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Best Buy for Business, an expanding unit of Best Buy Company, has more than 1,000 consultants who sell, implement, and support solutions for small-business customers. Saddled with a home-grown business-management tool originally designed for its retail business, the growing business unit sought a solution that would support its extensive outside sales force and would provide a commercial CRM solution it could sell to business customers. Best Buy for Business found both in Microsoft Dynamics CRM. It rolled out Microsoft CRM to more than 150 consultants in the field and has plans to extend this to its entire team of consultants. Today, the company has a robust solution that supports its complex sales cycle and integrates easily with the business tools employees use every day. In addition, the company has a solution that it will soon add to its own IT services and solutions offerings.
Situation For anyone in need of electronics, personal computers, entertainment software, or appliances, Best Buy is a one-stop shop. With annual revenues of more than U.S.$30 billion and 100,000-plus employees, Best Buy is the largest consumer electronics retailer in North America. Best Buy for Business Since 2003, Best Buy has focused on growing its business beyond the traditional retail market by catering to the needs of small businesses. Driving this effort is Best Buy for Business, a strategic business unit of Best Buy that implements and supports affordable and reliable end-to-end information technology and telecommunications solutions to small businesses (defined as fewer than a hundred employees). Best Buy for Business is a key contributor to driving additional growth in an already well-established company.
"Growing a company from a $30 billion business to a $60 billion business requires a comprehensive strategy that involves more than just physical growth and adding more retail stores," says Jay Devers, Director of Technology Solutions for Best Buy for Business. "With Best Buy for Business, we're creating end-to-end solutions for a customer segment that we've never catered to before. The end result for Best Buy is a whole new channel of growth."
One way that Best Buy for Business reaches out to small-business customers and differentiates itself from the competition is through its technical business consultants and widely recognized Geek Squad. Technical business consultants are responsible for developing and selling unique, end-to-end solutions for the customer. Geek Squad "agents"?who make up the always-available computer-support task force?help customers install and deploy the technology and provide ongoing support for day-to-day IT challenges. Enhancing Customer Sales and Insight As Best Buy for Business entered a new business realm, it realized that it didn't have the technology to support a world-class outside sales force. The company had an internally built customer management system but the solution was tailored to support retail employees. Instead, Best Buy for Business wanted a new solution that would enable sales force automation and foster strong customer relationships. In addition, the company wanted a solution that it could add to its own portfolio of services and solutions offerings. This would enable Best Buy for Business to empower its own customers to improve how they manage customer relationships. Tom Healy, Executive Vice President for Best Buy for Business explains, "For the past three years, Best Buy has focused on our 'Customer Centricity' initiative. The information that we've discovered?such as who our best customers are and what percentage of business they account for?is knowledge that we want our small-business customers to discover as well." Solution Best Buy for Business considered several options, including expanding its internally developed retail application, adopting a hosted CRM solution through Salesforce.com, or implementing Microsoft Dynamics CRM. In the end, the solution was clear.
"We didn't want technology, we wanted a solution to our problem," says Devers. "What ultimately drew us to Microsoft CRM was the fact that it is fully integrated with the Microsoft Office Outlook client. In addition, Microsoft CRM is feature-rich and supports a fast time-to-market." With Microsoft CRM, Best Buy for Business has a centralized repository of customer data that integrates with the Microsoft Office applications that employees use every day, such as the Office Outlook messaging and collaboration client. Within Office Outlook, employees can access Microsoft CRM sales, marketing, and customer service modules to make sales decisions, market products, solve problems, and obtain strategic views of the business.
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