HR Pharmaceuticals, Inc. Manages Mega Amounts of Data with Microsoft Dynamics CRM & Custom Software
Customer: HR Pharmaceuticals, Inc.
Location: York, PA
Solution: Microsoft Dynamics 365 CRM and Custom Sales Acceleration System
HR Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (HR®) is a leading supplier of personal care, consumer, and medical supply products. Headquartered in York, Pennsylvania, the company was founded in 2008 and owns two legacy brands of surgical lubricant, Surgilube and HR Lubricating Jelly. The exceptional quality, safety, and value of HR’s products represent the gold standard in the medical community.
HR is among central PA’s fastest growing companies. It has expanded its product offerings by 2000 percent since 2011. With the opportunities that stem from that degree of growth, challenges also arise. With an increase in products, vendors, and customers, the company’s data management needs have also surged. In early 2016, HR leadership realized it had to explore software solutions that could help it standardize data from varied sources and make it available to staff members in a way that could improve decision-making and performance.
The Challenge: Massive Amounts of Data Coming from Multiple Internal and External Sources
Austin Davis, Business Analyst at HR, shared that the sheer volume of sales data from HR’s sales team, contracted sales companies, and distributors presented the biggest challenge.
“We get data from more than 20 different sources, and we hadn’t had any data management tools in place to support our sales and customer service efforts. Everything was in spreadsheets that were maintained independently of each other.”
Davis explained that HR didn’t have a central place to store data and track it. With an estimated 1.5 million rows of data to handle, the company needed the ability to standardize data from different sources and build reports that could enable them to extract, organize, and analyze information effectively.
“Essentially, we needed a way to centralize data in a way that could bridge the gap between sales and customers service within our organization,” shared Davis. “Doing that was impossible using spreadsheets and smaller programs, so we began looking for a viable solution.”
The Cargas Solution: Microsoft Dynamics 365 CRM and Custom Sales Acceleration System
During mid-year 2016, the team at HR began working with Cargas. Cargas has the level of expertise and experience the company was looking for—and the fact that it’s a local company was a bonus. Cargas proposed a solution with two components that work closely together:
- Microsoft Dynamics 365 CRM
- SASY (Sales Acceleration System), a custom-built sales data integration system
Microsoft Dynamics 365 CRM is a robust solution that helps growing organizations to manage business relationships seamlessly. It offers enhanced tools to help companies transform their sales, marketing, and customer service processes.
SASY is a custom system that Cargas wrote using its Solution Builder platform to map and integrate approximately 25 different data sources into one normalized database. The data is summarized for integration into Microsoft Dynamics 365 CRM and also used for reporting and analysis.
The solution went live in June 2017.
Brooke Smith serves as HR’s Business Development Specialist. She shared that the solution allows her and others in the organization to access sales and customer data that wasn’t readily available before.
“We can keep track of everything that’s happening with our customer accounts,” Smith explained. “I can see who customers have spoken to or communicated with via email and what contacts have gone from a prospect to a lead to an opportunity. The CRM gives us a way to keep on top of things.”
According to Smith, she tracks about 250 emails a week through the CRM.
“It allows me to see the string of communications and understand where we stand with each contact. The more sales data and customer data we have, the better customer service we can provide.”
Another benefit of the SASY and Dynamics 365 CRM solution is that HR’s sales representatives can see the accounts that have come to fruition because of their efforts.
Both SASY and Dynamics 365 CRM don’t require any manual importing of data. All information from sources gets uploaded automatically, and users have instant access.
“It allows me to see the string of communications and understand where we stand with each contact. The more sales data and customer data we have, the better customer service we can provide.”
Brooke Smith, Business Development Specialist, HR Pharmaceuticals
The solution offers advantages from a marketing perspective, as well. Jim Pilsner, Director of Marketing, shared that after the sales team enters contact information and positions of prospects into SASY, he can extract that information for targeted marketing mailings.
“For example, we can zero in on all contacts with the title of “Director of Radiology” and execute a marketing campaign specific to their interests,” said Pilsner. “We can also run reports to see revenues by product to determine what offerings will need some marketing muscle behind them to bump up sales.”
The Cargas solution also enables HR to integrate data from the various subscription-based marketing databases it uses in its sales and marketing efforts.
Another way that Pilsner and his marketing team use the solution is to log contact information of the leads they meet at industry tradeshows, and then they access that data later for email marketing campaigns.
“SASY allows us to sort data in a multitude of ways so that we can use it to gain greater insight into who we’re marketing to and what our next steps should be,” explained Pilsner.
The reporting capabilities have helped the company in other ways, too.
According to Davis, “One of my favorite reports is ‘Chargeback Sales,” a report of total sales of products sold under certain contracts. This was not at all manageable in Excel.”
The company has created various other customized reports, as well, to give managers and team members specific information that they couldn’t drill down to before.
“I have to hit a quota monthly, so I can pull up a Business Development Specialist Report that shows me how many calls I made for a given period of time, such as by day, by week, etc.,” shared Smith. “That report tells me how many emails I tracked, how many leads I qualified to an opportunity, how many opportunities I won, and the revenue associated with opportunities that I’ve closed.”
Overall Impact
Davis said the solution has increased productivity company-wide and keeps everyone on the same page. “We’re not tripping over one another when interacting with prospects and customers because we can view the activity history on leads, opportunities, and accounts. We’re like a well-oiled machine with SASY and the CRM.”
He also shared that the ability to build and customize automated reports has alleviated the heavy lifting when analyzing data. Before, it was a time-consuming process to extract the information he needed and then format it in a way so that he could analyze it.
“Now, we can easily create and update reports. It’s a scalable solution that evolves as our needs evolve,” Davis explained.
Commentary on the Cargas Experience
Clear communication and attentive support throughout the development and implementation process and beyond are two of the reasons HR would recommend Cargas to other companies that are looking for a CRM solutions provider.
“Cargas is organized and responsive. We always knew where things stood throughout the project, and they remain responsive to our needs today when we want to make changes or have questions.”
Let’s Chat
Still have questions? Get in touch with our expert team of software professionals.