The leading registered social landlord in East London and Essex, East Thames Group, has reported significant improvements in the running of the Group after the introduction of a new centralised CRM system. Armstrong Consultants implemented GoldMine Corporate Edition from FrontRange Solutions to streamline the sharing of information and contacts within the organisation to avoid duplication of effort.
The Group had no previous CRM or contact management system in place and it had become evident that staff were often overlapping contact with external contacts, unaware that there were existing relationships already in place. There was also the danger of missing out new and important contacts; therefore a centralised system was essential. The basic requirement was for a system to easily manage all of East Thames Group's key external contacts (including local authorities, boards they sit on, forums they are involved in) and details of meetings, calls and other communication between them and East Thames staff.
Llewellyn Annandale, Client Relationship Manager at East Thames Group commented: "We had concerns that some of the CRM systems available in the marketplace would be aimed at sales-focused organisations, rather than housing associations, and that an in-house system may be required, plus our users are based across two buildings, and include members of the Senior Management Team, including Heads of Business and Managing Directors. The major benefits have already been seen by recording the history against key contacts and establishing organisational charts to group relevant data, as well as mail merging, printing and using Filters and Groups."
The new CRM system needed to enable East Thames staff to: gather information from a centralised database of key contacts for the East Thames Group and its subsidiaries; make better use of meeting time by knowing about past meetings / conversations and existing relationships; avoid duplication of effort, whilst ensuring that the right people are representing East Thames at the right level; avoid intruding on established relationships built up over time and being able to ensure that the information gathered on the database could be used by future CRM systems.
Llewellyn commented: "Armstrong Consultants won through formal tender, based on product offered, price, customer service, but for me, it was their attention to detail and their understanding of our business that swung it. The project planning and implementation phases have gone very well and we were happy with the speed and professionalism of Armstrong's GoldMine Consultants."
