Dukes Bailiffs Solution

Overview

Established in 1993, Dukes are certificated Bailiffs and Debt Recovery agents currently located in Staffordshire and Merseyside, offering an enviable range of services throughout England and Wales.

Dukes are proud to receive instructions from a wide-ranging client base and have achieved this by recognising that many of their existing and prospective clients work to tight timescales and budgetary constraints. They have developed working relationships to free up as much of their Clients’ resource and time as is possible, whilst constantly delivering an exceptionally high level of service. This has proved to be a considerable differentiator for Dukes, and a key factor in securing new business.

The Customer Relationship Management Challenge

Customer and contact data was organised with the aid of Excel spreadsheets and Outlook handled activity management. However, as the business expanded, Dukes found that the lack of multi-user access and limited functionality was inhibiting. The systems in place were not able to effectively support continued growth and thus became impractical to use.

Management immediately recognised a need to implement a more scalable and flexible solution that would enable them to manage client activities and interactions and monitor business development performance and results.

The system also needed to support a distributed implementation topology whereby staff could access and share common data from a number of UK locations.

Solution

The company chose the world’s leading contact management system - ACT! to help drive their business forward. ACT! had been recommended to Dukes as the perfect tool for recording customer information in a way that that could support marketing activity as well as the day to day sales operation.  

Dukes contacted Sage, the authors of ACT! to express their interest in the product who in turn introduced Midlands Product Specialist and Certified Business Partner, Bluebird CRM.

A Bluebird consultant visited Dukes to review the company’s processes, understand how the company wanted to develop their business and to explore how ACT! could contribute towards achieving Duke’s objectives.

By understanding the companies aspirations and exploring how they could apply ACT! for maximum effect, Bluebird was able to put a structured proposal in place that gave Duke’s management the confidence to invest in the new solution.

The Results

The ACT! Solution has enabled Dukes to target growth more effectively and help them to focus on sales process and activity. Also by closely monitoring customer contact they can ensure that all sales leads are followed through to closure.

Now that all client data is stored electronically in one system, staff are able to view all relevant details and information about existing and prospective new clients. All notes made during phone calls and meetings, emails and documents are recorded against the client’s record together with details of services offered and associated future events. ACT! provides Dukes with a complete client history record enabling them to manage relationships more efficiently.

The ‘task list’ and ‘calendar’ functions in ACT! have improved project management by allowing staff to monitor the duration of entire projects as well individual activities. By using the filters available in the task list, staff can prioritise events in order of importance or focus on certain task types i.e. calls to be made or emails to be sent. Alarm and reminder pop-ups ensure that scheduled tasks or activities (and business opportunities) are not missed.

Quote

Wendy Lewis, Business Development Manager says:

“ACT has been increasingly effective with the growth of the Business Development team, enabling the sharing, recording and monitoring of information. It encourages a focus on customer relationship and monitoring and gives management a clear picture of the Business Development team’s activity. The system enables clear communication between business development, operational, administration and management functions. We are able to record, update and log detailed information which - prior to the installation of ACT! - may have been missed. The initial support from Bluebird was very effective in helping to ensure that the ACT! implementation delivered immediate business value.”

Dukes Bailiffs Solution...

1. ACT! Contact Management Software implementation with customisation of user screens and databases to collect data specific to the business and provide key reporting, process and activity management.

2. Configuration of host server, client PC’s and wireless networking to support the ACT! Implementation.

3. Installation at two UK locations and setup of IP synchronisation between the two sites.

4. Import of existing customer data from Excel™ spreadsheets, Microsoft™ Word documents and Outlook™ Contact fields into the new ACT! database.

5. Training to all administration and sales staff in the operation of ACT! and systems administrator training to empower the business to be self-sufficient in managing its own configuration changes as the business requirements evolve.