatives.

“Having the right CRM technology which is flexible enough to keep pace with our changing requirements, has enabled ORIX to achieve peak levels of customer satisfaction, retention, loyalty and repeat business”.

ORIX’s core solution consists of StayinFront’s flagship Visual Elkä technology - to create a CRM system tailored specifically to meet their business and customer’s unique needs. Panoramaä, StayinFront’s powerful data analysis and decision support tool, was also chosen to gain a total view of their customers and to help use the customer intelligence to develop new marketing and sales initiatives.

Mr Walsh said, “despite having the best CRM technology employed in 1996, ORIX knew the reason for the high failure of CRM technologies in other organizations was because of their lack of internal buy-in”.

As a result, ORIX partnered with SRD Group in 1997 to conduct a comprehensive training program to more than 100 staff prior to the rollout of their CRM solution.

“This allowed ORIX to correctly position their new CRM system in the minds of staff and cultivate an extremely positive attitude towards embracing CRM,” he said.

Participants on the training program included Sales Managers, Account Managers and Supervisors – to meet every level of the customer-sales interface.

Mr Walsh said “the training enabled ORIX to identify potential CRM user and system issues early and to plan an internal implementation strategy to deal with these issues before the CRM rollout”.

“The staff buy-in and adoption of StayinFront’s CRM system has been very impressive – the rate of adoption of CRM by our sales and customer staff has been very high,” he said.

ORIX is continuing to partner with StayinFront, Inc. to develop their next phase of CRM implementation strategy. The company recently upgraded their CRM technology from Visual Elk 7.5 to Visual Elk 8.1 to optimize the integration of their newly adopted Mercuri International sales process.

Mr Walsh said the Mercuri sales program was implemented to provide ORIX with powerful sales Platforms™ to better manage existing business relationships and new sales opportunities.

Mercuri International provided the sales division with consistent sales processes to strengthen the quality of existing client relationships. The program also enables them to identify and prioritize new prospects and business opportunities more effectively.

He said Mercuri, combined with the Visual Elk CRM technology, is a powerful sales forecasting tool, providing ORIX with the capacity to accurately project and manage future sales activity.

“StayinFront, Inc., SRD Group and Mercuri International consultants will now work collaboratively to implement best practice over the entire sales and customer service functions.

They will also be working with ORIX’s sales and customer service teams to help them maximize the use of the CRM system and the Mercuri sales process”.

Mr Walsh said that in order for CRM best practice to really work, ORIX will constantly monitor and review what the sales and customer service people are doing, and this will be analyzed carefully through “strategic and performance methodologies” developed through SRD Group.

“We believe ORIX New Zealand is continuing to implement a successful model of CRM integration because we are empowering our sales and customer service staff. They now understand the benefits of CRM and how their role is intricately linked to the overall success of the CRM strategy,” he said.

ORIX New Zealand is part of the global ORIX group, one of the world’s largest non-bank financial institutions with more than 500 offices in 26 countries. It has assets of more than AUS$60 billion and remains at the forefront of the leasing industry, which it pioneered. The company has also diversified and expanded into a multi-national financial service organization.

The company specializes in the acquisition, financing and management of vehicles and other forms of transport, but also finances manufacturing and construction plant and equipment. It provides commercial finance, property finance, business finance, factoring and specialist fleet management leasing services.
 

21/2/2001