RED Systems – Specialist Glazing
RED Systems (https://redsystems.co.uk) was formed in 2005 by Michael Green (Managing Director), they are a specialist glazing firm. They focus on the creativity and quality of their products and excellent service delivery. RED Systems wanted to migrate to Dynamics 365.
The Challenge
RED Systems were using a hosted version of Microsoft CRM 2011 to help manage their current and potential projects (and the relationships they have with their clients, architects, contractors, consultants, suppliers and quantity surveyors). Due to the system being outdated and no longer being supported by Microsoft, a change was needed. The initial requirements asked for were:
1. Cloud based with ability to access by all standard web browsers on desktops / laptops / tablets / mobile.
2. Outlook compatibility to track emails.
3. Capable of incorporating directly or linking to external files (using SharePoint).
4. Capable of listing all data for projects in different stages.
5. Link companies and contacts and their roles to projects.
6. Record activities against a project.
7. Ability to globally search across all entities.
8. Record customer care jobs and info.
9. Be able to export data to Excel.
10. Ease of reporting / incorporating Power BI.
Due to the above an easy decision was reached by RED Systems to migrate to Dynamics 365 and take advantage of all the new features and functions built in.
The Solution
A 30 Day Trial of Dynamics 365* was setup within Office 365, we then imported the KMS Project-CRM solution. Due to the current pandemic consultancy was carried out remotely via MS Teams with the RED Systems’ team led by Jonathan Nash (Head of Sales and Estimating). A relatively straight forward and streamlined system was provided, the new Dynamics UCI (Unified Client Interface) has the same look and feel across all the Microsoft applications, so the importance RED Systems’ put-on user adoption was more than catered for. A few custom entities and custom activities were required, customisation changes were made to these entities and to the timeline to improve RED Systems’ user experience and a UCI App was designed and put in place. A system-wide dashboard was setup to show areas of interest for users.
The data migration from the old system was carried out using the KMS Data Connector, mapping to the appropriate new fields and entities in the new system. Train the trainer training was provided by KMS and Jonathan trained his team on all the new features, functions and the new processes built into the system.
The Outcome
RED were delighted with the completed project by KMS:
“It really ticked all our boxes in terms of how it could be adapted to suit our business needs. We really see data-driven decisions being at the heart of what do at RED in order to provide service delivery excellence. Now we have the ability to integrate so much more information into one central point than ever before, and this can only help us to become better at what we do. In particular the Microsoft Outlook email integration within the CRM has been a real game changer – allowing all our users to see what’s happening at each stage of a project’s life means that we can have much better visibility of business-critical information.”
Jonathan Nash – Head of Sales and Estimating – RED Systems – March 2021
