Case study: mobilizing workflows

Kenna Group is a leader in end-to-end customer relationship marketing solutions. For this progressive company, the rules of customer relationship management are pretty simple: give customers the consistent level of attention they deserve and they will reward you through increased loyalty and spending.

The company uses its marketing technology infrastructure and expertise to help clients integrate data management and analytics solutions with their marketing strategies, and was recently tasked with developing a strategy for better managing customer complaints for a client, the Canadian division of one of the world’s largest chemical corporations. The chemical company’s existing paper-based system was riddled with delays, errors and inefficiencies. Complaints from the company’s industrial customers were logged and assigned to a sales representative, who would then visit the customer site to determine how to resolve the issue. Throughout the process, all information was handwritten on paper forms; forms were compiled on a weekly basis and sent to headquarters to be manually entered into the database. Only then would company executives have any visibility into the status of the customer’s problem. In addition, data entry specialists often had difficulty reading the handwritten forms, resulting in inaccurate data that further compounded the process.

The solution

Kenna Group developed a digitally based, highly-portable solution that enables their client’s sales representatives to record customer visits onsite and synchronize their entries with the corporate CRM database in real-time. The company selected the Intellisync Mobile Suite with Data Sync from Nokia, combined with the Palm PDA platform and an IBM Lotus Notes workflow application designed for handhelds. “Intellisync had a strong reputation for providing mobile device synchronization and empowering mobile professionals,” said Jeff Bowles, Executive Vice President at Kenna Group. “This client needed a proven, reliable solution, making Intellisync a natural choice.”

Now, the chemical company’s representatives can record interviews, take notes, even digitally capture the customer’s signature to confirm a satisfactory resolution – all while on site with the customer. All data is instantly sent and synchronized with the corporate customer database, without any delay or risk of data entry errors. And the ability to synchronize the PDA on demand with the corporate customer database enables sales representatives to access updated information to better address the issue.

Benefits

With the Intellisync Mobile Suite, Kenna Group’s solution had an immediate impact on their client’s CRM processes. The Data Sync technology eliminated the paperwork issues that were delaying the chemical company’s ability to quickly resolve customer complaints. By synchronizing the Palm PDA applications with the corporate database from the field, the client company is able to move information into their CRM system faster than ever before. Synchronization of information gathered in the field with the customer database in the office gives company executives real-time visibility into the status of customer complaints. Instead of waiting for records to be compiled at the end of the week, key decision makers can monitor a situation as it happens, giving them the responsiveness and agility needed to better manage business risks, customer risks and liability issues. Using the Palm-based application, the chemical company’s sales representatives can now access customer data in the field. Instead of having to return to the office, the representatives can retrieve up-to-date critical customer data while onsite, empowering them to fine-tune recommendations, make better-informed decisions, and resolve issues more rapidly. Kenna Group’s client also witnessed a significant improvement in data quality and accuracy as observations are entered directly into the system from the sales representatives. And by eliminating the paper-based system, the Intellisync solution reduced the cost of manually collecting, entering and distributing data.

Key features include:

• High-performance architecture is achieved through: distributed components installation, dynamic load balancing, scalable clustered architecture, server failover, field-level sync, check point restart, store and forward model, advanced compression and performance optimization tools.
• Complex data management is designed to handle the most complex enterprise database and business logic with: bidirectional synchronization, server-side change capture mechanisms, complex data segmentation, full and partial client refreshes, automated data type conversions, automatic data realignment, and configurable conflict resolution.
• Powerful admin tools protect the system administrator from 95 percent of the effort of managing complex data with: Standard ODBC Mapping Object, Extensible Mapping API, Data Mapping Wizard, Microsoft Management Console (MMC) plug-in, remote administration, comprehensive logging detail, console-based log view, real-time monitoring and configurable alert delivery.
• Non-invasive integration for easy and extremely rapid integration into a wide variety of environments with: no changes to database schema, no changes to application data access, heterogeneous database support, APIs for client components, device compatibility and handheld VPN support.
• Intellisync Mobile Suite Integration that is also capable of moving e-mail, PIM (Personal Information Management) application data, files, web pages and travel data throughout your mobile network.

“Intellisync had a strong reputation for providing mobile device synchronization and empowering mobile professionals. This client needed a proven reliable solution, making Intellisync the natural choice”
Jeff Bowles, Executive Vice President, Kenna Group