The ongoing investment and maintenance of CRM finally gave the company the idea to explore the CRM market. “With a self-developed CRM system, you have to make changes yourself for every process. At some point, you built a rather complex system with high maintenance costs,” explains Wim De Saegher, who was responsible for the IT approach to the CRM project. “In addition, the integration possibilities are also limited, while our account managers need more possibilities to do their job optimally,” adds Tom Van Britsom, who is responsible for the commercial side.
It is definitely a well thought-out strategy to switch from your own system after 20 years to an external system. “On the one hand, there is the support that has to be created with the management, but also within the IT department. On the other hand, we had to think carefully about what exactly we were looking for and expecting from a CRM system,” Tom explains. “We knew the benefits of “build”, but what are the benefits of a “buy”, and more importantly, what are the benefits of buying and what are the drawbacks? ”
In a meeting with directors, business consultants, account managers, the intensive exercise of analyzing the pros and cons was done. The needs were as follows: User-friendliness, a web application, preferably mobile, a solid sales tool to support account managers, and most importantly, a flexible and fast solution. Clear criteria with which Vanbreda was able to analyze the CRM market.
“The meeting took place in January, the first Efficy presentations in March and we made our decision in May/June,” says Wim. “The project was able to start in September and we were able to move up a gear quickly thanks to the availability of the Efficy account manager.