Vertical Industry: Non-Profit – Strategy Consulting | Executive Search
Customer: The Bridgespan Group
Customer Website: www.bridgespan.org
Customer Profile:
The Bridgespan Group is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit that helps nonprofit and philanthropic leaders in the hard work of developing strategies and building organizations that inspire and accelerate social change. Bridgespan works to build a better world by strengthening the ability of nonprofit organizations to achieve breakthrough results in addressing society’s most important challenges and opportunities. At the heart of their mission is the belief that a strong and effective nonprofit sector can be a powerful force for change as well as a source of human inspiration. They believe that results are driven by three levers: solid strategy; access to appropriately structured capital; and talent that begins with leaders and senior managers. Bridgespan is focused on applying the best relevant thinking and tools to strengthen these levers and help organizations deliver on their missions.
Business Situation:
Bridgespan’s Executive Search Services are designed to help manage the process and guide organizations to find candidates who can help deliver on their organization’s mission. Building a strong, cohesive senior leadership team is no easy matter and identifying and recruiting talented leaders is oftentimes the biggest challenge of them all. Unfortunately, the firm’s legacy Encore contact management system led to a lot of duplication of effort largely due to its inability to integrate with the primary messaging and collaboration tool use in-house, Microsoft Office Outlook. The Executive Search team’s primary focus is communicating with candidates about executive searches and reporting back to the organizations that have open executive searches. The fact their current system wasn’t integrated with Microsoft Office Outlook meant they had to manually copy and paste email message details and calendar data into Encore resulting in 30-40% of their time being focused on non-productive administrative tasks.
Another challenge for Bridgespan was the lack of visibility of information across the organization. The Strategy Consulting and Advisory Services Practices had access to Encore but since the contact information was organized for Executive Search purposes it was difficult to bridge their needs with the information and structure of the system. In addition, silos of information existed across computers, spreadsheets, emails and employees personal contacts. These silos of data resulted in productivity loss and missed opportunities.
Solution:
Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0
http://crm.dynamics.com/
Partner:
AbleBridge Inc
http://www.ablebridge.com
Benefits:- Flexible, web-based CRM platform
- Seamless Integration with Microsoft Outlook, Excel and Word.
- Easy Access from a web browser or right from within Microsoft Outlook.
- Ability to track inbound and outbound email messages against CRM records.
- Ability to track and schedule activities in CRM right from the Outlook Calendar.
- Familiar, intuitive interface makes for high end user adoption.
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Solution Overview:
The Bridgespan Group organized a research committee led by their CIO to identify the best strategy and CRM solution that Bridgespan could grow with into the future. The research led Bridgespan to consider Salesforce.com, Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 or to upgrade their current Encore system to a newer version. After seeing demonstrations and analyzing the solutions, the research committee presented their finding to the Managing Partners and selected Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0.
“Several aspects went into our decision, but the fact that Microsoft Dynamics CRM is built on a flexible platform allows us to mold the system to our specific needs. More importantly, to the needs of each functional Practice within Bridgespan while still working from one centralized repository of information. The integration with Microsoft Office, especially Outlook, just made the decision that much easier.” Cris Peterson, CIO, The Bridgespan Group. |
Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 has centralized information for a complete view of all Bridgespan’s interactions across practice areas. This collaboration has resulted in efficiencies and consistency across the organization.
Benefits:- Executive Search team members can more effectively manage their Search and Candidate Pipelines. They can also exclude candidates who might already be placed by Bridgespan in a Consulting or Advisory role with a different Client.
- The Strategy Consulting & Advisory Practices have better visibility into their Project Pipeline. Oftentimes, their Organizations intersect with the same Organizations the Executive Search Practice focuses on. Now there is visibility into all the current and past opportunity relationships across Bridgespan’s cross-functional practices for a true holistic view of all their relationships with a Client Organization.
- Emails can be automatically tracked against the Search, Candidate or Client Organization details with a click of a button.
- Integration with Microsoft Office Outlook automatically tracks calendar changes within Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0.
- Executive Search consultants can now track the Milestones for each Search. They can also easily share the progress against these Milestones with their Clients.
- Attributes around a Candidate Biographies, Client Demographics or Search Attributes can be searched on to unveil potential opportunities and make for better decision making.
- Collecting and aggregating information to assess and manage Strategic Consulting engagements is performed in half the time it used to take.
- A 30-40% reduction in time spent on non-productive administrative tasks across the organization.
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The Value of Partnership:
The Bridgespan Group knew they wanted to enlist the assistance of a Microsoft Partner to help them through this migration process. They turned to the vast, worldwide network of Microsoft Partners to help them with this project and identified AbleBridge, a Microsoft Gold Partner headquartered in Massachusetts, as a great fit to help them through their migration process. AbleBridge had deep expertise implementing Microsoft Dynamics CRM. It was their core focus and they had a long track record of successful implementations across a variety of industries. AbleBridge guided Bridgespan through the implementation process which included milestones for business requirements, functional requirements, customization, data migration, installation and post implementation support.
“AbleBridge was a key partner for us during this process. They added significant value based on their expertise with Microsoft CRM, and more importantly, with their ability to comprehend and translate our organizational needs into Microsoft CRM.” Cris Peterson, CIO, The Bridgespan Group |
About AbleBridge
AbleBridge specializes in helping companies streamline their business operations and improve business results by leveraging the features and capabilities of the Microsoft Dynamics CRM platform. AbleBridge’s consultants have more than 30 years combined experience in the CRM industry. This expertise, in conjunction with Microsoft Dynamics CRM, helps them affordably tailor a solution resulting in increased sales, improved customer connections, enhanced productivity and greater business agility.
AbleBridge's Core Competencies include: Needs Analysis, Business Process Management, Installation and Configuration, Data Migration, Customization, .NET Development and Training Services.
About Microsoft Dynamics CRM
Microsoft Dynamics CRM gives every customer-facing employee the information they need to truly impress customers. With Microsoft CRM, you can create a centralized repository of customer data that sits neatly alongside Microsoft Office and Microsoft Office Outlook—the applications your employees probably use every day. From Outlook, employees access Microsoft CRM sales, marketing, and customer service modules to make sales decisions, market products, solve problems, and get strategic views of the business. It’s CRM that works - because it works the way your users already do, works the way your business already does, and works the way technology should.