PGG Wrightson – CRM leads business intelligence charge
PGG Wrightson, New Zealand’s largest nationwide provider to the agricultural sector, offers a wide range of products, services and solutions to farmers, growers and processors in New Zealand, and to processors and end-users internationally.
As a result of rapid expansion through a series of mergers, PGG Wrightson has grown to 2,400 staff, who work across more than a dozen business units, serving over 90,000 customers.
To help staff integrate the business data from the company’s various acquisitions and business units, and turn the different data-sets into actionable information, PGG Wrightson has implemented a companywide business / customer intelligence strategy, based on a Microsoft SQL Server 2005 data warehouse and Microsoft Dynamics CRM.
“Our business units were acting independently without any synergy between them,” says John Skurr, national sales support manager at PGG Wrightson.
“Two or more business units might have data about a specific customer, but there was no way to correlate this information.
“Additionally, no one group took ownership of the data, which meant we had issues with data accuracy, especially address data, such as RAPID rural addresses and post codes. So, we made the decision to create a data warehouse, as the centralised location of all customer data, and build a customer-centric portal into that warehouse that would allow us to see customer transactions across each business unit.”
Strategic focus
To help staff plan their business / customer intelligence strategy, build the data warehouse and design reports and interfaces, PGG Wrightson engaged independent business intelligence (BI) specialists Montage, which has one of the largest and most experienced BI teams in New Zealand.
“We selected Montage as our business intelligence services partner because they demonstrated they had the depth of resources and experience to manage a very complex and business-critical undertaking. Now, with the customer intelligence environment being rolled out after a very intense period of development, our confidence in Montage has been validated,” says Skurr.
“As part of the specification process,” says Tony Millar, CEO of Montage and the principal consultant on the project, “we made a major effort to include the intended users of the BI/CRM portals, to identify their data and customer information requirements.”
“We asked them what information they used in their everyday activities; what information they wanted but couldn’t get, and how they would like that information delivered to them. This valuable input not only helped us set up the back-end data models, front-end interfaces and reporting formats, but it also ensured that the final deliverable would be readily accepted by staff.”
Leveraging information
Another key business driver was to leverage the information content of the data and apply that market intelligence to improve the decision-making process within PGG Wrightson.
“A well-designed BI/CRM solution is a platform that integrates information, overlays business rules and business processes, and then delivers this information to stakeholders,” says Millar.
“The Microsoft Dynamics CRM portal interface provides intuitive and powerful tools to push that information into the hands of decision-makers, giving them a single version of the truth.”
This approach has proven successful for the company.
“Business/customer intelligence has given us a real appreciation of how important each customer is to the company,” says Skurr.
“Microsoft Dynamics CRM provides a snapshot of each customer, specifically around which customer accounts from different business units relate to each other. Our transactional data is stored in the data warehouse – based on Microsoft SQL Server 2005 – and we use a range of Microsoft reporting tools to bridge this gap and provide us near real-time analytics for decision-making.”
Populating the data warehouse is about 30 percent complete. “We started with a blank slate,” explains Skurr, “and have been slowly building up our customer databases.”
“Our initial focus has been our top echelon of customers, so we can see their activity across all business units. We also feed sales data from our retail stores into the data warehouse every night. Our regional and national account managers are using the system to analyse both the sales and customer data, to help them manage their key accounts more efficiently.”
“The solution has significantly improved our understanding around the relative value of customers across our whole organisation.” - John Skurr, National Sales Support Manager
“The solution has significantly improved our understanding around the relative value of customers across our whole organisation,” notes Skurr. “The Microsoft CRM portal and supporting data warehouse have put us in a better position to move forward. We need to walk before we run and this is giving us the foundation we need to better understand and serve our customer base.”
Feedback and monitoring
“PGG Wrightson is a classic example of how complex it can be to create an enterprise-wide business intelligence environment providing reporting on and analysis of key business activities and performance,” says Millar. “But, with the right approach, a thorough review of the business requirements, and a careful incremental implementation, combined with a feedback loop and constant monitoring of the project, PGG Wrightson has been able to achieve its initial goals and set the stage for further development.”
“Technology for technology’s sake isn’t a solution.
But technology aligned with real business goals can be a powerful tool to drive increased customer satisfaction and loyalty, and, ultimately, profitability,” says Millar.
“Montage continues to help bridge the gap between business requirements and technology deliverables,” says Skurr.
“The successful alignment of people, business processes and solutions has reduced risk, ensured that deliverables are fit-for-purpose, and has allowed the organisation to accurately target functions of highest impact and greatest return,” concludes Millar.
Business Benefits
- Reduced data inaccuracies
- Improved data capture and validation procedures to ensure data is accurate at entry point
- ‘Single version of the truth’ for upper level managers
