Staying Connected with Clients and Colleagues
If we as a society have learned nothing else from our collective response to the COVID-19 global pandemic, we’ve learned this: The organizations that can adapt swiftly to new ways of doing business are the ones best positioned to survive and thrive.
Global accounting firm Grant Thornton is one such company. In an environment with both official and voluntary stay-at-home orders and travel restrictions, face-to-face meetings among colleagues and with customers became almost impossible. Grant Thornton’s consultants had to find a new way to stay in touch with each other and with their clients.
Fortunately for them, Grant Thornton was already doing business on the Microsoft Dynamics 365 platform. The consultants were able to keep the business running by relying on several interconnected Microsoft technologies:
- Microsoft Dynamics 365 CRM enabled them to stay current with their clients’ activities, needs, and pain points. Keeping the data in the cloud, rather than individual laptops, meant that all consultants had access to the latest information.
- Microsoft Teams enabled consultants to conduct virtual proposal meetings with their clients and share information just as easily, if not more so, than in the traditional face-to-face meetings.
- Microsoft PowerBI provided dashboards and reports based on a variety of data sources, giving Grant Thornton immediate insights and enabling them to make better strategic and tactical decisions.
Overall, the global availability of Grant Thornton’s enterprise systems and gentle learning curve enabled them to pivot to a virtual-first business environment without missing a beat. The suddenly dispersed workforce was able to continue serving their clients with no adverse effects on their customers.
Nichole Jordan, Regional Managing Partner for Grant Thornton, put it this way: “The pandemic helped us to strengthen our firm, and prove to ourselves that we were flexible, we are agile, and we could adapt very quickly to the virtual world we’re operating in today.”
How did your organization adapt? If something like COVID-19 happens again, will you do better? Will your CRM tool help you stay connected with your customers, or will it be a hindrance?
One way to find out is by using the Empellor CRM “Self-Assessing Your CRM Process Strategy Checklist.” This checklist will help you understand important aspects of your company’s CRM environment, such as:
- Can you instantly identify current customers, previous customers, and cross-sell opportunities?
- Are you tracking the customer details that drive business development?
- Are you able to personalize your messaging to a level that drives connection?
If your organization is not prepared for the next global crisis, the time to do something about it is now. Start by downloading the checklist today.
