The St. Petersburg, Fla., company now recommends that its nationwide network of more than 4,600 financial advisors adopt Microsoft Dynamics CRM as its primary customer relationship management tool. Raymond James will initially offer 3,000 Microsoft Dynamics CRM licenses, but expects to increase the number to more than 5,000 in response to demand over the next two or three years.
"In our effort to provide our financial advisors the best tools possible, we are pleased to offer this high-quality management tool as a recommended option,"Â said Tim Eitel, chief information officer of Raymond James.
"Raymond James advisors who took part in head-to-head testing to determine the company's preferred CRM product consistently chose Microsoft Dynamics CRM, including advisors who had already personally purchased other products,"Â Eitel said. The prime differentiators included these:
- Greater efficiency, tight integration. Most of Raymond James' corporate technology systems run on Microsoft software, Microsoft SQL Server and the Microsoft Office system. Financial advisors can input and access customer data directly through Microsoft Office Outlook®, a program they already use throughout the day. The close integration among the Microsoft products eliminates the need to input customer information more than once, and advisors can also access meeting notes, sales reports, forecasts and other customer data via a single, customized onscreen dashboard.
- Keeping the pulse of projects. Microsoft Dynamics CRM gives Raymond James the platform to provide rich functionality such as mobility and detailed workflows with a reduced time to market.
- Confidence in Microsoft. The scale of Microsoft Corp.'s investment in this area of business software convinced Raymond James that Microsoft Dynamics CRM would eventually become the de facto standard in business CRM. Dramatic improvements with each new version of Microsoft Dynamics CRM also demonstrated Microsoft's dedication to continued innovation and adaptation of the product as business needs change.
"For companies to reap the benefits of customer relationship management, they need to get their employees to consistently use it,"Â said Michael Park, corporate vice president of Microsoft's U.S. Small and Midmarket Solutions & Partners Group. "Microsoft Dynamics CRM works the way that employees do, with a native Outlook experience that lets employees track customer data as part of the tasks they already perform throughout the day"Â - Microsoft.
Pictures for this story
