Case Study: Shapiro Metals - Dynamics CRM Implementation & Adoption
Business Challenge
Shapiro Metals is a scrap metal processing company headquartered in St. Louis, Missouri. Established in 1904 by Max Shapiro, the company buys, recycles, and sells metal to manufacturers, fabricators, and builders around the globe. With ten recycling centers across the United States, Shapiro prides itself on environmental consciousness and makes tremendous efforts to maximize amounts of usable scrap metal from their source companies.
Shapiro required a customized CRM system that could manage relationships with scrap metal vendors and capture the specific considerations of their industry. After implementing the solution with their former CRM partner, adopting it proved to be a struggle. Shapiro's initial CRM partner took a one-size-fits-all approach and delivered the product largely out-of-the-box. The solution they deployed complicated the lead entry process by including irrelevant fields. These challenges were due to a mismatch between the partner's communication style and assessment methods and Shapiro's individualized needs. Shapiro realized that they needed a partner with greater depth and flexibility of expertise with Dynamics CRM, as well as the ability to fully drill down into the company’s requirements.
Solution
Shapiro eventually sought a new partner in Turnkey Technologies, Inc. upon a referral that highlighted their customer-first approach in business systems implementation. After a thorough discovery phase that included a 360-degree view into Shapiro’s processes, Turnkey began to execute the necessary Dynamics CRM customizations. The team removed irrelevant lead fields and streamlined the process by setting up a single screen for entry and tracking. Turnkey also identified other areas where Dynamics CRM could be enhanced to optimize purchasing processes. This included adding the ability to automate follow-up activities during lead entry and setting up a dashboard to track purchase and sales representative activity.
Business Benefits
Benefit #1: Enhanced Lead Tracking Process
With the optimized and streamlined lead entry and tracking process, Shapiro's representatives save a significant amount of time when adding and amending records in CRM. Since the unnecessary fields were removed and relevant ones added, the end result of the new process is that representatives have a greater ability to identify sources of byproducts that meet Shapiro's scrap metal qualifications. All of this is in addition to considerations such as proximity to one of Shapiro's recycling centers. These enhancements ultimately facilitate proposals to and relationships with suppliers. On top of that, the enhanced automated follow-up activities allow representatives to schedule next actions in lead records, triggering notifications on individual CRM dashboards and/or in Outlook when a scheduled date approaches.
Benefit #2: Improved Management and Planning
Before working with Turnkey, Shapiro's purchasing and sales representatives had to manually track their activities in spreadsheets and periodically submit them to management. Now everything is automatically updated on the new sales management dashboard. The dashboard provides easy access to reliable information on representatives’ opportunity probabilities, activities, statuses, and close rates. These features make it easier for Shapiro's management to evaluate performance and plan for the year according to sales and purchasing trends.
Benefit #3: Powerful Integrations for the Future
“We are looking to use the Connector for Dynamics to hook CRM into GP,” says
Pulizzo. By integrating the two systems, JS Logistics can harness full control over
their data and use it in more diverse ways to help them strategize, make more
informed decisions, and identify hard-to-spot trends.
Client Comments
“Turnkey’s professional caliber is unparalleled. The team’s business acumen, combined with their patience and vision, makes them an unbeatable partner who we enjoy working with. We are confident that we can rely on them to meet our needs going forward.”
-Bob Alvarez, Vice President of Operations, Shapiro Metals
“With our previous partner, it was like the blind leading the blind. Turnkey Technologies listened to us, documented our needs and had the right mix of people with technical, functional and customer-focused vision to turn our requirements into realities.”
-Bob Alvarez, Vice President of Operations, Shapiro Metals
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About Turnkey
Since 1994, Turnkey Technologies has delivered real business process modernization, improvement, and Return on Investment (ROI) to hundreds of businesses from Small-Medium (SMB) to Enterprise. Our experienced team brings deep technical and functional expertise across numerous industries with an emphasis on Defense Manufacturing, Medical Device Manufacturing, Project Services, and more. Valet service and an extraordinary customer experience are the hallmarks of our mission, and we stand ready to deliver the real improvements that our customers need to compete in the 21st century.
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