Asset Finance Company

The business has grown rapidly since its launch four years ago. The challenge was around whether their existing business systems were fit for purpose and would be able to cope with the significant increase in business activity. The company relied on an older version of Microsoft Dynamics, alongside a suite of Word documents, spreadsheets, and other systems, together with a mix of paper-based processes. This not only meant that a lot of data was being duplicated but also it was increasingly difficult to access information quickly and execute business processes efficiently. User engagement was also affected due to impractical functionality within the old system and meant that employees found themselves working outside of the CRM. Alongside this there were excessive manual communications between departments, hindering employee productivity.

Due to data being stored in several places, management lacked insight into the end-to-end sales process, which is essential for making informed decisions. Having a 360-degree view of the end-to-end sales process was one of the key goals to be achieved within this project, providing a view into employee’s activities & performance, opportunity pipeline & forecasts, and the status of deals.

Other key goals to be achieved are outlined below:

1. Improve overall operational & process efficiency
2. Better support for management decision making
3. Improve employee productivity

To achieve the main goals for out client we proposed an upgrade to the latest version of Microsoft Dynamics 365 with additional customisation to suit their current needs.

Following that, the end-to-end sales process was rearchitected to accommodate specific client requirements. That improved the way in which opportunities were split up into finance requirements, lender proposals were created & submitted, and transactions were processed.

As part of the project, Pragmatiq also implemented a document generation tool. This replaced the manual workload around lender proposal generation and allowed documents to be generated quickly, efficiently, accurately and in a professional manner.

To improve operational efficiency and the flow between departments, multiple processes were automated. To assist with this goal, department-specific apps were developed to give each team access to what they needed. This eliminated both the need for manual communication and time spent searching for data.

Alongside this, we replaced some of the previously customised functionality within the system, with standard tools like Power Automate. This means that when Dynamics is upgraded, the platform is more stable, providing long-term benefits.

Towards the end of this Phase 1 project, a series of User Training sessions were then undertaken to ensure users fully understood how to use the CRM and utilise all the benefits it provides to improve their day-to-day processes.

Through the implementation of our proposed solution, the following benefits were realised:

• Improved employee productivity – By automating processes and replacing some of the customisations with standard functionality, employees were more productive and spent less time on manual tasks. As the impractical elements of the previous system were amended, users were more engaged and understood the benefits; increasing adoption.
• Efficient and faster document generation – The employees are now able to generate documents quickly and accurately, saving time and increasing operational efficiency. This new tool will save around 75% manual administration time spent on manually generating these documents.
• Improved management visibility – All sales data is now in the system meaning managers have a full view of the end-to-end sales process. Using this data, managers can make more strategic decisions, train staff more efficiently, identify trends and forecast effectively. Previously, a lot of data was held in spreadsheets, making reporting a challenge; this is now much more efficient as data is consolidated in one central application.
• Single truth of customer – All client activity is now tracked throughout the sales process within Dynamics 365. Due to siloed departments previously, some notes were stored locally and meant internal communication was a challenge. All users can now see when a customer was last contacted, any notes relating to them and identify future opportunities for cross-selling.
• Enhanced insight into the performance of lenders – Through data collected in Microsoft Dynamics 365, the organisation is able to actively track the performance of lenders. This allows them to monitor and identify areas to drive and increase performance and provides tangible data to support negotiations.