CRM Best Practice Award: Doka Group among prizewinners

The critical factors underlying nominations for the Best Practice Award are how well the company and its processes focus on the customer, and how relevant this approach is to actual practice. Every year, a top-class panel of experts at the CRM Expo in Nuremberg awards prizes for the best projects in the categories ‘CRM Implementation’ and ‘CRM Advancement’. These are regarded as benchmarks in the industry as a whole. Doka won 2nd prize for its customer-relationship management system, which was rolled out in 2006 in a multi-stage process involving Sensix, a full-service provider focusing on CRM. “Our rapid expansion and strong internationalisation, and the increasing demands being made on our sales organisation, made it imperative for us to implement an up-to-date CRM system”, says Thomas Krahofer, Head of CRM Doka Group.
To be sure of fulfilling clients’ wishes in an efficient, top-quality way, it was decided to base the new CRM system on ‘update.seven’.

Doka CRM: 25 countries, eleven languages

From the requirements analysis and the planning phase all the way through to the national and international roll-outs, the Doka CRM is now available in 25 countries and eleven languages. Krahofer: “It’s very important for us to keep our field staff supplied with the compact information they need for their daily work. The new system lets us respond in a very tightly focused way to the differing needs that our customers have.” A key factor behind the success of this project was that everybody affected was involved right from the outset, and the creation of a ‘central’ infrastructure. Representatives of the various Sales Regions were given the opportunity to input their particular requirements into the project – and this proved to be a central aspect, especially in terms of gaining acceptance. The involvement and commitment of the Doka Group’s top management were also highly conducive to the success of the project.

Optimum customer-care coverage

Field reps have round-the-clock access to up-to-the-minute information on projects, on the value of equipment in use on sites, and on the functions and interests of contact-persons at clients’. These functions make it possible to take care of customers in an even more individual way. “With these data, our field reps can give themselves the best possible preparation for visiting a customer. Having an integrated process-workflow means that we can draw up offers even faster and target them better”, says Krahofer.

CRM IT architecture

The Doka Group’s new CRM system is an online, web-based solution in which users access a central server. This centralised solution has made it possible to lessen the complexity of the requirements and thus to lower the costs of day-to-day operation. Implementation of the Sales Desktop, of a project pipeline and of an opportunity management system now permits ongoing inferences to be drawn regarding customers, projects, internal resources, activities and requirements.

CRM implementation is by no means the end of the process, however. The system is ‘alive’ and is being continually adapted to the company’s needs and to the situation in the overall and sectoral markets in which the customer operates.

About the CRM Best Practice Award

The CRM Best Practice Award is given at the CRM Expo in Nuremberg every year by the organisers ASFC GmbH and the marketing and sales magazine ‘Acquisa’. An international jury rates companies for how well they and their processes are focused on customers. Gold, silver and bronze awards are made in each of two categories: CRM Implementation and CRM Advancement.