Integrated GroupWise and CRM Solution Increases Sales at CPU Consultores
CPU Consultores is an international, multidisciplinary consultancy group in the fields of architecture, urban planning and property valuation. The company wanted to integrate Novell GroupWise with their corporate CRM.
Riva Integration Server provides the critical bridge between Novell GroupWise and info@hand. Account managers and salespeople now have access to their CRM accounts, contacts, calendar, leads, opportunities, quotes and support incidents directly from GroupWise.
A Platform for Profitability
During the past 25 years, CPU Consultores has consulted an impressive roster of customers in the areas of architecture, urban planning and property valuation. Founded in 1983 by Architect-Planner Adriano Callé Lucas as a single company, CPU Consultores now operates as a group of companies with a subsidiary for each division. Approximately 100 highly qualified and experienced staff work in the company’s European, African and Asian offices. CPU Consultores has made a wise investment in an integrated Novell GroupWise and CRM platform to enhance their profitability and growth.
Migration to GroupWise
Since their migration to Novell GroupWise in 2006 from Microsoft Exchange, CPU Consultores has experienced zero downtime.
"Novell GroupWise is our preferred email collaboration system," said Marcus Svensson, business development manager at CPU Consultores. "Compared to Microsoft Exchange, GroupWise delivers lower licensing costs, improved security and reduced downtime. In fact, we have had zero downtime in the past two years. End-users find GroupWise to be much faster than Exchange, which makes our team more efficient and productive on a daily basis."
CRM Benefits
"What truly makes our GroupWise system unique is that it is fully integrated with our corporate CRM," continued Svensson.
"CRMs provide a complete view of all customer interactions and data, including email, address information, sales leads, contacts, calls, appointments, opportunities, quotes, support incidents (cases) and purchased products."
"Many organisations still use a combination of spreadsheets, in-house databases, email folders, stacks of business cards, and network files to keep track of sales opportunities and customer interactions. As a result, opportunities often slip through the cracks, customer service becomes reactive, and new hires start with a ‘blank slate’ based on the lack of CRM data."
"In the GroupWise space, you may find organisations that are running Salesforce or Sugar, for example, but the critical integration piece is missing," said Svensson. "The challenge here is that account managers and salespeople may not invest the time to update the CRM, because it requires manually entering a lot of information and copying data from GroupWise over to the CRM. So, you end up with two incomplete silos of information—CRM address books that do not integrate with GroupWise, customer emails that do not appear in the CRM, email opportunities that do not get entered into the CRM, and incomplete CRM support case data."
"At CPU Consultores, we were looking to take a more structured approach to our sales system, customer relationship management processes and underlying IT infrastructure. We wanted our sales teams to work smarter, not harder, as we continue to grow and expand."
The Missing Link—Integration
"Historically, GroupWise has not integrated with enterprise CRMs, such as SugarCRM, Salesforce, Microsoft Dynamics CRM, GoldMine, SageCRM.com, info@hand CRM, Siebel On Demand and others," said Svensson. "That is, until the launch in 2008 of Riva Integration Server from Omni."
"Riva Integration Server delivers transparent, bi-directional, server-side integrations between GroupWise and eight major CRMs. No client-side plug-ins need to be installed or managed on the workstations. When I viewed the on-demand Riva client demo on Omni‘s website, I was very impressed."
Choosing the Right CRM
"The challenge with CRMs is that they involve significant switching costs if you make the wrong decision," said Svensson. "Some CRMs can end up controlling a company’s processes rather than molding to them. In the past, I worked with a hosted CRM that was inflexible, expensive, lacked the required integration we needed, and met with major push-back from end-users because of its complexity. As a result, the company did not realise the full potential of the system."
"Omni recommended that we look at SugarCRM Professional and info@hand CRM, a SugarCRM derivative with a compelling set of advanced features. We decided to trial info@hand and Riva Integration Server for two months and the pilot was a success."
Riva delivers much better integration for GroupWise than anything I have used in the past for Microsoft Exchange and other CRMs."
The Best of Both Worlds
"Riva has turned GroupWise into our most powerful selling tool. From any GroupWise client—Windows, Mac, Linux, WebAccess, BlackBerry or GroupWise Mobile Server device—we can access all our CRM data. We can access CRM account, contact, calendar, opportunity, quote and support case data directly from within GroupWise. GroupWise emails can also be archived into the CRM system and associated with accounts, contacts, opportunities, quotes or cases."
"Riva’s SmartConvert Drop Folders have proven a huge time-saver for us. We can drag-and-drop emails into Riva’s Smart Convert folders to automatically create opportunities and support cases, along with the associated account and contact data if they don’t already exist in info@hand. CRM opportunities and support cases can be viewed and sorted in GroupWise. When you click to edit them, they will automatically open the CRM to the appropriate opportunity or case. These advanced Riva integration features are terrific. You really have to see Riva in action to believe it."
GroupWise Partners
"Another interesting aspect of this project is how it represents the age of the global information economy," said Svensson. "Here you have an architectural consultancy from Lisbon (Portugal), running GroupWise collaboration software developed in Provo (USA), with a business development manager from Sweden, implementing a CRM developed by a company in Ottawa (Canada), hosted by a company in Helsinki (Finland), running Riva Integration Server developed by Omni in Edmonton (Canada). This is truly an international technology and business process success story."
The Results
"Riva Integration Server for info@hand and GroupWise is absolutely fantastic!" said Svensson. "We will never move from GroupWise based on the power of Riva."
"The success of this strategy has helped reinforce my position in the company and improve our core sales processes. We are well on our way to being able to support 200 or 300 employees as CPU Consultores continues to profit and grow."
More Information
Riva On-demand Presentations
www.omni-ts.com/quicktours/
Riva Integration for GroupWise
www.omni-ts.com/crm-integration/
Riva SharePoint Integration for GroupWise
www.omni-ts.com/crm-integration/sharepoint.html
Contact Details
www.omni-ts.com/contact-us.html