Midsize Business Case Study
Sunglasses Manufacturer Boosts Sales 29 Percent, Aids Dealer Growth with CRM Software

Story at a Glance

Spy Optic, a manufacturer of sunglasses and goggles, scrambled to keep up with the rapid growth in the action-sports market and stay one step ahead of competitors. The marketing department needed better sales and inventory data to help salespeople push the hottest-selling items and keep them in stock. To gain control, Spy Optic deployed Microsoft® software that provides up-to-the-minute sales and inventory data for making smart marketing, sales and development decisions. Spy Optic can help dealers stock the most popular items, which has helped boost sales by 29 percent. Also, operational costs are lower, thanks to automated efficiencies.

Flying Blind

Fran Richards, Vice President of Marketing for eyewear manufacturer Spy Optic, was flying blind. His company was soaring in the edgy outdoors market aimed at snowboard, water-sports and extreme-sports enthusiasts. But like a snowboarder flying over a cornice into the unknown below, Spy Optic was operating on instinct rather than on solid information. “We didn’t have good data about regional tastes, sales or even our own inventory,” he says. “We were making design, stock and marketing decisions based on gut feel and assumptions.”

Spy Optic makes high-performance sunglasses, snow goggles, motocross goggles, clothing and accessories for 20- somethings and the young at heart. It’s a demographic subject to constantly changing tastes, and Spy Optic didn’t have the insight it needed to keep close tabs on sales. Nor could it tune new-product development to the latest fads and keep dealers stocked with top sellers. “There wasn’t a focus on what was selling,” Richards says. “We only looked at what we sold to retailers, not what was selling through, so we were out of touch with market changes. We were typically out of the top-50 SKUs, which disappointed dealers and limited revenue opportunities.”

Already in more than 5,000 U.S. retailers, Spy Optic was poised to expand outside the United States into Europe and Australia but wanted to get a handle on its data before multiplying problems across a larger dealer base.

Integrated Data

Spy Optic replaced its antiquated enterprise resource planning (ERP) application with Microsoft Dynamics® GP business software and deployed Microsoft Dynamics CRM for customer relationship management. “We liked the integration between the two programs and the way that Microsoft Dynamics CRM integrated with the Microsoft® Office Outlook® messaging and collaboration client,” Richards says. “Both programs were instantly familiar to our employees and allowed them to manage customer and sales data through Outlook, which sped adoption.”

FMT Consultants, LLC, a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner based in Spy Optic’s hometown of Carlsbad, California, helped with the implementation of both programs. Deployment took just a few weeks, and both programs have been live for a year.

Up on Dynamic Markets

Using live sales data, Richards and his staff can gain instant, up-to-date visibility into topperforming products; this lets them focus efforts on top sellers and keep inventory stocked with popular items. “We can see what styles are popular in New England versus California and online versus in stores,” Richards says. “We now make sure we never run out of our top-50 SKU colors and styles. We also use this data to drive product development. If we see that tortoise is outselling hot pink, we ramp up tortoise and come up with similar ideas.”

Better Service Fuels Growth

Spy Optic now has a single customer database from which to coordinate sales, marketing, and customer service activities. Salespeople can create a quote in Microsoft Dynamics CRM and convert the quote to an order that is automatically transferred into Microsoft Dynamics GP. Similarly, for contact management purposes, sales leads are automatically converted to customers, which eliminates data reentry.

“The whole company operates off the same set of data, which eliminates confusion and redundancy and speeds customer service,” Richards says. “Marketing can share customer records with accounting, and salespeople can see inventory levels before they make commitments to customers. I use inventory data to launch promotions, which I can manage easily from within Microsoft Dynamics CRM.”

Spy Optic is also better able to help its dealers, many of which are young sports enthusiasts, often without a lot of business experience. “We’ve been able to create a sound business model for inexperienced dealers,” Richards says. “We can take successes from our most sophisticated dealers and distill winning techniques. We can now tell dealers which product models they should carry, in what quantities. We can help them see that if they replenish their top-10 sellers every week, and even increase the space devoted to sunglasses, they can increase sales. It’s completely changed the way we sell to dealers.”

Sales Up, Costs Down

After a year of making smarter use of sales and inventory data, Spy Optic has seen sales rise 29 percent. At the same time, operational expenses are down. “We used to have three people filling Web orders, but that’s down to one, thanks to new automated efficiencies,” Richards says. “We’ve moved those two people into customer service.”

Richards now steers Spy Optic with a clear eye into exciting new vistas.

Lessons Learned

• Select a local, knowledgeable reseller.
• Choose a solution with a familiar interface to speed user acceptance.
• Select a flexible solution that can grow with you.

Posted by Matthew Holden, of FMT Consultants, LLC, a California Microsoft Gold Certified Partner in Dynamics CRM and GP

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Although CRM stands for Customer Relationship Management, it’s a bit of a misnomer because most CRM systems are multi-faceted and handle everything from Sales Force Automation (SFA) to marketing automation and service management.  All of which goes far beyond customer relationship management.

What’s more, since a CRM application like Microsoft Dynamics CRM can integrate with Dynamics GP – the back office ERP/Accounting system – and with SharePoint – for document management and much more – this ultimate integration of three applications translates into total accessibility of business critical data. 

Add dashboards into the equation and you have the best of all worlds.  By accessing data from CRM, individualized dashboards can be created to meet the needs of every end user.  Dashboards consolidate KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) in dynamically updated graphical format – easy to read and easy to understand.  Reports don’t have to re-created and re-run every time you want to view a business indicator, say for example, sales by sales rep or by product line or by accounting period.  Just refresh the dashboard and the up-to-the-minute data appears (like magic).  What a concept! 

Here’s a link to view a random sample of executive, sales, and inventory dashboards.

Submitted by Altico Advisors, Microsoft Dynamics CRM Partner for Massachusetts (MA)

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For data migration and integration with Microsoft Dynamics CRM, the tool of choice is most likely going to be Scribe Software’s Insight product.  For those of you who are familiar with the tool, you know it is very powerful because its CRM Adapter does everything for you in terms of keeping data integrity in the CRM database.

In order to use Scribe Insight’s Console to integrate data between Microsoft Dynamics CRM and other systems, most commonly Microsoft Dynamics GP, there is a significant amount of time needed to set up the integration environment.  Known as the Scribe Plugin Publisher, which monitors the CRM database for the entities you define and then creates an XML record for records which are created, modified or deleted.  Detailed knowledge of MSMQ (Microsoft Message Queues) and the MSCRM Publisher (a component of Scribe Console) is required for this type of integration.  These tasks are not easy for the less experienced individuals related to Scribe Console.

However, in the latest version of Scribe Insight, v6.5, there is a new and simpler option to setup integration between CRM and other systems. It is called the Scribe Workflow Publisher and it uses the internal, graphical interface of the CRM Workflow engine to trigger the integration points.  The main advantages that the Workflow Publisher has over the Plugin Publisher are ease of ease of use, the ability to trigger based on an attribute change and the ability to work with CRM Online.

For me, the option to trigger an integration event based on an attribute change in CRM is a huge plus.  The normal Plugin Publisher triggers an integration every time a record in CRM is added, modified or deleted, regardless of which field is modified.  But with the new Worflow Publisher, everything is based on the CRM Workflow.  So if your Dynamics CRM workflow is set to execute after certain attributes in an entity meet any number of criteria, then the integration takes place.  For example, you can setup a workflow to fire only when an Account’s phone number has changed or when a Contact’s attribute has changed from a Prospect to a Customer or any combination along those lines to fire a workflow and integrate the change to the other system.  As you can imagine the possibilities are numerous.

Enjoy and happy integrating!

By: Dipesh Jobanputra, RSM McGladrey, New Jersey Gold Certified Partner for Microsoft Dynamics

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Microsoft Dynamics CRM is an outstanding Sales, Marketing, and Customer Support solution.  Office SharePoint Server is an unrivaled collaboration, document, and information management platform.  Dynamics GP is a leader in the financial and business management realm.  Office is the top user productivity suite.  Collectively these and Microsoft’s other products are what Microsoft and its partners refer to as the “stack”.   While not an official term, describing their product line this way highlights the design philosophy that each application can build upon the others to give unified access and control of your business’ data. 

Each of the products listed above stands out in its respective category, but Microsoft has also built them with interoperability and extensibility in mind.   So, while each product serves a particular area of your business, together they become a greater asset than just the sum of the parts.   

In many companies, business knowledge and data is “siloed” or locked within the specific system the department uses, only sporadically crossing the boundaries between those departments in small amounts, usually in an ad-hoc and reactive manner, and frequently depending on someone else to provide it.  These are barriers that prevent employees from working most effectively, and decision makers from having access to timely information they need.  Workers are not given the full view of the information they need to be most efficient, and management lacks a cohesive view of the health of the organization.  

For example, Sales Professionals maintains the relationships with your customers using a standalone package, but they may not have the visibility into the order fulfillment aspects to help further cultivate those relationships and identify new opportunities with existing and new customers.   Accounts Receivable may not have ready access to what was promised and what was delivered, resulting in a manual process of reconciling customer accounts. 

Instead, by using the “stack” you can build a solution for your business that can help you to follow the sale from “cradle to grave” ensuring that each unit in your business has access to the information it needs to most effectively operate while giving superior automation, control, and intelligence to those who need it.

Solutions built on Microsoft’s “stack” accomplish this though the use of common tools and technologies that span their product line.  These technologies enjoy wide adoption and an extensive community of Microsoft Dynamics users.  For example Windows Workflow Foundation is a workflow engine that is built in to all the products listed above, allowing you to automate your business’ processes seamlessly from one department, system, or functional area to the next.   SQL Server is used for easy, flexible, and ubiquitous access to your data along with robust reporting, analytics, intelligence, and integration.   

One the other hand, all-in-one solutions that try to package all of the functionality into one large package often end up requiring your business to adapt to the way it works, or the feature set it does or doesn’t provide rather than the other way around.  As well, they often require a special skill set to implement and maintain with a limited pool of supporting talent.

So when looking at systems to run your business, look beyond the particular applications that fill a need or solve a specific set of problems in your business and make sure that you are picking a solution that can integrate all areas of your business and truly propel your organization forward.

By John Voorhis, RSM McGladrey, New Jersey Microsoft Dynamics Gold Certified Partner

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