Overview:

Founded over 40 years ago as a professional recruiting agency, OI Partners Promark Company (Promark), has expanded its mission and now specializes in talent development and the retraining and outplacement of displaced workers. The company operates three offices across the state of Ohio and assists hundreds of companies and individuals each year. In a business that demands high levels of interpersonal communication and organization, Promark relies on Sage Accpac Online Extended Enterprise Suite, which includes Sage Accpac and SageCRM.

System:
Sage Accpac Online Extended Enterprise Suite

A Successful New Hire in the Front Office

When the company came under new ownership five years ago, Promark had a talented team of professionals but lacked effective tools for managing its client base. Jim Byrne, business operations manager at Promark recalls the difficulties the company faced, “Most of our client information was maintained by a single individual. The rest of the staff had client information stored in notes and e-mail messages. We lacked a single, centralized location for holding and accessing all client-related information.”

The new owner wasted little time in remedying the situation. “He researched CRM solutions and found SageCRM,” Byrne says. “It is ideal for us; all the capabilities we need without the IT requirements of an in-house system.”

By investing in a hosted solution, Promark was able to implement the software rapidly, without worry about internal IT infrastructure, backup routines, or workstation installations and updates.

Immediate Positive Results

Promark’s staff started by gathering, entering, and importing all customer contact information into SageCRM. The change in productivity and efficiency was dramatic and immediate.

“Suddenly we had a cohesive view of our client base and we could see the relationships between different individuals at a company which allowed us to better target our promotional efforts,” Byrne explains. “We set up groups by sales manager to give managers a clear view of the activities in their regions. We now can step up our marketing efforts and send our company newsletter by e-mail to targeted groups in the SageCRM database.”

Building on its success with SageCRM, Promark began using the Opportunities feature in SageCRM to track new leads and sales opportunities. “We had no efficient way to organize and prioritize these opportunities before,” says Byrne. “Now both management and staff can see the open and pending opportunities, so we can be certain nothing is overlooked.”

Before, there was always the concern that employee turnover would lead to a loss of valuable client and opportunity data. “In many cases, our sales representatives had information on paper notepads” says Byrne. “If they left the company, that notepad and its data went with them. Now that data is securely and centrally stored.”

Promote Back Office Integrations

With robust customer relationship management, opportunity tracking, and marketing automation in place, only one thing was missing. “We recognized the value we could realize by integrating our CRM system with our accounting system,” says Byrne. “However, we were using QuickBooks which significantly limited our options.”

Byrne discussed options with the company’s Sage Authorized Partner, who introduced him to Sage Accpac. The solution also operates as a hosted solution, delivers sophisticated financial and accounting functionality, and seamlessly integrates with SageCRM. “It was equally quick to get this solution up and running,” recalls Byrne.

To convert the company’s database from QuickBooks to Sage Accpac, Promark sent their data to Greytrix, a Sage Gold Development Partner. Greytrix was able to efficiently perform the database conversion over a weekend—the converted database balanced to the penny.

In addition to the integration with SageCRM, Sage Accpac delivers time-saving efficiency to the company. “We used to manually enter invoices into QuickBooks from our billing software. Sage Accpac has allowed us to combine invoicing and accounts receivable functions so we no longer need to re-enter invoices. This saves us four to five hours each week.”

Accuracy and consistency have increased as well. “Thanks to the integration between the two systems, we can update a client’s information in one system and the change automatically updates the other system,” notes Byrne.

Promark is preparing to implement the Inventory Control module of Sage Accpac to track its training materials. “We also will begin using the Purchase Orders module to track the referrals we generate to our affiliates in other parts of the country,” adds Byrne.

The Benefits of a Hosted Solution
Byrne says SageCRM and Sage Accpac have proven to be ideal for Promark. “Our business is people, not computers, he says. “To hire and retain knowledgeable IT staff is expensive. To be competitive, we need to manage costs and make smart investment decisions. We’ve found it’s a much better investment to put our resources into our core business functions and outsource the software administration.”
Byrne concludes, “The combination of SageCRM and Sage Accpac gives us a powerful, integrated solution that allows us to focus on what we do best.”