In early 2017, due to the active growth, the number of projects at Orion.Group increased, which required more attention, management and control. Moreover, it is because of business growth that there was an urgent need to increase sales efficiency and build a customer management system in such a way as to be able to control all sales processes: from the first contact with the customer to the signing of acceptance acts and the preparation of a maintenance contract. To do this, it was extremely necessary to increase internal control of the work of Orion.Group employees who were involved in the process of project sales and ensure:

To solve these issues, management of Orion.Group needed to implement a fundamentally new approach of working with customers, building a single centralized modern system of relations with customers, and automating the management of the sales process.

To select the optimal solution was organized tender, which was conducted with the assistance of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) within the framework of the Program for Support and Development of Ukrainian Small and Medium-sized Enterprises. To participate in the tender were invited as consulting companies that offer specialized solutions for customer relationship management (CRM) from the world’s leading software producers, and Ukrainian development companies.

Based on the results of the tender, OntargIT was selected to implement the project based on Microsoft Dynamics 365. The main criteria for the selection was the reliability of the proposed platform, as well as: flexibility, scalability, wide functionality of the proposed solution, whose standard functionality completely covered the client’s processes, and in the future there is the possibility of further expansion of the functional of the system.

The project was launched in September 2017. Implementation assumed maximum use of the standard functional of Microsoft Dynamics 365, and minimization of modifications. This approach to implementation makes it possible in the future to easily update the functionality of the system, and to switch to new versions.

At the initiative of the Customer, employees of Orion.Group took an active part in the implementation of the project under the guidance of the decision-maker – technical director of Orion.Group – Andrei Karban. Such involvement has improved the level of technical preparation of the Customer’s team qualitatively, which in future will independently be able to take all necessary steps to support and develop the system, as well as to use the new functionality for their business.

Today, Orion.Group has fully automated sales process with sophisticated logic for the calculation of commercial offers for engineering projects – calculations of works and materials for the production and installation areas separately (the most complex and lengthy part of the project). There was an opportunity to conduct all information on customers and contractors in a single database, build transparent relationships with customers at all stages of the sale: from the first contact and signing the contract, to invoicing and signing of delivery certificates.

Also, a lot of other standard features of the Microsoft Dynamics 365 platform were deployed, which improved communication within the team and solved the issue of quality and data structuring. For example, it became possible to assess personnel (according to skills) in the system to attract the necessary specialists to perform certain types of work.

At the same time, Orion.Group solved another important task – resource planning and staff timing. In the future Customer, based on planned and actual labor costs, will be able to optimize the production operations of its units, and will also be able to provide more accurate estimates in the proposals for its customers at the sales stage.

Andrey Karban, technical director of Orion.Group: “Thanks to deployment of Dynamics 365, we have improved the quality of sales management, our customers have received the best service, that will allow them to receive faster and better services and products manufactured by us. All information about our customers and transactions is consolidated in a single solution – you do not need to search for data in different databases, combine different formats of documents. Our specialists spend much less time preparing commercial offers, internal communications in the team of employees participating in the sale of our projects have significantly improved. Moreover, interaction with customers has been simplified considerably – now we react to their appeals much faster and more efficiently, which helps maintain high level of service and constantly improve satisfaction of our customers. We hope that the introduction of CRM will be the first step to the implementation of the ERP system.“

The project was completed in May 2018. Orion.Group plans to continue cooperation with OntargIT to support and further develop the Dynamics 365 platform.