Client Overview
The client is a Canadian manufacturer of advanced membranes used in waterproofing and flooring, serving distributors and contractors across North America. Their business depends on precision, as operations comprise managing hundreds of SKUs, maintaining real-time stock visibility, and enabling sales teams to deliver prompt, informed service.
Based in Brampton, Ontario, the company, as it began to expand its distribution footprint and product lines, faced issues with fragmented data, manual reporting, and inconsistent follow-ups, which strained its operations. Implementing a modern, automated Microsoft Dynamics CRM platform became critical to sustaining growth and customer satisfaction.
What Were the Business Challenges?
Despite their manufacturing expertise and strong market presence, the company grappled with significant operational obstacles that limited both growth and day-to-day efficiency. Complex sales workflows, fragmented data sources, and manual processes created persistent bottlenecks that held the business back from reaching its full potential.
Key challenges included:
Disconnected
Sales Data
Store-level sales across Canada and the USA were logged in separate spreadsheets, delaying critical insights and creating room for errors.
Limited Process
Automation
Reps and managers relied heavily on manual reminders and self-managed follow-ups, resulting in inconsistent engagement with distributors and partners.
Complex Product
and Pricing Management
Maintaining accurate product catalogues, price lists, and discount structures required significant effort, with no centralized repository or streamlined approval processes.
Inadequate
Reporting
Leadership lacked timely, visual reporting on product performance, rep activity, and order trends, forcing them to rely on outdated snapshots for decision-making.
Manual Address
Handling
Quote, order, and invoice creation often involved repetitive address updates—time-consuming and prone to mistakes.
Business Demands
To modernize its sales operations and build a foundation for long-term success, the company needed a solution that would unify data, automate workflows, and empower teams with actionable insights.
- Unified Customer Data: Centralize all accounts, contacts, and opportunity records in a single system for complete visibility and consistency.
- Automated Engagement: Streamline follow-ups, reminders, and activity tracking so reps and managers never miss critical tasks or deadlines.
- Store-Level Performance Tracking: Enable weekly sales logging across Canadian and US locations to monitor performance and drive informed decisions.
- Simplified Product Management: Manage complex product catalogues, pricing, and discounts with transparent, centralized controls that reduce administrative effort.
- Dynamic Sales Views: Provide teams with real-time visibility into orders, inventory availability, and key metrics that impact customer experience.
- Advanced Reporting and Analytics: Deliver real-time dashboards and reports through CRM and Power BI to support data-driven planning and accountability.
- Automatic Address Handling: Auto-populate billing and shipping addresses in quotes, orders, and invoices to save time and reduce manual errors.
Their vision was clear: build a foundation where accurate data, consistent follow-through, and actionable insights drive every customer interaction.
Objectives
The primary objective was to replace disjointed, manual processes with an intelligent and scalable CRM ecosystem that would align sales, operations, and reporting under one platform. This transformation aimed to empower teams, improve efficiency, and drive more strategic growth across regions.
Streamline Sales Operations: Unify sales data, daily workflows, and reporting into one cohesive platform that simplifies complex processes end-to-end.
Increase Productivity Through Automation: Eliminate repetitive, manual tasks by implementing intelligent workflows, automated reminders, and seamless follow-up processes.
Enhance Visibility Across Regions: Equip leadership and sales teams with real-time, store-level insights spanning Canada and the USA to support proactive management.
Standardize Product and Pricing Management: Maintain consistent, accurate product catalogues and pricing structures to reduce errors and improve customer trust across channels.
Empower Teams with Actionable Insights: Deploy advanced reporting and analytics capabilities that enable faster, more confident, data-driven decisions at every level of the business.
Solution Implemented
The company embarked on a two-phase transformation journey to reimagine sales operations from the ground up. Anchored by Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales and seamlessly integrated Power BI dashboards, the implementation delivered a robust platform to centralize data, automate daily processes, and drive informed decisions across Canadian and US operations.
Key components of the solution include:
- Centralized Leads and Opportunities Management: Consolidated all leads and sales opportunities into a unified CRM, improving visibility and follow-through.
- Product and Pricing Configuration: Established detailed product catalogs, price lists, discounts, and product families to streamline quoting and sales.
- Account and Contact Management: Deployed centralized account and contact modules for accurate, up-to-date customer and partner records.
- Targeted Segments and Marketing Lists: Configured marketing lists to enable segmented campaigns and more personalized customer engagement.
- Activities and Task Management: Implemented tools to schedule, track, and complete activities, meetings, and follow-ups efficiently.
- Automated Follow-Ups and Reminders: Created workflows to assign tasks and trigger reminders automatically, reducing manual effort and delays.
- Store Listing and Management: Developed tools to maintain accurate store information across Canada and the USA in real time.
- Weekly Sales Logging by Location: Enabled consistent weekly sales tracking per store for better performance analysis and accountability.
- Rep and Manager Activity Tracking: Delivered transparent tracking of sales activities and engagement by individual reps and managers.
- Automated Notifications and Escalations: Implemented proactive notifications to ensure timely action on key activities and important milestones.
- Product and Order-Specific Views: Built dynamic views to simplify order management and product-level monitoring for sales teams.
- Custom Reporting Dashboards: Created interactive dashboards in CRM and Power BI to visualize sales performance instantly.
- CRM Audit Logging: Enabled audit logs to improve compliance, data integrity, and historical record-keeping across processes.
- Automated Address Updates: Deployed automation to pre-fill addresses in quotes, orders, and invoices, reducing errors and saving time.
Benefits of Implementation
This initiative transformed sales management from a fragmented process into a seamless, data-driven engine.
Improved Efficiency:
Sales reps and managers now operate from a unified platform that automates follow-ups and streamlines task assignments.
Enhanced Sales Visibility:
Store-level performance is visible in real time, enabling proactive decisions and better forecasting.
Simplified Product Management:
Accurate product catalogues and dynamic pricing ensure consistency and reduce administrative overheads.
Better Customer Experience:
Automated address handling and timely engagement improve the accuracy and reliability of every transaction.
Data-Driven Culture:
Leadership has access to live dashboards and reporting through Power BI, replacing static reports with actionable insights.
Scalable Platform:
The system is built to grow with the business, supporting new stores, products, and territories as the company expands.
Case Highlight: Redefining Sales Operations in Manufacturing
Before the project, the company’s sales workflows were tangled in spreadsheets, manual reminders, and siloed reporting. Today, from their base in Brampton, Ontario, they operate a modern, intelligent CRM Software that empowers teams to serve customers with confidence and clarity.
Seamless Sales Logging:
Weekly sales tracking across Canada and the USA is now automatic and real-time.
Consistent Engagement:
Automated reminders and follow-ups ensure no opportunity is overlooked.
Unified Reporting:
Leadership can drill into performance metrics across stores, reps, and products instantly.
Time Savings:
Repetitive tasks like address updates have been eliminated, freeing teams to focus on growth.
By combining automation with a clear, unified sales platform, the company has set a new benchmark for operational excellence in manufacturing distribution, making this a standout example of how Dynamics 365 for Ontario Businesses can drive measurable impact.
