After working 15 years with a large global CRM provider Barona was at a crossroads. Markets were challenging, sales took more effort than it used to and the development of “the way sales is done” was changing quickly. The vision how to tackle the challenges wasn’t perfectly clear.
A New Way of Doing Sales
Barona, the Nordic-born expert in work, learning and wellbeing services had recently completed their new business strategy. The new direction did away with siloed structures and improved cross-department collaboration by unifying and sharing processes.
Digital Business Transformation Lead Riikka Lehtonen says the new One Barona strategy seeks to unify ways of working together. “Drafting the new strategy, we zoomed out and looked at everything from the perspective of all business areas. One of the things identified was the need for a new way of doing sales.” A central tool, the Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system naturally came under scrutiny in the process.
Barona wasn’t even sure they needed to switch to a new CRM partner. After all, the old CRM was working fine, but it had been customized to its capacity. Director of Sales Henri Pynnönen talks about how they thought long and hard about even looking for a new solution: “We had a decade and a half of experience with our partner, and had every possible integration built into the system. I personally believed in the beginning that changing the platform would be too costly.”
The CRM system needed to be ready for many new, if yet unknown things. Henri says: “That’s what finally tipped the scales. We are building a business process of the future, where sales will be a collaboration of man and machine. We knew we needed a CRM application and system that has the capabilities we’ll need at different points of our journey and progress, we just don’t know exactly what they are yet. We just need to be future proof!”
Choosing Microsoft Dynamics
After evaluating many options, Microsoft Dynamics proved to be the best. “We were already a Microsoft customer. We thought about how their tools were easy to use and simple to integrate”, Henri explains. “Unlike other applications, Microsoft’s products worked by a familiar logic, and would be easier to transition into.”
More Than a Tech Partner
Once Microsoft Dynamics was chosen, Barona needed a partner to work with. When vetting potential vendors Bofor stood out with a unique perspective and approach to this kind of project. Rather than just executing from a playbook, Bofor asks questions to make sure all decisions are relevant and beneficial in the big picture.
Henri illustrates this with a comparison: “Most consultancies take on a CRM project as a tech project. Bofor’s view was far more holistic, and work started by overhauling Barona’s full sales process! We scoped out our sales as far as we could see and then Bofor tailored Microsoft Dynamics around it.”
Riikka and Henri both agree that working with Bofor was positively different. Henri says: “Bofor’s project plan, schedule and budget made sense and were conclusive. Most importantly, the people we worked with were great! Barona is not a corporation in the traditional sense – we think of ourselves as go-getters who get things done; we’re very straight forward and direct. Bofor matches this perfectly.”
“Working with any Boforian is delightfully uncomplicated.”
Riikka continues: “It’s awesome to be able to talk things through very informally and just cut to the chase. In any project unexpected things are bound to come up. Any time we hit a snag we would just discuss it, find a fix, implement it, and move forward. Everybody at Bofor is genuinely interested in making sure the customer gets the best solution.”
Quick Schedule
To construct, configure, and fine-tune a CRM for a large business is a major effort, and there wasn’t much time. The decision to switch to a new CRM partner was made in May. After the handshake, Bofor reacted fast, and the kick-off was held the next week. Riikka highlights the working method: “We were hoping to get asked the right questions and be given alternatives to choose from so we wouldn’t end up planning for something that Microsoft Dynamics isn’t suited for. Bofor delivered on both.”
Over the summer Barona’s sales process was reconfigured, and the sketching out of the new CRM began. Actual work on the platform started soon after. In November Barona had the first version of Microsoft Dynamics sales platform in place.
Henri concludes: “Barona is now on a path towards future ways of doing business. Will our sales process change? It surely will, we just have no way of knowing exactly how. But when we do, we know we have the right tools to do it.”
More information:
- Bofor Oy: Joonas.Juola@bofor.com