Great manufacturing company using Dynamics CRM

1. Microsoft Dynamics
Customer Solution Case Study
Supermaterials Firm Frees Budget for New
Initiatives and Service Improvements
Customer: Element Six
Website: www.e6.com
Customer Size: 3,000
Country or Region: United Kingdom
Industry: Manufacturing
Partner: Zero2Ten
Customer Profile
Element Six is a global leader in the
design, development, and production of
synthetic diamond supermaterials, with
manufacturing facilities in China, Europe,
Sweden, South Africa, and the United
States. It is a member of the De Beers
Group of Companies.
Software and Services
 Service
− Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online
“Moving from Salesforce.com to Microsoft Dynamics
CRM is saving us in the region of £70,000 a year. That’s
a lot of money to put back into improving customer
service and delivering more value.”
Paul Williams, Head of Group IM, Element Six
Element Six moved from Salesforce.com to Microsoft Dynamics
CRM Online to reduce licensing cost and free budget to do
more with customer relationship management (CRM). Working
with partner Zero2Ten, it was able to move quickly and easily to
the new cloud platform. Element Six is confident it has a CRM
system that users are happy to work with and that integrates
with existing applications to add value to the business.
Business Needs
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Paul Williams, Head of Group IM at
Element Six, firmly believes the role of IT is
to help provide the right services for
customers and deliver value for money.
While Salesforce.com offered a lot of
functionality, it wasn’t being fully used by
Element Six employees. And just
maintaining the system was using up the
entire CRM budget. “We weren’t really
taking advantage of the platform. We were
spending all of our money just to stand
still,” says Williams. “We could do
requirements capture for new functionality
and new features, but we didn’t have the
resources to do anything with it.”
Element Six had also experienced
challenges in getting users to adopt CRM
into their daily work practices. Williams
says: “With Saleforce.com, we had too
many systems that weren’t integrated.
Users would have to log on to their
machines and then log on to
Salesforce.com. Just that one hurdle meant
people were reluctant to use it. Not only
was Salesforce.com costing us more, but
the lack of adoption meant the cost per
activity was high.”
Williams wanted a CRM system that would
be easy to use and would fit with the
company’s IT strategy. He wanted to move
to a unified platform and was looking at

2. Microsoft SharePoint for the firm’s portal
and web presence. Its front office was
already predominantly Microsoft.
Williams also needed the new CRM
platform to integrate with other core
business applications, including the JD
Edwards ERP system. He says: “Because
Microsoft Dynamics CRM is built on a core
framework, I knew that we could do a lot
more with it to extend the value across the
business.”
Solution
Requirements for lower licensing costs, ease
of use, and integration made Microsoft
Dynamics CRM an obvious choice for
Element Six. With more than 20 sites
globally, selecting the cloud version—
Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online—would
make implementing and managing CRM
significantly easier.
With the platform decision made, Element
Six had only four months to migrate before
its Salesforce.com contract expired. Williams
chose to work with Microsoft Dynamics
Gold Partner Zero2Ten to achieve this. He
says: “I’d worked with Zero2Ten before and
new instinctively that it could work to our
tight timescales. I liked its fixed price
approach—it told us what it was going to
do and then delivered it.”
Zero2Ten was able to meet the timeframe
and budget set by Element Six using its
remote migration and implementation
services. Working to a defined process,
technical teams in Atlanta, in the U.S., built
the basic system model in parallel with
preparation for data migration. This meant
that the Salesforce.com data could be
migrated and surfaced directly into the
actual system.
The entire implementation was carried out
remotely, including close collaboration
with IT Six—Romania-based Microsoft
Gold Partner and Element Six development
partner. “Considering the project manager
and Zero2Ten were working remotely, the
whole process was incredibly smooth,”
says Williams.
Element Six now has 220 CRM users across
its global business—in sales, marketing,
and customer service divisions. Employees
log on through Microsoft Outlook, which
they use every day. The CRM system
maintains an accurate record of all sales
and marketing activity, customer service
logs, and communication with customers.
Benefits
With Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online,
Element Six has an easy-to-use platform
that integrates with core applications and
that people are using to add value to the
business. The saving on licensing costs
over Salesforce.com can be invested in
new initiatives to cut costs and boost
profit.
Improved user adoption thanks to
familiar application. Integration with
Microsoft Office means Element Six
employees no longer log on to a
separate system to use CRM. Williams
says: “People just launch email and they
instantly have access to CRM.” With the
Zero2Ten Adopt2Win programme,
Element Six can measure adoption.
Williams says: “I can see people using
CRM, and they’re using it for things like
forecasting, which add value to the
business.”
 Reduced licensing costs. With 220
users across the business, Williams says:
“Moving from Salesforce.com to
Microsoft Dynamics CRM is saving us in

This case study is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS
SUMMARY.
Document published March 2013
the region of £70,000 a year. That’s a lot
of money to put back into improving
customer service and delivering more
value.”
 Enhanced customer service. Williams’
vision is to use CRM to enhance
customer service and overall
performance. He says: “Everyone should
have an opportunity to interact with
CRM in a way that affects what they do
for the company. When we open our
new innovation centre, I’d love it if when
a customer requests a sample, the
innovation team for that product could
see what’s being done. That way, they
could contact the customer to ask for
feedback and make sure that we’re
delivering the best products.”
 More value to the business. Williams
says: “We want to do more with CRM.
We can use the authentication methods,
workflow tools, and the fact that it’s
plugged into Microsoft Outlook to build
even more applications. It has given us a
platform that we can use to add even
more value.”