Lydall, Inc. Boosts Sales Team’s Efficiency World-Wide with Microsoft Dynamics 365 CRM

CHALLENGES

 A Global Presence That Outgrew Its Premise-Based CRM

Lydall, Inc., a global manufacturer of thermal/acoustical and filtration/separation products, needed a way to more effectively coordinate the efforts of its sales and engineering teams in the Americas, EMEA, and Asia Pacific. Before the company expanded worldwide, its proprietary customer relationship management and Innovation & Development (I&D) engineering project management system called MOS (Management Operations System) served its needs well. However, as Lydall’s business evolved, its leadership team realized it was outgrowing MOS’s capabilities.

According to Mario Mugrace, Senior IT Business Analyst at Lydall, “As effective as MOS was when our company operated from just one location, it lacked the broad global functionality we required when we expanded beyond our walls.”

A custom-built solution that Cargas Systems created for Lydall about ten years ago, MOS enabled Lydall to track sales opportunities (qualified leads), match opportunities with the company’s I&D projects and engineering efforts, and interface with its financial and ERP systems.

With Lydall’s growth and expansion, however, it needed more robust capabilities to handle multi-faceted sales opportunities that involve multiple people across multiple locations.

“The most glaring deficit was that we couldn’t scale the system globally and across different types of devices,” explained Mugrace. “Our salespeople could only access MOS by a computer when either in the office or connected remotely via VPN. We needed a modern CRM solution that was accessible from everywhere at any time, one with mobile access and portability.”

“Cargas provides expertise and a personal touch. They make the time and effort to gain an intimate knowledge of how your organization works and what it needs. They know our business, understand the challenges we face, and help us overcome obstacles—sometimes before we’re even aware of them. We like knowing they’re there and value us as a customer”

~ Mario Mugrace, Senior Network Engineer, Lydall, Inc.

SOLUTIONS

Microsoft Dynamics 365 CRM With Sales and Project Service Automation

In 2017, Lydall looked to Cargas for a CRM solution that could overcome the barriers of language and distance. The company needed a CRM that could allow team members near and far to see data in one central system and work together more efficiently.

Mugrace shared, “We already had a strong, long-standing relationship with Cargas. Cargas is one of the primary reasons why we chose Dynamics CRM. We knew Cargas to be a trusted resource, and we knew they had expertise in Microsoft Dynamics 365 CRM and other Microsoft products.”

The Dynamics 365 CRM solution implemented by Cargas in 2017 includes the Sales and Project Service Automation modules. It gives Lydall:

• Mobile access from anywhere and anytime (laptop, tablet, smartphone)
• Ability to match sales opportunities and I&D projects/engineering efforts for streamlined collaboration and workflows
• Integration with the company’s internal financial system, on-premise ERP system, and internal data warehouse
• Freedom to personalize the solution without the help of a programmer
• A cloud-based solution that eliminates the time and cost to develop and maintain a premise-based CRM system

Mugrace said that Dynamics 365 CRM’s “out-of-the-box” default functionality provides a natural link between sales opportunities and projects created in the Project Service Automation module.

“We could copy data, link data, automate tasks, and institute workflows immediately,” he shared. “Also, we can do more on our own if we need modifications. With Dynamics CRM, we can personalize aspects of the system, such as by adding fields, re-ordering fields, changing the look of screens, creating reports, and more.”

BENEFITS

Always-On Access to Data; Enhanced Collaboration and Business Insight

According to Mugrace, the most significant benefit to Lydall is having faster access to sales and project information from anywhere in the world, thanks to Dynamic 365 CRM’s mobile, cloud-based platform.

“Even if salespeople aren’t connected to the internet during a client visit, they can access data offline because it is cached in the system. They can even generate notes and create emails through CRM when offline. The notes post and messages get delivered after the salesperson is back online.”

He also shared that the operability with other Microsoft products improves collaboration. Lydall has some large customers with multiple points of contact, and often there are a variety of conversations (email, phone calls, and in-person meetings) going on between the Lydall team and those clients. Dynamics 365 CRM and Outlook work seamlessly together to capture and track those conversations.

“With Dynamics 365 CRM, we have a complete customer picture that helps us to provide better service,” Mugrace said.

Dynamics 365 CRM also enables Lydall’s sales team to see more of what’s happening in their sales pipeline. Mugrace noted that the company can now capture potential leads (those that aren’t yet qualified as bona fide opportunities). “MOS didn’t have any true leads-tracking capabilities. It had opportunities tracking, but potential customers weren’t added there until it was a qualified lead. So, we didn’t have any way to capture prospect-type leads, and we may have lost sales as a result.”

Lydall also takes advantage of automatically assigning leads in Dynamics 365 CRM—a capability that didn’t exist in MOS.

Other Dynamics 365 CRM features that have benefited Lydall are its suite of reports and ad-hoc report capabilities (in MOS, all reports had to be custom created).

Future plans for Dynamics 365 CRM include enlisting Cargas’s help to expand the solution’s integration with Lydall’s ERP and develop a budgeting and forecasting process within the CRM.

“With Cargas and Dynamics 365 CRM, we have better visibility into our business and are better positioned for continued growth on a global scale,” said Mugrace.

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