Brighton Based, Experience Education has multiple brands working with groups from schools, universities and supporters.
They started using Maximizer CRM in the 90’s which worked well and grew to more than 230 users across 20 brands.
Background to the project
When system ownership shifted from the brands and became centralised, the incoming Digital Director reviewed the situation with Matt Royal, the newly appointed CRM Manager.
They realised that adoption varied hugely, from 100% usage in some brands and almost no use in other parts. So, although the CRM system was originally implemented to increase revenues, reduce costs and minimise risks, the benefits had become patchy. Matt was tasked with bringing back the benefits that senior management were looking for.
Unearthing issues
The first step was to review the system with the users. This highlighted a number of points:
- Configuration did not suit all brands
- There were infrastructure issues around servers, Citrix and access speeds
- Lack of central leadership for the use of Maximizer CRM
- Maximizer was not used for high-level reporting, so many senior managers were not engaged
- Failed attempts at centralisation in the past had reduced the will to change
- With no method of tracking purchases across multiple brands in place, corporate objectives such as a loyalty program were not possible
- No use was made of a web or mobile client
This meant that the various brands’ experiences were diverse – different databases, different versions, different adoptions and different expectations.
Single Customer View
The outcome of this review was the SCV – Single Customer View – project. They started with user forums where other issues were raised, including:
- They had no sector-standard email marketing service provider, meaning integration was not worth commissioning
- Marketing profiles were all too brand-specific so the structure didn’t work for corporate objectives
What about Maximizer CRM?
At this point Experience Education realised that the resolution of all these issues was fairly straightforward and they could now plan on getting everyone up to speed. Furthermore, Maximizer CRM was reviewed and the conclusion was that, with clearer direction, Maximizer and Experience Education’s long-time partner, Collier Pickard, could deliver against the newly defined requirements. The key to success was determined to be Central Control with Local Flexibility. As part of the SCV programme, Matt identified the following needs:
- To rationalise the number of databases in order to increase cross-brand visibility
- To get everyone on to the same software version to simplify training and support
- To get everyone on to web and mobile to reduce the IT overhead and increase flexibility
- To improve data integrity
- To commission integrations as necessary
Benefits that Maximizer CRM brought
The key win and core benefit was that changes occurred at zero marginal cost. Integrations commissioned from CP are, where necessary, unique – but written to a common platform. Since these are generic in style, it means they are configurable by Experience Education marketers without any external spend. This, in turn, delivers massively reduced on-boarding costs for new brands because changes are quick and have zero marginal cost.
Multiple quick wins from this first phase include:
- Common reporting and language
- Clearer multi-brand relationships
- Cheaper integrations – web, email and data warehouse all point to Maximizer
- Better data integrity – a link to an external data provider was built to clean and enrich existing data and to add additional organisations
Other improvements
Increased CRM Maturity, increased benefits
The second phase of the SCV project reflected Experience Education’s growing CRM maturity; much better quality data has enabled high-quality reporting.
Dashboards – an easy & effective way to present data for multiple uses
Management became streamlined with the use of team Key Performance Indicators, such as pipelines, visit analyses etc. which were re-usable across brands globally. On a granular level, personal KPIs could also be used for individual forecasts. Dashboards also helped with the management of lead distribution and the maintenance of data integrity.
Standardisation of dotdigital as the corporate email marketing tool
Dotdigital became the chosen email marketing tool for Experience Education, and integration with Maximizer became justified, allowing marketers to map their own settings. This, in turn, has enabled highly focused email campaigns as they are based on opportunity information in Maximizer. Sales-driven segmentation of data is enabling marketing to drive better quality outcomes through focus.
Maximising the use of other areas of functionality
Educating users in the power of the email and Word integration using templates has reduced form-filling time and effort. One brand now gets these booking forms signed using DocuSign.
Other areas of functionality that have helped increase user efficiency include using colouring rules to highlight buyer personas and assigning Priorities to meetings in order to facilitate analysis and reporting.
Maximum benefits from web leads
Whether a brand has 150 or 50,000 enquiries a year, an integration piece which lets marketers define their own fields and rules has reduced costs and speed up on-boarding of new leads. Capturing Google UTM data has enabled the establishment of the complete marketing ROI.
Conclusion
The revitalisation of Maximizer CRM delivered benefits to Experience Education’s users, team leaders, marketers, internal web-designers and senior management as the business grew and developed.
Identifying the issues was the first step towards change. So, how did Matt Royal manage to achieve this success?
- He leveraged executive-level sponsorship
- Then engaged people at all levels
- He marshalled the requirements
- Then enabled/enacted changes to database structures
- He ensured delivery of on-going training to users, administrators & managers
- Built better data integrity, which increased confidence
- Implemented reports – personal productivity, data integrity & Management KPIs
- Commissioned generic & therefore reusable integrations to multiple systems
- Continually addressed data cleanliness, integrity & usefulness, including halving the number of profiling fields
Matt Royal sums up the benefits as follows:
“Experience Education has massively reduced the on-boarding costs for new brands because changes are quick and have zero marginal cost. This is down to Experience Education-specific, but generic, integrations built by Collier Pickard which enable our marketers to link to web-forms and dotdigital etc. Other quick wins from this phase include common reporting and language as well as clearer multi-brand relationships.” – Matt Royal, CRM Manager
