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8/4/2019 MS Colliers International CS
http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/ms-colliers-international-cs 1/6
Microsoft Dynamics
Customer Solution Case Study
Colliers International Builds Competitive
Advantage by Using CRM Solution
OverviewCountry or Region: United States
Industry: Professional services
Customer Profile
With 15,000 real-estate professionals in
480 offices worldwide, Colliers
International is the third-largest
commercial real-estate firm, offering a
combination of deep expertise and a
broad range of services.
Business Situation
To capitalize on its decentralized
organization and rapid growth, Colliers
wanted a standard customer relationshipmanagement solution that would give
brokers a 360-degree view of clients,
transactions, and properties.
Solution
Colliers built its new customer
relationship management platform on
top of Ascendix Technologies’ Real Estate
Advantage solution, which is based on
Microsoft Dynamics CRM.
Benefits
Improved information access andquality
Service excellence
Enhanced producer effectiveness
Faster time-to-market
“The Link application built on Microsoft Dynamics CRM
strengthens collaboration and information sharing
within Colliers, which is key to differentiating ourselves
from competitors.” Veresh Sita, Global CIO, Colliers International
After roughly doubling in size in two years, Colliers International
sought a standardized customer relationship management
platform that would help the company make the most of its
unique combination of geographic breadth and local expertise.
After considering other platforms, Colliers chose Microsoft
Dynamics CRM because of its ease of use, technical flexibility,
and the Real Estate Advantage solution from Microsoft Gold
Certified Partner Ascendix Technologies. The solution from
Ascendix adds industry-specific functionality to Microsoft
Dynamics CRM and saved Colliers at least eight months of
custom development. Brokers can now find and share
information about clients, transactions, and properties without
having to search separate systems. And, through Microsoft
SharePoint Server, people throughout the company have theinformation they need to make better decisions.
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SituationColliers International is like a U.S.$2 billion
startup, says Durgesh Sharma, Vice
President of Global IT at Colliers, the
world’s third-largest commercial real-estate
services firm. The company combines
decades of deep expertise in all aspects of
the real-estate industry with the mindset
more typically found in an agile and bold
newcomer. That is his simple explanation of
the unique mixture of broad geographic
reach, technological innovation, and nimblecollaboration that continues to transform
the company.
In the past three years, Colliers has
expanded dramatically, roughly doubling
its number of local offices and increasing
annual revenue from $600 million to about
$2 billion in 2010. The real-estate giant now
employs 15,000 professionals in 61
countries. Each of the company’s 480
offices around the world enjoys autonomy
in terms of business processes and systems.
Because of this decentralized model,Colliers can offer clients deep specialization
across the entire real-estate life cycle and
local market expertise around the globe.
“Colliers is growing, but we want to do so
in a way that maximizes the advantages of
our local offices,” explains Sharma. “We are
using technology to harness the full
capabilities of the organization to benefit
our customers.”
The IT road map at Colliers reflects the
company’s business strategy, and features
six components of an integratedtechnology platform: business intelligence,
enterprise search, unified communications,
collaboration, content and knowledge
management, and broker applications. “For
our broker applications, we wanted to
replace several, disparate legacy systems
for managing contact, transaction, and
property data with a single, integrated
solution,” says Sharma. “We wanted to
eliminate information silos that hindered
collaboration among brokers, discovery of
new opportunities, and market insights that
can benefit our customers.”
Specifically, Colliers envisioned a solution
that would provide brokers with a 360-
degree view of:
Contacts, including activities and
interactions, profiles of target properties,
marketing lists, and campaigns.
Companies, including contacts within acompany; portfolios of properties owned,
leased, and managed; and relationships.
Properties and projects, including
contacts relating to a property,
interactive maps, sale and lease
comparables, property and project
information, tenants, and stacking plans.
SolutionColliers quickly determined that the
existing customer relationship
management software it had in place in its
North American and Australia–NewZealand operations was unable to
accommodate all that the company had
planned. Looking for a new platform,
Colliers compared a number of customer
relationship management platforms. “We
discounted some platforms early on
because of limitations in customizing the
solution for industry-specific requirements
and the need for tighter integration with
existing applications,” says Sharma.
“Similarly, being a Microsoft shop, we
lacked the specialized development
expertise needed to extensively customizeon other platforms, which would have
meant having to hire expensive
development consultants if we had gone
that route.”
When Colliers learned about the Real Estate
Advantage solution from Microsoft Gold
Certified Partner Ascendix Technologies,
the balance swung in favor of Microsoft.
“By building on what
Ascendix has already
done with Microsoft
Dynamics CRM, we
saved at least eight
months of
development .… For a
growing company with
nearly $2 billion in
revenue, that was very
important to us.” Durgesh Sharma, Vice President of
Global IT, Colliers International
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Real Estate Advantage adds industry-
specific functionality to Microsoft Dynamics
CRM for brokerages, owners and operators,
and capital-market entities such as real-
estate investment trusts.
“Ascendix has done a great job of creating
the basic capabilities that any property
management or real-estate brokerage
would need,” says Sharma. “What we’ve
endeavored to do is take that foundation
and create a real competitivedifferentiation, developing capabilities that
amplify our broad reach and deep
specialization to bring added value to our
customers.”
A Multiregional Rollout
Building on the enhancements of Real
Estate Advantage, Colliers piloted its Link
solution based on Microsoft Dynamics CRM
in five months. The company is in the midst
of enhancing the solution and deploying it
in different regions around the world. So
far, Colliers has rolled out Link toapproximately 700 brokers in North
America and 50 brokers in Europe. Next,
the company plans to next deploy Link to
its team in the Australia–New Zealand
region. Within the next few years,
approximately 5,000 brokers will have
access to regional Link systems hosted in
Prague, Toronto, and Sydney. To
accommodate international requirements,
Colliers took advantage of the multilingual
and multicurrency capabilities in Microsoft
Dynamics CRM and functionality to convert
imperial measurement to metric
measurement.
Tools to Empower Producers
Employees at Colliers use Link to access
information, schedule and track activities,
generate reports, and manage salesprojects and marketing campaigns. Because
these functional areas are integrated,
employees can track lists of accounts,
contacts, and leads that match a specific set
of criteria that spans sales, marketing, and
service. In addition, brokers can access Link
functionality from directly within Microsoft
Outlook, and the two programs are
connected so that changes made to
contacts in Outlook are automatically
reflected in Link, and vice versa.
Link enables brokers to investigate marketopportunities with built-in mapping
capability powered by Bing Maps for
Enterprise. Colliers customized the
mapping function so that brokers can draw
a custom polygon on top of a map and
then apply specific search filters. Search
results appear in tabular form and as
colored pins on the map. A Bird’s Eye view
is also available, helping brokers to better
understand a property and its surrounding
landscape.
Integration with Business SystemsTo provide brokers with a 360-degree view
of client, transaction, and property
information, Colliers created connections
between Link, which stores data about
clients, and the company’s Deal Tracking
System (DTS), which records the status of
deals, invoices and payments received, and
information about sales pipelines and
broker commissions. “DTS reads client and
Link is available directly withinOutlook, in web browsers, andon mobile devices.
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property data stored in Link,” says Sharma.
“And, after we complete a deal, all the
details related to that transaction are
uploaded to Link.” Similarly, Colliers built
connections between Link and the
company’s SPEX real-time database of
market listings. This integration enables
brokers to view and report on sale and
lease comparables from within Link.
Connections to Microsoft Office
SharePoint Server 2007 and Microsoft
Office Communications Server 2007
Brokers and managers at Colliers can viewreports generated in Link on the company’s
Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007
portal. Colliers is currently working on
creating dashboards that dynamically
reflect the same type of data but in a
format that people can easily scan. The
company has also implemented similar
functionality for clients, enabling them to
view relevant property and activity
information imported from Link online.
“Now, we take full advantage of the way
that Microsoft products and technologies
work together to facilitate employee
collaboration,” says Sharma. For example,
Colliers used Office SharePoint Server as
the basis for its Our People application that
lets employees identify and connect with
colleagues who may be able to help them
capture a new opportunity. “Our Peopleand Link work together to help brokers
team up to provide the best service
possible to clients,” says Sharma. “Now, it’s
easier for someone with hotel expertise or
connections in one city to work with a
colleague located in another city, if that’s
what is best for the client. Eventually, we
plan to connect Microsoft Office
Communications Server to our telephony
system. That way, our employees can easily
see when a colleague is available to talk
and initiate a call with a click of a button.”
BenefitsColliers International uses Microsoft
Dynamics CRM to capitalize on its unique
strengths as a global commercial real-
estate powerhouse with highly
decentralized operations. “The Link
application built on Microsoft Dynamics
CRM strengthens collaboration and
information sharing within Colliers, which is
key to differentiating ourselves from
competitors,” says Veresh Sita, Global CIO
at Colliers.
Improved Information Access and
Quality
By implementing a standardized customer
relationship management solution for each
geographic region, Colliers gains visibility
into business operations in those regions.
And, because of the way that Link
integrates seamlessly with Office
SharePoint Server, employees without
Link includes mapping capabilityto facilitate market research.
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direct access to the broker application can
benefit from the data as well. “We haven’t
touted it this way, but Link provides
decision makers throughout our company
with improved business intelligence,” says
Janice Lai, Business Application Manager at
Colliers. “Producers have the information
they need to drive a better deal for their
clients, optimize building utilization, or
proactively position their clients in light of
emerging market trends. Some of our
offices in North America have evenenhanced their recruiting strategy based on
the availability of these types of
collaboration tools.”
Local offices in the Colliers network
tremendously improved the quality of their
client information with Microsoft Dynamics
CRM. “During one of our first
implementations, we asked 35 brokers in
one metropolitan region to provide us with
their contact information,” recalls Sharma.
“We received approximately 70,000
contacts, but trimmed that number throughconsolidation to just 22,000 contacts. Link
automatically synchronizes with client
records and activities in Outlook so that
this type of data duplication is virtually
eliminated. As a result, our brokers have
greater confidence and are more
productive. Link is a valuable, go-to
resource for client research.”
Service Excellence
As Colliers continues to grow, the
company’s leaders want to maintain the
autonomy of local offices but facilitate
collaboration among those offices. “Built on
Microsoft Dynamics CRM, Link is a keycomponent in our strategy of enabling
brokers in the Colliers network to work with
one another more easily,” explains Sharma.
“We believe our clients will benefit when
we can bring together teams of varied local
and industry expertise. Service excellence
requires collaboration throughout the
company, but it’s a significant
organizational challenge. Link is a great
example of how technology can help with
cultural transformation within an
organization.”
Enhanced Producer Effectiveness
Link simplifies everyday producer tasks and
eliminates the need to record and look for
client information in a stand-alone system.
Available within Outlook, web browsers,
and mobile devices, Link promotes fast user
adoption because it borrows the familiar
user interface and navigation of Outlook.
“Because it is built by Microsoft, Microsoft
Dynamics CRM takes advantage of what
employees already know about Outlook
and other Microsoft Office applications. If
people know how to use email, searchcontacts, and schedule tasks and
appointments in Outlook, they can begin
using Link right away,” says Sharma. “Most
importantly, the solution improves the
effectiveness of our brokers in attracting
and retaining clients while reducing the
time spent on administrative tasks. This has
been our primary message when
Brokers can view stacked heatmaps for commercial officesbased on suite lease expirationdates.
“Producers have the
information they need to
drive a better deal for
their clients, optimize
building utilization, or
proactively position their
clients in light of
emerging market
trends.” Janice Lai, Business Application Manager,
Colliers International
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promoting the solution to our regional
operations.”
Faster Time-to-Market
Instead of having to develop commercial
real-estate functionality on its own, Colliers
saved time and resources by using the Real
Estate Advantage solution from Ascendix.
“By building on what Ascendix has already
done with Microsoft Dynamics CRM, we
saved at least eight months of
development and radically decreased ourtime-to-market,” says Sharma. “For a
growing company with nearly $2 billion in
revenue, that was very important to us. Our
in-house development team continues to
work on the next versions of Link, and we
are looking forward to the next release of
Microsoft Dynamics CRM, which will add
powerful new capabilities.”
Additional Resources Real Estate Advantage:
www.ascendix.com/ascendix-
solutions.php Microsoft case study on the Our People
application at Colliers:
www.microsoft.com/casestudies/Case_St
udy_Detail.aspx?CaseStudyID=40000069
36
Microsoft DynamicsMicrosoft Dynamics is a line of integrated,
adaptable business management solutions
that enables you and your people to make
business decisions with greater confidence.
Microsoft Dynamics works like familiar
Microsoft software such as Microsoft Office,
which means less of a learning curve for
your people, so they can get up and
running quickly and focus on what’s most
important. And because it is from
Microsoft, it easily works with thesystems that your company already has
implemented. By automating and
streamlining financial, customer
relationship, and supply chain processes,
Microsoft Dynamics brings together
people, processes, and technologies,
increasing the productivity and
effectiveness of your business, and helping
you drive business success.
For more information about Microsoft
Dynamics, go to:
www.microsoft.com/dynamics
For More InformationFor more information about Microsoft
products and services, call the Microsoft
Sales Information Center at (800) 426-
9400. In Canada, call the Microsoft
Canada Information Centre at (877) 568-
2495. Customers in the United States and
Canada who are deaf or hard-of-hearing
can reach Microsoft text telephone
(TTY/TDD) services at (800) 892-5234.
Outside the 50 United States and
Canada, please contact your localMicrosoft subsidiary. To access
information using the World Wide Web,
go to:
www.microsoft.com
For more information about Colliers
International products and services, call
(206) 223-0866 or visit the website at:
www.colliers.com
For more information about Ascendix
Technologies products and services, call
(972) 889-8090 and select option #2, orvisit the website at:
www.ascendix.com
This case study is for informational purposes only.MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS ORIMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY.
Document published February 2011
Software and Services Microsoft Dynamics
− Microsoft Dynamics CRM
Microsoft Office
− Microsoft Outlook
Microsoft Server Product Portfolio
− Microsoft Office SharePoint Server
Technologies
− Bing Maps for Enterprise
Partners Ascendix Technologies