Logistics Firm Records One-Month ROI for New CRM System

Published: February 28, 2006

by Alex Woodie

An English logistics company has achieved the elusive one-month return on investment (ROI) for a new CRM system that's integrated with its OS/400-based ERP system, Geac announced last week.

The Consortium for Purchasing and Distribution implemented Geac's Opportunity Management CRM software as a component of its System21 Aurora ERP software in December, and by January it had recouped its initial investment, according to Joe Caddell, business systems director for The Consortium.

"We were using an old version of the Talent CRM system and had evaluated the cost of upgrading to the current version," Caddell says. "The decision to switch to Opportunity Management was clear-cut. Not only was it significantly cheaper and a low-risk migration, it allowed us to have a consolidated customer and prospect view across our whole business."

The integrated Geac system also cuts down on manual processes at the company, which has revenues of about £40 million per year. With the new system, as soon as a prospect is converted to a customer, it's an easy matter to switch the record to a customer account. Previously, this required an overnight batch process and then subsequent manual changes to both systems to keep them synchronized, the company says.

Geac, which is in the process of being bought by Infor, developed Opportunity Management specifically to address the CRM needs of its System21 base. The software, which is served through a Web browser and taps into System21 data stores, provides System 21 users with an integrated view of prospects, customers, contacts, quotations, actions and follow-ups, e-mails, and documents, and fills the CRM needs of approximately 80 percent of System21 users, according to Geac.