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350 Chapter 12 • Customer Relationship Management

Andover, Massachusetts. California began manufacturing Plexipave in 1953 and is now the
oldest and largest manufacturer of acrylic tennis court surfaces in the world. Plexipave sells
its products to tennis court installation businesses.
After the loss of two long-term sales representatives, who collectively had more than
50 years in the business, the director of the Plexipave division was in search of a better way
to capture customer data. Much of the customer and market information from the two terri-
tories was lost since the salesmen maintained prospecting information independently from
the database in customer service.
Customer service maintained a Microsoft Access database of current customers.
It was not integrated with any other systems (e.g., ordering, finance), but instead served as a
stand-alone database to retain only the most basic information (e.g., addresses and employee
names). In addition, Plexipave subscribed to a lead reporting service called the Dodge
Reports, offered by construction publishing powerhouse McGraw-Hill. McGraw-Hill
employed reporters from around the country to capture and report construction projects as
they went to bid, detailing all aspects of the project. The Dodge Reports were e-mailed to
customer service, read, sorted, divided by territory, and e-mailed to the sales representative
who would then follow up on the lead. Any report updates were treated as a new report, and
the information would be sent once again with the applicable updates.
McGraw-Hill and Seibel entered into an agreement in 2004 to offer a hosted CRM
program as an upgraded option for the Dodge Reports. It would enable Plexipave employees
to download the daily Dodge reports into the CRM database and to transfer information
from legacy programs into the CRM as well. A small one-time fee of $5,000 plus $100 per
seat annually provided a hosted database that could be accessed remotely through the
Internet. The software was designed to eliminate redundant files: If updates were available
for a customer or project, it would simply add the information to the existing file. If a user
attempted to create a new file for an existing user, the software would likewise alert the user
to the double entry.
The director of Plexipave purchased the CRM service and five seats to “test-pilot” the
program with key salesmen and customer service personnel. A seat was used for a customer
service representative so she could input the data from the Access database (about
175 customers), download the leads from Dodge into the CRM before pushing the data to the
sales force, and enter new phone, mail, and fax inquiries into the CRM. Three seats were given
to salesmen who volunteered to pilot the program. The last seat was utilized by the director to
oversee the program. A Dodge representative trained the internal users by reviewing a “canned”
capabilities presentation, and the salesmen were trained through computer-based training
(CBT) software with an offer to meet face to face with a trainer if the CBT was not sufficient.
The service went live with no lag time for development. The salesmen spent hours
sifting through the database of leads, but did very little in terms of information input. Many
approached the automation by compiling notes offline (whether written or typed) and then
waiting for downtime or office time to input the data into the CRM. The stockpile of infor-
mation took hours to input, and, in a short time, the salesmen began to resent the time they
had to put aside to use the program. The most frequent comment was, “We spend all this
time recording what we are doing and should be out selling.”