Speed Up Quote-to-Order Process to Give Your Sales Team More Time for Customers

Both the efficiency and speed of your company’s quote-to-order process play a vital role in the amount of quality time you can spend with your customers. If the workflow is bogged down due to errors and a lack of automation, your sales team needs to spend time fixing things. And that takes attention away from closing on new business and providing services to existing accounts. 

That was the challenge faced by one of our customers—a distributor of health and beauty products. The management team knew the answer would likely come from adding more capabilities to its existing custom CRM application. But expanding the functionality of the software would require an expensive rewriting of the codebase. 

At the same time, the distributor was in the process of upgrading its Microsoft Dynamics NAV ERP platform. Given the move to the latest version of NAV, it made sense to deploy a true enterprise CRM solution at the same time with all the key capabilities the management teams required.  

Dynamics 365 Sales Streamlines Integration with ERP and Email 

Specific must-have functionality for our client included notes that would transfer back-and-forth automatically between CRM and Microsoft Outlook calendars and follow-up reminders. The sales team also needed to break down leads by status to help drive processes for converting leads into customers. 

The distributor first considered deploying a Salesforce CRM solution but ultimately decided on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales. We demonstrated how with Microsoft NAV and Outlook already in place, integrating those technologies with Dynamics 365 Sales is easier, and the flow of data among all the systems is smoother. Our client also benefits from collaborating with us as the sole partner for both the ERP and CRM platforms. 

We assisted with implementing Dynamics 365 Sales and integrating it with NAV so the quote-to-order process within NAV is embedded into the CRM platform. That means the sales team can now access the process easily within their primary application.  

We also provided training services to get the sales and management teams accustomed to the new CRM solution. The adjustment was fairly smooth given that Dynamics 365 Sales has the same look and feel as other Microsoft solutions. 

75% Faster Quote-to-Order Process Increases Sales Productivity 25% 

With Dynamics 365 Sales, it’s now easier to manage orders for customers, who include other distributors and retailers as well as consumers around the globe who purchase products from the company website. The management team estimates the quote-to-order process has improved by 75% in terms of speed-to-complete and order accuracy.  

This enables the sales team to increase their efficiency and productivity by more than 25%, with each member gaining about one hour per day to handle other tasks, such as direct interactions with customers. And the integration with the ERP system facilitates cross-functional application adoption and greater usage. This is leading to other workflow efficiency gains for the sales team and adds to the time they spend building stronger customer relationships and generating more sales. 

For information on how Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales can help your company improve the efficiency of your sales process, contact us today to start the conversation.